The Top 7 Trends in Management Accounting

Many organizations are far from where they want and need to be with improving performance, and they apply intuition, rather than hard data when making decisions. Enterprise performance management (EPM) is now viewed as the seamless integration of managerial methods such as strategy execution with a strategy map and its companion balanced scorecard (KPIs) and operational dashboards (PIs); enterprise risk management (ERM); capacity-sensitive driver-based budgets and rolling financial forecasts; product/service/channel/customer profitability analysis (using activity-based costing [ABC] principles); lean and Six Sigma quality management for operational improvement; and resource capacity spending planning. Each method should be embedded with business analytics of all flavors, such as correlation, segmentation regression analysis, and especially predictive analytics.

Ultimately costing principles, such as the causality principle, must be converted into practical practices with supporting tools. This presentation examines how cost modeling has evolved over the last century. It will describe the trends and obstacles that have helped or delayed developments. These evolving areas and trends include:
 

• The expansion from product costing to include channel and customer profitability reporting and analysis
• The integration of managerial accounting with other enterprise and corporate performance management (EPM/CPM) methods (e.g., the balanced scorecard, incentive compensation, risk management, supply chain management)
• The shift from historical reporting to predictive accounting (e.g., marginal/incremental costing; capacity-sensitive driver-based rolling financial forecasts, performance-based and driver-based budgeting, customer lifetime value [CLV] )
• Imbedding analytics into managerial accounting (e.g., correlation and segmentation analysis, recursive partitioning with decision trees)
• Acceptance of two or more co-existing managerial accounting methods
• Chargebacks to internal users and service level agreements of information technology (IT) and shared services.
• Recognition of barriers slowing the adoption rate of advanced managerial accounting (e.g., resistance to change, being held accountable, weak leadership) to gain buy-in.

Here is an expansion on #1 above. The only value a company will ever create for its shareholders and owners is the value that comes from its customers current ones and new ones acquired in the future. To remain competitive, companies must determine how to retain customers longer, grow them into bigger customers, make them more profitable, serve them more efficiently, and target acquiring more profitable customers.
Customers increasingly view suppliers’ products and standard service lines as commodities. This means that suppliers must shift their actions toward differentiating their services, offers, discounts, and deals to different types of existing customers to retain and grow them.
 

• How these trends have expanded accountants from “bean counters” to “bean growers”?
• How to calculate profit and loss statements for customers displaying profit margin layers?
• How to identify and differentiate strategic KPIs in a balanced scorecard and operational performance indicators (PIs) in dashboards?
• How to perform “predictive accounting” for capacity-sensitive driver-based budgets/rolling financial forecasts, what-if analysis, and outsourcing decisions?
• How to imbed statistics and analytics into product, channel, and customer profitability analysis?
• How to overcome implementation barriers such as behavioral resistance to change and fear of being held accountable?

• Are our product and service-line costs accurate?
• Do we properly “allocate” our indirect expenses (i.e., overhead) to calculate reasonably accurate product and service-line costs based on “causal” relationships? Or do we “butter spread” expenses with cost allocation factors simultaneously over and under-cost products and service lines?
• Do we measure non-product channel and customer expenses (e.g., distribution channels, selling, marketing, customer service) to report profit or loss by each customer?
• Do we know which customers are more attractive to retain, grow, win back, and acquire?
• For the more attractive customers, do we know the ROI from our different actions to achieve profit lift from them (e.g., price discounts, deals, offers, coupons)?
• How effective is our annual budgeting process? Does its benefit exceed the administrative effort and costs to produce it?
• Is the budget out of date within a few months after it is published?
• Do experienced managers “pad” their department’s budgets?
• Is consolidating cost center budget spreadsheets bottom-up cumbersome?
• Do we understand incremental/marginal expense analysis classifying the behavior of our resource capacity expenses as sunk, fixed, step-fixed, or variable based on the planning time horizon?
• Are many of our decisions based on intuition or experience rather than on fact-based data?
• How much competency does our organization have with analytics?
• How much resistance to change does our organization have that is slowing our adoption rate of progressive managerial methods?

• CxOs
• CFOs
• Financial officers and controllers
• Managerial and cost accountants
• Financial and business analysts
• Budget managers
• Strategic planners
• Marketing and sales managers
• Supply chain analysts
• Risk managers
• CIO and information technology staff
• Board of Directors

Gary Cokins is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, and author in advanced cost management and performance improvement systems. He is the founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management, an advisory firm located in Cary, North Carolina at www.garycokins.com . Gary received a BS degree with honors in Industrial Engineering/Operations Research from Cornell University in 1971. He received his MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in 1974.
Gary began his career as a strategic planner with FMC’s Link-Belt Division and then served as Financial Controller and Operations Manager. In 1981 Gary began his management consulting career first with Deloitte consulting, and then in 1988 with KPMG consulting. 1992 Gary headed the National Cost Management Consulting Services for Electronic Data Systems (EDS) now part of HP. From 1997 until recently Gary was in business development with SAS, a leading provider of enterprise performance management and business analytics and intelligence software. His two most recent books are Performance Management: Finding the Missing Pieces to Close the Intelligence Gap (ISBN 0-471-57690-5) and Performance Management: Integrating Strategy Execution, Methodologies, Risk, and Analytics (ISBN 978-0-470-44998-1). His most recent book co-authored with Larry Maisel is Predictive Business Analytics (ISBN 978-1-118-17556-9) published by John Wiley & Sons. Mr. Cokins can be contacted at gcokins@garycokins.com .