Cover Story
Anatomy
of a Plan
BETTER PRACTICES FOR
MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTANTS
BY JEFFREY C. THOMSON
Planning, budgeting, and forecasting. On various occasions, I have
called these topics the “heart and soul” of management accounting
and, on others, its “lifeblood.” Therefore, I thought it appropriate to
use the term “anatomy” to describe the key internal elements of the
multiyear strategic planning process (which includes budgeting, longrun forecasting, and other types of decision analytics), current
practitioner issues, lessons learned, and keys to success. The most
important thing I’ll discuss in this article is the roles that management accountants do or can play as critical influencers in the
strategic planning process. I’ll also cover some better practices for
planning and budgeting. (Since few companies have reached a state
of perfection in the planning and budgeting process, I prefer the term
“better” rather than “best” practices.)
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WHY IS PLANNING THE HEART, SOUL, AND
LIFEBLOOD OF MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING?
Planning is the ultimate forward-looking, influential
activity that impacts key stakeholders over a long period
of time. Management accountants and finance function
professionals have been on a decade-plus quest to shift
their roles from shareholder value stewards to shareholder
value creators, from bad cop to respected and credible
influencers at the decision table, from transaction processors to strategic business partners. This isn’t a complete
shift away from their “home base” of finance and
accounting because management accountants must
demonstrate technical accounting depth in order to have
the “right” to influence a breadth of business operations.
What better opportunity to influence operations, value
creation, and business performance than involvement in
an organization’s multiyear strategic plan, budgets, and
forecasts—those forward-looking activities that chart the
path ahead for an enterprise’s critical stakeholders, such
as customers/members, investors, and employees, to
name a few!
To do this, what knowledge and skills must management accountants and finance professionals have? They
regularly list planning, budgeting, and forecasting as areas
in which they are seeking to build additional competency,
Table 1: Knowledge and Skills
Management Accountants
Need to Possess
Strategic Planning
87%
Organization Management
83%
Decision Analysis
78%
Statement Analysis
75%
Budget Preparation
75%
Information Management
74%
Performance Measurement
71%
Cost Management
71%
Internal Controls
70%
Business Process
66%
Investment Decisions
64%
Business Economics
63%
External Reporting
63%
Strategic Marketing
58%
Global Business
57%
Quantitative Methods
56%
Corporate Finance
53%
Operational Paradigms
51%
Source: ICMA Job Analysis (March 2006—1,899 respondents)
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and Table 1 seems to agree. It lists strategic planning as
number 1 and budget preparation as number 5 under
“most important knowledge and skills,” according to a
job analysis conducted by the Institute of Certified Management Accountants (ICMA) in March 2006. The job
analysis was conducted to test/validate whether the Certified Management Accountant (CMA®) exam content is
consistent with the tasks and functions performed by
management accountants in practice today and to suggest
future content changes to ensure ongoing exam relevance
as environmental conditions change.
Once management accountants gain these and other
skills, a highly desirable set of jobs awaits them! An
“FP&A” (financial planning and analysis) job is often a
“required” stop on the career path for the aspiring management accountant, regardless of an organization’s size
or structure. The position could be inside the central
group that manages the planning process (the central
FP&A organization), which could be the chief strategy
organization (CSO), the controller’s department, or even
you (in a small enterprise), among other organizational
options. Roles could include developing a master planning calendar; developing guidelines, standards, and templates for business units to apply in their planning;
developing forecasts based on external expectations; and
“rolling up” business unit forecasts to determine gaps relative to market expectations for key performance metrics
such as revenue growth.
Influential positions abound outside the central planning organization as well, namely in the business units,
product groups, and/or departments that are the operational “piece parts” or components that make up the total
organization. These roles are closer to the market action
and could involve preparing departmental budgets, forecasting products or customer segment financials, and
“negotiating” with the centralized planning group to create an optimal financial and operational planning view
that achieves organizational objectives.
BUT WHY IS PLANNING STILL A MAJOR PAIN
POINT FOR MOST ORGANIZATIONS?
Figure 1 portrays the current level of dissatisfaction with
the planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes among
leading CFOs. In 2006, KPMG and the Economist Intelligence Unit surveyed more than 200 CFOs about various
dimensions of finance leadership, such as people, processes, and technology. Figure 1 indicates that planning heads
the list of areas with which the CFO is most dissatisfied.
