Although converting to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is accounting-driven, organizations should realize very early on that it is a multi-faceted business change initiative that has potentially wide-reaching impacts across an organization, particularly regarding IT systems.
While IFRS creates a need for new financial data, calculations and reporting, the IT systems and processes should also be reviewed, modified, reconfigured, or even new systems implemented.
With each change that is made in the IFRS an entity needs to assess the impact it will have on the collection of the data for financial reporting purposes and the other control processes.
For example – on adopting the Property, Plant and Equipment most of the entities will result in additional componentization or change in the depreciation methodology. So any entity transitioning to IFRS will need to assess if their current systems can actually capture the information on a go-forward basis for IFRS reporting / disclosures. In addition, the entity will also need to consider the process that will be carried out for its future impairment testing.
Read The Impact of IFRS on Technology – A Practical Introduction from KPMG website
References: KPMG publication