SF Magazine: ABC and Value-Stream Costing in Tandem

“Like in most areas of life, it’s generally good to have a lot of choices in accounting. Take, for instance, activity-based costing (ABC) and value-stream costing (VSC), which can be viewed as two alternative approaches to obtaining accurate cost information in complex production and sales environments. You would think that companies that adopt VSC aren’t likely to also have ABC systems. But that isn’t necessarily the case: A 2012 survey of 368 facilities employing Lean production found that 62 of them—or roughly one in six—reported a relatively high use of both ABC and VSC. Those same companies also reported the highest level of performance improvement from Lean initiatives. Clearly, these organizations weren’t treating ABC and VSC as alternatives: They were using the systems in tandem.”

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SF Magazine: Preparing Future Accountants

“The essence of management accounting is internal decision support, which will ultimately impact the internal and external stakeholders of an organization and, consequently, influence the areas of financial reporting, audit, and tax. Management accounting seeks to reflect and provide deep insight into the underlying relationships among resources, processes, customers, economic conditions, and financial and nonfinancial outcomes. The goal is to enable an organization to use information that’s meaningful and timely for creating long-term strategic value.”

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Accounting Today: 3 Steps to Improving Your Accounting Data Analytics Results

“Descriptive and diagnostic analytics ranging from inventory availability to variance analysis have been performed since Luca Pacioli created double-entry accounting. Long before user-friendly dashboards existed, we used Excel spreadsheets and charts. And before Excel? We did it by hand.

Thankfully modern accountants can leverage advanced technologies to perform analysis at scale and speed, dramatically increasing the amount of accounting and non-accounting data available to shape our analysis.”

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Forbes: 2022 Will Be The “Year Of The Management Accountant”

“In fact there is room for optimism given the new emphasis business leaders are placing on agility for the short-term and anticipatory thinking for the long-term. This represents a pivot in thought and action, perhaps one that was long overdue. At IMA, we have been championing the need for finance and accounting professionals to move beyond the compliance mindset to engage as full business partners and as future-focused strategic planners who use data to anticipate the future. It is this future-focused orientation that makes management accountants so valuable to their organizations, and I believe 2022 is the year when their skills will be best utilized and recognized.”

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CFO Journal: Financial Reporting Considerations: Forecasts and Inflation

“Inflation, as well as supply chain disruptions and labor shortages, are affecting an increasing number of companies in different industries to varying degrees. And if a company’s business model and operations are affected, it’s likely that its accounting and financial reporting will be as well.”

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CFO Dive: Work Backwards When Replacing Legacy Systems, Accounting Specialists Say

“When replacing your legacy finance and accounting system with something automated and cloud-based, first understand what both you and your non-finance business users need out of the system, and organize implementation around that.”

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Accounting Today: Data Analysis and Forecasting Software: Taking a Look Into the Future

“But in some practices, there’s been a degree of hesitation in adopting one of the excellent software applications targeted at this need. As with many applications, building and using an Excel spreadsheet model is still a popular approach. And some practices are hesitant to adopt and apply an analytical application that uses techniques they may not have been exposed to — essentially a “black box.” But in today’s world, many of the apps and software solutions in use employ techniques that you may not be able to detail step by step, but that produce results that are probably a quantum level above those that could be achieved a decade ago. And that’s a very good and profitable development.”

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SF Magazine: Accounting Curricula in the Digital Age

“Digital technology is transforming value delivery and operational performance of accounting and finance functions across the globe. This transformation, or disruption, of accounting tasks by emerging technologies like advanced analytics, Big Data, AI, and robotic process automation (RPA) influences the evolving expectations of finance and accounting employers.”

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Forbes: Accounting For The Future: Why CFOs Need Predictive Powers

“While hindsight and oversight were the activities we felt most comfortable performing, today our roles have shifted to include the additional “lines of sight” of insight and foresight. Some have gone as far as referring to the “CFO” as “Chief Futures Officer.” In any case, as our world grows more complex and volatile, the CFO can evolve to become both a strategist and a futurist.”

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