Management accountants will be well placed over the next ten years – if they can overcome the many challenges ahead, say experts. By Calum Robson, freelance journalist.
Credit crunch hangovers will strengthen accountants’ roles as business advisers over the next ten years, according to the International Federation of Accountants. Roger Tabor, chair of IFAC’s Professional Accountants in Business Committee, has said that accountants are well suited to contribute significantly to recovery. ‘In many organisations, they’ll act as creators and enablers of value, providing pertinent advice that informs strategic decisions and achieves better results,’ he said.
Peter Simons, technical specialist at CIMA, agreed saying he anticipated that business accountants will shift swiftly out of crisis management mode: ‘During the recession, there was an emphasis on cashflow and risk mitigation. Looking ahead, they’ll need to provide tactical input on systems investments, as well as centralisation initiatives, such as in house or outsourced shared service centres. The underlying trend will be to become more influential across the business.’
However Simons predicted that the relentless drive for greater efficiencies will continue in the 2010s. He said: ‘Globalisation and technological advances have helped drive down the cost of finance functions. In the future, instead of simply questioning costs, management accountants will be increasingly proactive in process improvements.’
Fine-tuning competencies
Successful management accountants will have a common set of attributes, said Tabor: ‘The accountant’s skill is both to chart the course an organisation has been following, and to guide its future journey. Increasingly, they’ll be expected to complement technical knowledge and analytical mindsets with leadership and personal relationship competences of a high order.’
This entails being unafraid to come straight to the point, however unwelcome the message. ‘Accountants will sometimes have to tell bosses things they don’t wish to hear, requiring strength of character on both sides,’ said Tabor. ‘In hard times, though, organisations that are prepared to hear and respond to bad news from trusted, internal sources are more likely to succeed than those that are not. And when good times return, those same values will restrain organisations from overstretching or misleading themselves.’
Becoming better informed
Simons predicted a need for better information over the next ten years, for both reporting and management information purposes, along with closer business partnering. He said that management accountants will be well-placed to provide the information senior managers need to capitalise on opportunities.
‘They’ll need to identify relevant leading performance indicators, collecting information on business processes and customers, and taking external factors into account,’ he said. ‘They must be champions of evidence based decision making – examining figures past and present, testing the logic of various forecasts, and using their insight to enhance performance management.’
Patrick Fenton, partner in KPMG’s financial management advisory practice, said the recession highlighted weaknesses that had previously been masked, calling for significant renewed investment. He said: ‘Finance teams will have to take more of a lead role in ensuring the right information gets to the right people at the right time. This will underpin their potential to do their jobs more effectively.’
Traditional techniques for forecasting demand proved insufficient when the recession took hold, according to Nick Jarman, partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, who advises clients on finance function effectiveness. ‘Many CFOs had to tear their budgets up,’ he said. ‘In future, management accountants will have to apply more sophisticated thinking in predicting performance. This might include taking into account less obvious but more sector specific indicators.’
Jarman said a number of CFOs had found themselves faced with data that was too poorly organised to offer any realistic insight, while others had plenty of data but no sensible reporting methods. ‘Greater co-operation between finance, IT and the business will be needed, so that data strategy relates to actual requirements,’ he said. He cited working capital and cash reporting as examples of areas where effective reporting tools had been sorely missed.
Accounting for corporate responsibility
Another strong theme for the next decade will be corporate social responsibility (CSR). As organisations strive to boost their CSR credentials, greater emphasis will be placed on measurement and reporting, to give tangibility to good intentions.
Tabor said the importance of environmental and social issues to both the success of organisations and external reporting will grow, with accountants inevitably drawn closer in. He said: ‘Their distinctive contribution will be to ensure integration of CSR issues – along with the associated contribution of colleagues in other departments – into organisational strategy and objective setting; and into mainstream reporting processes.’
Indeed, the coming decade will see finance teams assuming greater responsibility for reporting outside traditional domains, predicted Fenton: ‘The challenge for management accountants will be to define sustainability data and its associated processes, and to collaborate with other functions to help business leaders make better decisions. Although it may be non-statutory information, it will be of increasing importance to a wide range of stakeholders.’
Adding appeal to careers
Management accounting careers may look somewhat different by the end of the coming decade. ‘There’s definitely a trend towards business intelligence providing management information,’ said Simons. ‘Commercial accountants will need to combine accounting expertise with business understanding and influencing skills. ‘Management accountants have traditionally trained in accounts, before progressing to financial or commercial roles,’ he said. ‘That may no longer be the norm, with reporting and back office functions separating out from the front line. Accountants will be focused on management – which is a more interesting proposition than one based on transaction processing.’
The accounting profession has been increasingly vocal in claiming eligibility for CEO roles. Influencing skills will still be crucial – but Tabor warned that CEOs also require strategic competence, political astuteness, leadership and clarity of vision. ‘Accountants who have become CFOs will already have developed those competences and be ideally placed to hone their skills,’ he said. ‘As to whether more will become CEOs, that will depend on how well individuals perform, develop and commit to exercising their strengths.’
Jarman concluded: ‘The most successful CFOs will be those who understand not just internal financial issues but also competitors, customers and the supply chain – and who use all available data to help their employers gain competitive advantage. It follows that those CFOs are strong candidates to be CEOs of the future.’
