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Cost Management Roles and Practices in Management Accounting Today RESULTS FROM THE 2003 IMA-E&Y SURVEY B Y A SHISH G ARG,DEBASHIS G HOSH,JAMES H UDICK, AND C HUEN N OWACKI anagement accounting is at a critical juncture. themselves against their peers. What’s more, more than Increased competition and uncertain business 200 members indicated that they would like to participate Mconditions have put significant pressure on in detailed interviews about industry-wide best practices corporate management to make informed business deci- in management accounting. sions and maximize their company’s financial perfor- mance. In response, a range of management accounting KEY FINDINGS tools and techniques has emerged. The survey revealed six major findings: Given this abundance of solutions, what decision- 1. Cost management is a key input to strategic decision support tools and cost analytics methodologies are makers. finance professionals employing? And what are the fron- 2. Decision makers and decision enablers alike identify tier issues in cost management? Surprisingly, there have “actionable” cost information as their topmost priori- been few contemporary broad-based surveys that illumi- ty.(For purposes of this analysis, we presumed that nate and identify cutting-edge issues in cost management decision makers run the finance or accounting depart- today. That’s why the Institute of Management Accoun- ment and decision enablers include all other manage- tants (IMA) and Ernst & Young (E&Y) undertook a sur- ment accountants.) vey to understand the evolving role of management 3. Several factors impair cost visibility. accountants, the goals of the organizations they serve, 4. Adopting new cost management tools isn’t a priority and the tools they use to meet those goals. We believe this in the current economic environment. survey is the first of its kind in the last several years. 5. Traditional management accounting tools are still During January and February of this year, nearly 2,000 widely used. survey responses from IMA members poured in. The 6. Management buy-in, adequate technology, and in- response rate of 9%, which is at par with commensurate house expertise in addition to a clear, quantifiable surveys, reflects strong interest on the part of IMA mem- value proposition are important triggers for the adop- bers to share best-practices information and benchmark tion of best practices. 1 STRATEGIC FINANCE I July 2003 Now let’s take a closer look at our major findings. role of management accountants has changed, and they’re being increasingly perceived as business partners who 1. Cost management is a key input to strategic decision makers. focus on key strategic issues well beyond the boundaries Cost management plays a significant role at companies; of traditional finance. This was evidenced by the result 81% of all respondents reported that cost management that nearly 56% of respondents agreed that contributing was important to their organization’s overall strategic to core strategic issues was a high priority for manage- goals. There may be several reasons for this. First, 75% of ment accountants. all respondents indicated the current economic slowdown has generated greater demand for cost management and 2. Decision makers and enablers alike identify “actionable” cost cost transparency, pushing companies to seek better ways information to be the topmost priority. of managing costs and financial bottom lines. Second, the There was remarkable alignment between decision mak- ers and decision enablers on top priori- Figure 1: Priorities Facing Management Accountants ties facing management accountants. DECISION ENABLERS DECISION MAKERS Both believe that the top two priorities Generating Cost Information for cost managers are to: (1) generate “actionable” cost information and Cost Reduction (2) reduce costs and drive efficiency. Improving Processes The necessity to generate key, timely, Contributing to Core Strategy and accurate costing information as an Setting Standards aid to strategic decision making was Reducing Risk characterized as a high priority for man- Automating Processes agement accountants by nearly 82% of 012345 NOT A PRIORITY TOP PRIORITY the respondents across both groups. They agreed that generating this infor- July 2003 I STRATEGIC FINANCE 2 mation as efficiently as possible was Figure 2: Top Initiatives Being Undertaken in of utmost importance and felt that Management Accounting the information should ultimately be TOP PRIORITY LOW TO MEDIUM PRIORITY used to accomplish at least one of the following: improve the corporation, ERP Implementation change employee behavior, or manage New Reporting Software costs more efficiently. New Budgetary Procedures Both groups also reported that