The Management Accountants use historical data only to help forecast what is going to happen. They are more concerned with the future of a project to ensure that it is profitable. Since they analyses and investigate historical data to determine future outcomes, it was estimated that about 50% of the time spent on backward-looking analyzing and 50% is spent on forward-looking analyzing . Prior to the implementation of the ERP system, most of the time was spent on historical/backward looking data – ‘probably 80–85% historical.’ It is a lot easier to undertake the forward-looking work with the new system. (b) Are the Management Accountants performing cross-functional analyzing compared to domain specific analyzing ? Before the implementation of the new system, the data wasn’t available to undertake cross-functional analyzing . The Management Accountants are now involved in cross-functional analyzing – there are third party contractors, procurement, maintenance, asset management and ‘Commercial, who say how much it is going to cost and that is how much we are going to make on it. That is totally across the business.’ It was noted that the Management Accountants are taking both a ‘project view’ and ‘business view.’ (c) Since less time is needed for data capture and less time is spent generating routine reports for managers, what are the Management Accountants doing with the extra time? The Management Accountants are spending a lot of time attending customer meetings and actually dealing with customers. They provide ‘a reality check’ to the promises made by the Sales team.
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