Changing careers can be a daunting experience, especially when transitioning to a complex field like data science. However, it is believed that finance seems to be a perfect fit for data science, especially for the ones working with numbers, like accountants.

Accounting has mainly been the field of analysing business transactions and thus requires analytical skills, which is similar to the area of data science. In fact, both the field leverages numerical data to make a business decision; however, the latter requires a high-level of computer skills to gather the relevant data.

As experts believe markers of a genuine data scientist isn’t just the background of maths and statistics along with programming skill, instead it also includes domain experience. And that’s where the knowledge of CAs such as accounting, analysis and storytelling comes into the picture. An in-depth understanding of the financial space is the cherry on the top.

Also Read: Effective Ways For Self Learning To Become A Data Scientists In This Crisis

Accounting Skills Of CAs Can Help Transition Into Data Science

Accounting is a field where accuracy takes the utmost importance when required to extract data from accounts and sort the same for relevant insights. Along with extreme knowledge in mathematics, accountancy also comes with an amount of domain experience, which is critical for the data science field.

Such requirements are quite similar to what the data science field necessitates for; thus, an accountancy background for a professional can be extremely beneficial to pursue a career in data science. In fact, accountants having experience in working with databases to process massive amounts of information can have an edge in the data science field, which mainly focuses on analysing data. 

As a matter of fact, accounting, finance knowledge, database administration as well as financial reporting are some of the key educational background requirements advertised for data science jobs. Along with that data science job also requires the aptitude for data and the ability to automate processes, which again are vital features of an accounting professional. 

Moreover, with the BFSI industry increasingly relying more on the data-driven environment, the requirement for data scientists is increasing. But, the ones equipped with financial knowledge are even becoming more relevant. With an understanding of finance and management, accountants can easily stay ahead of the curve for reading financial data, which is ever-growing.

Data Analysis Skills That Can Help CAs Transition Into Data Science 

Having said that a professional with a chartered accounting background brings a unique approach to the data science field. Not only it involves the aspect of finance, accounting and management but also brings their understanding of financial data which is critical for extracting business insights. 

With all things considered, mathematical knowledge is the key to any sort of analytical job, and chartered accountants are well versed with statistics, which is extremely critical for the field of data science. Data scientists tend to use statistical formulas along with computerised algorithms to analyse data and gather relevant information.

Alongside similar to data scientists, chartered accountants also leverage data analytics tools as well as visualisation tools such as Power BI, Datawrapper, Tableau, etc. for making sense of data, as well as predict operational business risks. Thus, transitioning to a data science field would be easier for CAs compared to other professions.

Apart from excel sheets, chartered accountants many a time also use programming languages like SQL, R, Python to get their work done faster and with a higher degree of accuracy. As a matter of fact, accountants with a certain level of programming language are high in demand.

Therefore, if willing to change the course of their career to data science, these programming skills and knowledge of tools can come handy for chartered accountants. Besides these, working in the finance domain also makes accountants robust in understanding how businesses operate and how to determine the financial aspect of the company. 

Thus, in entirety, understanding of the essential analytical tools, along with the business knowledge and expertise in communication with clients while auditing, can make transitioning to the data science field easy for chartered accountants. 

Also Read: An Economist’s Guide To Becoming A Chief Data Scientist

Wrapping Up

Data science is a field of interest, and if one has an interest in numbers and learning programming skills, it becomes an easy transition for them. With both accounting and data science primarily addressing numbers in order to bring out relevant insights, it’s only applicable for accountant professionals to opt for higher education in data science so that it becomes easy for them to combine the two aspects and become a financial analyst or a data scientist in the BFSI or other similar industries.