An SME approach to data analytics by management accountants in the transition economy of Vietnam

Abstract

Purpose: Data analytics (DA) is an emerging topic in management science at large organizations; however, accountants in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are believed to be lagging far behind in the usage of DA. This study aims to provide a deep understanding of the actual DA activities undertaken by management accountants (MA) and to draw on SMEs’ characteristics to take advantage of DA applications. Design/methodology/approach: This study used a qualitative approach by conducting in-depth interviews with 31 accounting and finance practitioners at senior levels of SMEs, following the use of the MAXQDA 2022 application for data analysis. Findings: Findings in this study suggest variance and trend analysis as the two most popular tasks of DA, and advanced tasks such as contingency analysis, financial modeling, sentiment analysis and regression analysis are unfully performed in SMEs. The outcomes revealed that DA is not anticipated to affect the responsibilities but to expand the role and scope of management accounting. Practical implications: This study simultaneously builds a theoretical framework about the antecedents, in terms of the external and internal drives and the characteristics of SMEs’ owner-managers, that are most common in all types of SMEs that encourage MA to use a specific technology, data analysis in a more advanced way instead of searching for determinants that affect the adoption of technology in general, as previous studies have conducted. Originality/value: Although there are studies on DA usage, little has approached the mutual interconnections between how DA is applied by MA in SMEs and what changes in management accounting responsibilities by DA affect. Therefore, the point of this study was to look into how SMEs use DA and what activities MA actually do with DA to discover what traits SMEs need to use DA applications effectively as DA applications become more advanced.