Discussion Board and responses

Question Description

The Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) has a series of YouTube Videos on Trends in Management Accounting. We will continue to review and discuss some of these trends to learn about developments in this field for discussions in this course.

Listen to the following two videos in the IMA series:

Required:

Comment and expand on a topic discussed in the video and provide a real world example from the news or your own experience. In addition, make some concluding remarks about the seven changes discussed in this series.

Presence during both weeks of the module and a minimum of three postings are expected, one original posting and two responses to colleagues. Minimum required participation does not guarantee a perfect score.

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PLEASE RESPONSE TO THE FOLLOWING:

Emily Post –

For this discussion post I decided to address some of the things Mr. Cokins brings up during his summary of the seventh major trend: “the need for skills and capabilities in behavioral change management” (IMA, 2014). I chose this particular video because so much of it resonated with me during my experience at a previous organization. I was newly arrived with a computer science background to a division responsible for information technology lifecycle management; I was roughly 15 years younger than anyone else I worked with; those same people had been in place for at least 5 years, some as many as 15 years or more. As a result, I came in with a fresh set of eyes on processes that had been in place for a very long time, with people who had become comfortable in their processes. Once I learned their way of doing things, I slowly identified ways that I could perhaps improve their processes by making it more efficient or less costly. However, much to my chagrin, they were all extremely reluctant to change their processes. As a computer science person, I well understood that their accounting processes for hardware and software approval were too slow to adapt to the quickly changing technological environments found in the computing industry today. Because they lacked the IT background, they didn’t understand how their processes were slowing down the organization and ultimately impacting the organization’s ability to effectively manage their IT costs. This industry makes a great example for why it is imperative that organizations do not become resistant to change and are able to adjust their processes and behaviors to allow for the most cost effective solutions in a rapidly changing (technological) market.

Overall, I think Mr. Cokins did a great job in summarizing some of the big “trend” items which could really make or break an organization going forward. Although accounting for the business operations are crucial for success, there are many other factors which need to be taken into account so a business can make the appropriate decisions.

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Patrick Post –

Internal charge backs are a way for the formerly “free” internal services to have a value instead of being written off and (potentially) abused by the users within the company. When people realize that everything has value, they may be less likely to ignore self-help tools, personal troubleshooting techniques or bypassing established reporting requirements just to get the “IT guy” to come fix their computer.

There is an issue in military customer service type functions that cause abuse from both the customer and the service function standpoint. First, the function has no value and everyone is able to push tickets or help requests – and every customer is an emergency. Don’t believe me? Just ask them. On the other hand, since the processes are completely internal (and the employees are judged by their own functional community) and there is basically 0 competition, customer service suffers in a big way. Adding value to these functions could very well help in lowering the unnecessary requests that bog down the system, demand a level of customer service not previously given (but people will want what they pay for), and lead to more healthy and profitable interactions.

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Kojo Post –

One of the seven major trends in management accounting is the realization that management should put in place measures and behavioral change management techniques to enable people embrace change in skills in order to curb the slow adoption of these enterprise management performance methods. No matter how great these techniques are will not matter if they are not utilized.

Technology and the software to unlock the potential of the enterprise management performance management and the information needed has been available for a long time but people’s resistance to change due to all the turmoil and uncertainties surrounding change management has slowed down this great prospect.

Management should therefore acquire and learn behavioral change management techniques and effectively manage and facilitate change within their organizations. By so doing, they will be able to overcome the resistance associated with change and enable corporations to adopt the enterprise management techniques available to realize the full potential of the companies and attain optimal results.

v/r,

Kojo

Reference:

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