Den digitaliserade revisionsbranschen : En jämförande studie mellan the big four och företagskunder

Sammanfattning: Digitization is a global phenomenon that has changed the everyday life, both workwise and privately. Digitization has become a central part in almost everything you do today. New effective methods to provide services have been created with the help of automatization, which has introduced the audit world to a transformation process. The work process has become more digital, which has led to a higher demand in expectations on the agencies.The purpose of this study is to describe and identify possible impacts that digitization might have on the auditing work practice and “the big four” competitiveness. The study will focus on two different perspectives, the agencies and the clients, where we will examine the general view on the digital services that are being offered and what pros or cons these services bring. In order to achieve the purpose of this study, every “big four” accounting firm and a couple of customers will be interviewed. After the interviews were completed, they were analyzed by applying relevant theories. The methodology of the study has a qualitative character with inductive character.The empirical findings of the study indicate that digitization has created a more effective work practice where you have more access to data. Digitization is necessary for the agencies if they want to maintain legitimacy and be able to compete with one another, because every customer has an expectation that the agencies will have developed digitized utilities to support their work process. Furthermore, the findings show that the human interaction has decreased because of digitization, since the work has become more independent with less requirements on communication.Finally, the study shows that all agencies are aware that digitization is the main force on their market and that huge investments are being made to follow the development and to compete for the customers.