The digitalization impact on accounting firms business models

Sammanfattning: Technological revolutions have occurred for markets and industries since the rise of organized communities and societies. In the past few years a technological revolution has been in process with the growth of digitalized markets. This has resulted in a shift of analog business becoming digitalized. Digitization is a structural change for industries and the Swedish economy is affected by it. This put a demand on many industries to adapt digitalized techniques, in order to stay competitive and survive this technical shift. Adapting to a technical revolution puts pressure on the business strategies and requires companies to model new ones. With the digitization, new requirements have arisen for companies to create new business models, value chains and ways of organizing activities, in order to manage the business strategies. Digitization has been seen to change innovation processes and some experts believe it will change whole markets. The accounting industry is one of the industries that has been seen to have a growth in digitalization and is expected to grow even more. The accounting industry is like many other industries are experiencing the need for a change due to digital technologies. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how digital accounting businesses could set up a general business model, in order to be a successfully digitalized business. This has been conducted through a multiple case study, with the aim to provide generalized findings of business model elements and barriers/facilitators for digitalization affecting the business model. The multiple case studies has been conducted through interviews with different accounting companies, that market themselves as digitalized actors. The findings of the research indicate that digitalization had a direct affect on how companies should strategically organize a business. Many of the implications on digitalized accounting will have direct impact on strategies, actions and processes. The digitalization will require company cultures, which are digitalization friendly. Some of the found results are: digitization will give accounting companies digital accounting tools, knowledge sharing and communication channels. It will put pressure on employees for having different knowledge than analogue businesses and more expertise skills. Digitalization it is estimated to affect the offerings provided to customers. The digitalization is also most likely to have key partners, targeted customer segment, cost structure and revenue streams specific for being digitalized. Digitalization of the accounting industry is likely to change the market from being a supplier driven to becoming demand driven and new actors with less accounting knowledge could get a opening for entering the market. And there are many barriers and a few facilitators for being a digitalized accounting business. This has been taken in consideration when mapping a general business model for a digital accounting firm in this report.