CA ANZ - Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand - see its new venture ‘as a vital step in equipping businesses, particularly small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs), with the skills and tools to access big data in a meaningful way.’

The announcement, which came yesterday ahead of Malcolm Turnbull’s celebrated and much praised ‘Innovation Statement,’ is billed by CA ANZ as putting it ‘at the heart of predictive analytics which CA ANZ, representing over 115,000 Chartered Accountants, believes is the future for SME businesses wanting to maintain their competitive edge.’

The initiative has been called CA Kairos, with Kairos being ‘an ancient Greek word meaning the opportune moment,’ is designed to ‘bring together systems and platforms to deliver a leading data analytic service.’

CA Kairos comprises of ‘The Predictive Accountant, The Connected Practice and an accelerator /incubation hub,’ and will provide ‘a single source of data through a collection of tools, dashboards, and predictive models supporting different client scenarios. This will save time and allow for more meaningful insights, leading to richer conversations and more reliable business predictions.’

Here is the CA Kairos video:

CA ANZ Chief Executive Officer Lee White said that CA Kairos represented a significant step for SMEs and Chartered Accountants. “There will be a huge demand for professional advisers who are commercially astute and data-savvy who can use predictive analytics to make better business decisions, particularly from small to medium sized enterprises. Chartered Accountants are ideally positioned to take advantage of this,” said Lee.

More below, please read on.

Toby Bowers, Cloud and Enterprise Lead, Microsoft Australia said: “We’re pleased CA ANZ have selected Microsoft Azure and Power BI solutions to power the CA Kairos offering. This initiative will enable SMEs to become more agile and innovative through predictive analytics technologies.”

Ian Hill, Head of Innovation at Westpac said: “We are excited by the concept of the predictive accountant and are delighted to be involved with such a progressive and forward-thinking organisation.”

Meanwhile, CA ANZ says it is ‘developing an analytics curriculum for its Graduate Diploma to help fill demand for the estimated 30,000 data managers required by 2018 in Australia and New Zealand alone.’