Not surprisingly, other results from the survey reveal that
Figure 1: Where Is Finance Most Dissatisfied with Its Current Capabilities?
Source: Economist Intelligence Unit, 2006.
Planning, budgeting, and forecasting
Management reporting
Enterprise-wide risk management
Decision support for investments
Transaction processing
Regulatory compliance processes
Cash management
Tax management
External financial reporting
Investor relations
Treasury management
0%
10%
20%
Figure 2: Budget Gaming
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
Spending money
at year-end to
avoid losing it
Deferring
necessary
expenditures
Never Occurs
Accelerating sales
near year-end to
make the budget
Taking a
“big bath”
Occurs Occasionally
40%
50%
budget process is nearly four months (Hackett, APQC).
While there isn’t necessarily an official “best practice”
benchmark, ideally this average cycle time would be closer to one month, depending on an organization’s scale
and scope.
B. It takes about 25,000 person days per $1 billion of
revenue to complete the annual budgeting and planning
cycle (Hackett).
C. A majority of IMA member respondents say the traditional budgeting process is too time-consuming, is slow
to detect problems, and isn’t reliable for measuring performance (Libby and Lindsay).
60%
0%
30%
Negotiating
easier targets—
“sandbagging”
Occurs Frequently
the planning process is the CFO’s highest priority for performance improvement, ahead of management reporting,
transaction processing, enterprise risk management, and
regulatory compliance.
In addition, many leading benchmarking organizations, such as The Hackett Group and APQC, have conducted research in the area of planning process cycle time
and best practices. And an August 2007 Strategic Finance
article by Theresa Libby and R. Murray Lindsay, “Beyond
Budgeting or Better Budgeting?” based on a survey of
more than 200 IMA members, also revealed a certain level of dissatisfaction with the annual budgeting process.
Here are some additional “fun” (or maybe frightening)
facts that reveal current practitioner pain points with the
planning and budgeting processes:
2. The traditional budgeting process doesn’t incent “stretch
behavior” in individuals or organizations but does incent gaming.
A. Bernie Ebbers, former WorldCom CEO now serving
jail time, mandated expense performance at least 2%
below budgeted amounts.
B. Jack Welch, the legendary CEO from GE, declared:
“The budget is the bane of corporate America. It never
should have existed. A budget is this: If you make it, you
generally get a pat on the back and a few bucks. If you
miss it, you get a stick in the eye—or worse.”
C. Libby and Lindsay’s research explicitly addressed the
issue of budget gaming. A majority of IMA respondents
indicated that three “gaming” phenomena occur at least
occasionally: spending money at year end to avoid losing
it (the age-old “use it or lose it” syndrome), deferring necessary expenditures, and negotiating easier targets (the
“sandbagging” syndrome). See Figure 2 for further details.
1. Cycle times are too long and don’t add value.
3. Practitioners are generally using “low grade” technology or
aren’t pleased with their existing technology solutions to planning, budgeting, and forecasting.
A. The average cycle time for completing the annual
A. More than 50% of respondents use Excel as their budOctober 2007
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geting software, including Fortune 500 companies (Forrester Research Advisory Services, 2005). Although Excel is
very functional and user-friendly when budgeting for a
particular product or department, quality control issues
arise when trying to achieve integration across multiple
work units and rolling up totals to the organizational level.
B. More than 60% of users weren’t satisfied that their
BES (Business Enterprise Systems) software lived up to
expectations (Cost Management, May/June 2006).Unless
we understand the factors that drove this expectations
gap, more recent BPM (Business Performance Management) software suites aren’t likely to achieve the desired
gains in integration and productivity.
KEY PLANNING ACTIVITIES AND THE ROLE OF THE
MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTANT
Before discussing better practices for the multiyear strategic planning process, I’ll define the key steps and activities that generally make up the strategic planning process,
including the annual budget and forecasting processes.
See Table 2 for current or potential roles for the management accountant and a list of the corresponding key
planning activities.
The Vision and Mission are the cornerstones, the
“rocks” of any organization that has been successful over
a long period of time. The Vision is an emotion-inducing
statement that tells where an organization is or aspires to
be and that provides long-term direction. It should be
inspirational, passionate, and evoke the organization’s
brand in one short, sweet statement. A Vision statement
can evolve just as an organization evolves. For example,
in its early days, Microsoft’s Vision was “A PC on every
desk and in every home.” Today, its Vision is “Your Potential, Our Passion.” The Mission is meant to describe, at a
high level, the value the organization delivers to its various stakeholders and how to achieve the organization’s
strategic goals.
