One element perhaps surprisingly not identified in this model is the success of the ERP implementation. It would seem likely that any assessment of the success of any ERP project would be related to the changes resulting from the ERP project, and that the impact upon management accountants would be related to the success of the implementation. A successful implementation would be expected to free management accountants to do other things and to move them in the direction of becoming business consultants. A less successful ERP project might increase their activity on some of their existing tasks, absorbing any time saved through their being required to spend less time on other tasks, leaving no time for them to develop into business consultants. It is possible that an ERP system could be implemented without any change actually occurring because it does nothing different – the management accountants still need to retrieve the data and prepare reports using some other (e.g. spreadsheet) software, which may either have been intended in the implementation or not. If it was the latter, this would give grounds for viewing the implementation as a failure – there has been no impact of the implementation upon the management accountants, yet there should have been one. Alternatively, there could be no change because everything was already done by a system in place and all that has occurred is that, for example, different ERP software is now being used to perform the same processes as before and the switch of system was a success. In this case, very little change would be expected in the role of the management accountants. However, if the implementation failed, significant changes may be expected in the role of the management accountants. From an economic perspective, a straight replacement of one ERP system with another does not seem as likely as the implementation of an ERP system that mimics ERP system implementation Changes in management practices, changes in business process, etc. Management accountants and management accounting systems Impact of ERP systems on management accountants and management accounting. Source: Granlund and Malmi (2002).
|
