It is estimated that about 90–95% of work performed by the Management Accountants relies on the new system. ‘Their role has changed almost 180 degrees because whereas before they were relied upon to be the calculating engine to provide the reports, now they are more interpreters and navigators.’ Other staff are now responsible for entering project data, the Project Manager is responsible for ensuring that the time sheets are completed and for time and costs allocated to a project. The Management Accountants on a project now examine the project timelines, the profitability of the project and ‘…spending their time doing management appraisal of the projects rather than just generating the numbers.’ They are now monitoring the project as it proceeds and recommending appropriate action rather than gathering data and not knowing the outcome until after the project is finished. With the implementation of the new system, Management Accountants are now assigned to regions rather than being located at Head Office. The number of Management Accountants has increased slightly due to this regionalization. With the new ERP system, the data is now collected from the source. The Management Accountants are now interpreting the data rather than having to be responsible to ensure that the data is collected. Prior to the ERP system implementation, they ‘…spent most of their time running around trying to find out where the data was.’ The responsibility for data entry into the ERP system is now the responsibility of the Project Manager and/or Procurement. Management now relies on the Management Accountants to interpret the numbers and to ‘tell them what is going on.’
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