Financial Consolidation reducing costs and driving efficiency New Analytic Software is a priority. In fact, more than 70% of the respondents considered cost Outsourcing Back Office Functions reduction, not top-line growth, the 0102030405060708090100 % OF RESPONDENTS prime way to impact the bottom line in the current recession. Figure 3: How Tools Are Implemented Decision makers and decision enablers diverged on subsequent priorities. Contributing to core strategy is the Installed as Part of next most important priority for decision makers. Deci- an ERP sion enablers demonstrated that they’re in tune with their Package: 14% day-to-day job requirements by revealing that their next A "Best of Breed" most important priorities are to improve the reporting Technology: 14% Developed process and set performance standards for the enterprise In-house Using Homegrown Systems: Most Popular Management 72% Accounting Tools There’s considerable variability in what management accounting tools companies use. These are the top (see Figure 1). This seems reasonable given the relative tools that more than 50% of the respondents use: roles of each group. Planning and Budgeting Tools ◆ Operational Budgeting 3. Several factors are perceived to impair cost visibility. ◆ ABM/Std. Budgeting Despite the emphasized need for cost information, there are obstacles to providing accurate numbers. Ninety-eight ◆ Capital Budgeting percent of the respondents said that some factors cause Decision-Support Tools some distortions in cost information, while 38% said that ◆ Quantitative Techniques some factors cause significant distortions. Bottom line: ◆ Breakeven Analysis Many numbers aren’t as accurate as they should be. ◆ Internal Transfer Pricing To delve deeper into the topic of distortions, the survey Product Costing Analysis Tools posed the following question: “In your experience, what ◆ Traditional Costing factors are distorting the computation of true costing in ◆ Overhead Allocations your organization?” The most reported distortion factors were overhead allocations (30%), shared services (20%), Performance Evaluation Tools and greater product diversity (19%). Most likely, over- ◆ Benchmarking head allocations tops the list because operating and Here are the tools that more than 40% of the SG&A overheads account for 34% to 42% of operating respondents say they are considering: value-chain costs across all industries. analysis, supply-chain costing, theory of constraints, target costing, value-based management, and the balanced scorecard. 4. Adopting new cost management tools isn’t a priority in the current economic environment. In today’s economic environment, new initiatives aren’t 3 STRATEGIC FINANCE I July 2003 high on companies’ priority lists, and, in fact, nearly 80% (1) enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation, agreed that implementing new management accounting followed by (2) newer budgetary procedures, and (3) new initiatives is of low to medium priority. This finding was reporting software. Approximately 23%-24% of all similar for both large and small corporations and consis- respondents reported adopting these initiatives as a top tent across industries. While all new initiatives are gener- priority. Other once-popular initiatives such as financial ally on hold (see Figure 2), the top three initiatives are consolidation and installing new analytical software such The Survey Process and Respondents The survey, which was executed electronically using the Web and Table 1: Summary Statistics e-mail, involved no paper or telephone transactions (it is posted at http://surveys.ey.com/ima/survey2003). In a sense, we test- Total Invitations Sent 23,034 ed the limits of electronic survey deployment simply because of Number of Respondents 1,995 the sheer number (23,034) of IMA members we asked to com- Response Rate 9% plete the questionnaire. Median Revenue $300MM We distributed the survey to the following IMA members: Median Number of Employees 1,750 senior-level financial executives (such as CFOs, VPs of finance, Corporation Types: controllers, cost managers), members with experience imple- Public Corporation 44% menting cost management solutions, and those who belong to Private Corporation 40% the Cost Management Group and the Controllers Council Mem- Other 16% ber Interest Groups (MIGs). A copy of the report, “2003 Survey Industry Sectors Represented: of Management Accounting,” will be available to IMA members Manufacturing (Various) 39.8% on request. Financial Services/Consulting 15.5% Survey respondents formed a representative cross-section of Government/Nonprofit 7.8% IMA members and cost managers (refer to Table 1). The average Consumer Package Goods 5.8% respondent represented a company with 1,750 employees and Retail/Wholesale 5.1% $300 million in