The minicomputer: accountants' sleeping giant.

The article offers an insight into the challenges posed by the proliferation of minicomputers to accountants in the U.S. Failure to react to the computer's potential as an accounting and management tool can cause an accountant to relegate himself to a much lesser role in financial information processing. One distinction for accountants should be made between using the computer for problem solving and using the computer to accomplish systems data processing. Accountants must learn how to perform such functions as surveying client information needs, feasibility of electronic data processing for a particular client and implementing the system and training personnel to operate it.