What role does the management accountant play
regarding an organization’s Vision and Mission? The
management accountant may have an opportunity to be
part of a team to create, validate, or change the Vision
and Mission. There’s no magic as to how often the Vision
and Mission should be validated by all stakeholders. If
an organization is humming along, the Vision and Mission will stand the test of time unless market changes or
evolving technology suggest a change. If the organization
is puttering along and not satisfying its stakeholders,
the strategy—starting with the Vision and Mission—
probably needs to be revamped.
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The Environmental Scan ensures that you are vigilant
about looking “outside your own walls” and not becoming
too isolated in setting strategic goals. Michael Porter from
Harvard University developed a “Five Forces” framework
that models an industry as being influenced by Supplier
Power, Buyer Power, Barriers to Entry, Threat of Substitutes, and Degree of Rivalry. Strategic business partners
seeking to gain a competitive edge for their organization
can use this framework to better understand the industry
context. If your organization is planning to introduce a
new product, service, or technology, understanding these
influencers before proceeding with internal prioritization,
resource allocation, and business cases is critical to building market acceptance and financial viability.
As part of the Environmental Scan, management
accountants could assess all environmental factors that
impact business success within their company, business
unit, product line, or department (e.g., a detailed competitive analysis of your new product line vs. a competitor’s). Or their role could be more quantitative in nature,
such as forecasting their competitors’ or industry peer
groups’ key performance metrics over the multiyear
strategic plan (e.g., revenues, expense-to-revenue ratios)
to ensure that stretch organizational targets are set relative to their key competitors vs. internal run rates and
“what we did last year + x% better.” Or they could compare the demographics of their customer or member base
against the broader industry to determine gaps and product marketing implications for key market segments (e.g.,
U.S. vs. international, gender, organization size, etc.).
Management accountants should perform the Environmental Scan every three to six months to ensure that
external dynamics are reflected in their latest forecasts.
Product/Market Priorities actually involve several
steps. First, baseline your current products and services
relative to your key targeted market segments. Are you
delivering products, services, and solutions that satisfy the
Table 2: Key Planning Activities and Management Accountants
KEY PLANNING ACTIVITY
ROLE OF THE MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTANT
SUGGESTED FREQUENCY
Setting/Validating the Vision
Contributing to feedback sessions to set or validate the Vision.
Every three years
Setting/Validating the Mission
Contributing to feedback sessions to set or validate the Mission.
Every three years
Environmental Scan/
Business Landscape
Research and synthesize intelligence on key environmental factors,
including regulatory environment and competitors.
Every three to six months
Product and Market Priorities
Identify key market segments, inventory current product and service
set, and determine the priority products and markets for resource
allocation, market launches, etc.
Every six to12 months
Strategic Change Portfolio
Work with cross-functional teams to create and update “strategic
initiatives” that overlay the multiyear baseline view to achieve
strategic goals.
Every six to12 months
Determine Measures of Success
◆ Strategic goal setting
◆ Forecasting at micro and macro
levels (Baseline + Initiatives)
◆ Budget detail
◆ Financial and nonfinancial
measures
Key role for the management accountant in terms of determining
goals, key financial and nonfinancial measures (e.g., use of balanced
scorecard and strategy maps), long-run forecasting of key measures,
budget expense detail for first year of plan, etc.
12 months (budget/plan cycle)
supplemented by periodic in-year
outlook updates (e.g., quarterly)
Develop, Deploy, and Sustain a
Continuous Improvement Process
(“the plan for the plan”)
Work closely with cross-functional teams to support or lead continuous
process improvement efforts for one of the organization’s most critical
business processes: strategic planning, budgeting, and forecasting.
Ongoing
needs and wants of these segments? Is there a gap that
could result in a reassessment of your Strategic Change
Portfolio—the portfolio of strategic initiatives that will
require incremental funding over and above the baseline,
multiyear financial view? The final step involves rating
and ranking the products and services relative to your key
market segments to help in allocating resources. As an
influential member of cross-functional teams in larger
organizations, the management accountant can play a key
role in the project prioritization and resource allocation
processes. Market research—the voice of the customer—
is also critical for effective prioritization.
