The Value of Providing More Accurate Costing- Part 3

This is the final blog in the series on how management accountants can become more strategic advisers based on the article, Don’t Be Stuck in the Last Century, from Strategic Finance Magazine.

In the first two blogs, we focused on five areas of management accounting practices that concern business professionals. Now, we are going to focus on what changes can be made to solve some of these concerns so business leaders can focus on making the best strategic decisions for their organization using the best data.

Do Emphases In The Discipline Need To Change?

Where should the emphases be in the business? Managers should be shifting from reacting to “after-the-fact” reports to anticipating the future with predictive data analysis and being proactive with their decision making.

To do this, management accountants will need to communicate internally to adequately understand what the company’s customers want and how they behave.

“They have to open their eyes, focus clearly on the customer, and become familiar with what the customer needs and wants.”

Management accountants need to remember the most important thing: their customers. To provide the best possible service to their customers, accountants must focus on providing the best and most accurate information. Putting the customer relationship first while having strong communication internally is imperative to changing the way management accountants operate.

Finance professionals won’t evolve from “bean counters” to “bean sprouters” if they continue to use outdated accounting practices. Using the wrong methods, ignoring bad data, and using several different styles of accounting will create more issues for the business. Big Data and business analytics are becoming the focus for marketing and operational professionals, so if management accountants don’t learn to apply advanced and accurate analytics, their jobs will soon be irrelevant.

The widening gap between the data that management accountants provide and what decision makers need creates a shift from analyzing what happened in the past to predicting the future. This shift is in response to a change in executive management taking a more proactive approach in their decision making. Business leaders are starting to take advantage of the best-of-breed technology available to them, and it is important that management accountants make it a priority to keep up with the new accounting practices that come with the changes.

To read the article in its entirety, Start Here.

To learn more about how 3C Software can help your company make more strategic business decisions, Start Here!