The extent to which the new system has had an impact on the role of Management Accountants was described as follows. The scores relate to the question: ‘On a scale from 1 to 7 (1: very much reduced to 7: very much increased).’(a) Time spent on data collection ‘It has gone down. ’Time spent on data analyzing ‘Increased. ’Involvement in business decision-making ‘Increased a lot. ’Focus on internal reporting, for example performance measurement and control issues ‘No. ’ Focus on external environment (e.g. benchmarking I don’t think it has necessarily increased because of the ERP system. It has probably increased because of the market [changes in the market] that the business is in [but, taking these other factors out of the equation,] it has changed slightly. ’The following summarizes the response to the questions listed below: To what extent are traditional analyzing performed that focus on past operating results compared to decision support type of analyzing that have a forward-looking focus? ‘The decision support is 60–70% of the time as opposed to the other way around [previously] (30–40%).’Are the Management Accountants performing cross-functional analyzing compared to domain specific analyzing ?‘Yes, probably more than they were, although I think they probably still do quite a lot of analyzing within the functional silos… [cross-functional analyzing ]won’t replace the [domain specific analyzing ]… but the difference now is that there is the ability to see, to look at “end to end” business processes across the business and in more depth than previously.’
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