The Strategic Change Portfolio will drive sustainable
growth value for stakeholders. This portfolio generally
falls into two categories: (1) “Market Facing,” such as new
products and services, and (2) “Infrastructure,” such as
human resources, IS/IT systems, etc. The management
accountant can play many important roles here. One is
working with his/her team to conceive, develop (via a
business case), and deploy (via a project plan) strategic
initiatives. Another is providing financial support for the
change initiative, including estimating business case revenue and expenses that are incremental or add to the
baseline financial trajectory had the action (the change
initiative) not taken place. While being strategic and for-
ward looking, first and foremost the management
accountant is the financial steward of the Strategic
Change Portfolio, the market basket of change initiatives,
over and above an organization’s baseline or “momentum” trajectory, that will allow the enterprise to achieve
its long- and short-run strategic goals. Finally, rigorous
project planning that includes milestone tracking and
release of funds relative to the achievement of milestones
(“the banker”) is another key role for the management
accountant. The Strategic Change Portfolio should be
assessed annually when the plan cycle begins and then
ideally every six months.
Determining Measures of Success is where the quantitatively minded management accountant (aren’t we all?)
can make a real difference in the strategic planning
process. This includes setting the broad multiyear strategic goals for the organization. These goals should contain
a balanced set of measures, including financial viability,
as measured by revenue, expenses, and margin; customer
growth, as measured by new customers and customer
retention statistics; customer satisfaction, as measured by
surveys and market share; and employee development, as
measured by staff retention and career development. A
traditional role for the management accountant in the
annual planning process involves developing a budget
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Figure 3: Principles of the New Performance Contract
FIXED BUDGETS
Ï
Ï
Ï
FIXED
PERFORMANCE
CONTRACT
Ï
Ï
Ï
FIXED TARGETS lead to
incremental changes
RELATIVE TARGETS lead to
stretch changes
FIXED INCENTIVES lead to
fear of failure
RELATIVE REWARDS lead to
confidence to take risks
FIXED PLANNING leads to
focus on meeting the plan
CONTINUOUS PLANNING
leads to focus on value creation
RESOURCES ALLOCATIONS
lead to cost protection
RESOURCES ON DEMAND
lead to cost minimization
CENTRAL COORDINATION
leads to inflexible response
DYNAMIC COORDINATION
leads to flexible response
VARIANCE CONTROLS lead
to excuse culture
RELATIVE KPI CONTROLS
lead to improvement culture
that covers the first year of the multiyear strategic plan—
but at a lower level of detail (e.g., expense line items by
department).
Management accountants also need to help forecast at
macro and micro levels via financial modeling. Financial
modeling is a critical element of determining key measures of success over the multiyear planning horizon. A
macro financial model is often the first step. Here the
modeler collects all available internal data (e.g., department spend history) and external benchmarks (e.g., competitor growth rates) and creates a macro financial
projection over the planning period. This view may be
limited to the key financial and performance indicators
consistent with the strategic goals, such as revenue, operating expense, margin, and customers. It also is used to
test the reasonableness of individual product or departmental views relative to expectations of the market and
organizational stakeholders (the infamous “rollup”). A
micro financial view also may be developed in conjunction with the macro view. This micro financial view
would decompose revenue into a price and a quantity/
volume component (P x Q = R), for example. The advantage of having a complementary micro model is that,
once the piece parts are calibrated to the reported or
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ADAPTIVE PROCESSES
Ð
Ð
Ð
Ð
RELATIVE
IMPROVEMENT
CONTRACT
Ð
Ð
planned total at the macro level, the model can be used
for “what if ” and scenario planning purposes during the
periodic outlook update process (e.g., quarterly). For
example, what’s the financial impact if we raise prices?
What’s the financial impact if we improve our customer
retention rates based on a new strategic initiative?
Finally, Developing, Deploying, and Sustaining a Continuous Improvement Process, or planning for the plan, is
truly the “lifeblood” of a strategic plan because it ensures
focus on execution, continuity, and intervention if necessary. Developing the multiyear strategic plan and putting
it on the bookshelf to collect dust while focusing on the
in-year budget only (the one that affects our pay in the
short-term mentality that guides American business)
could spell doomsday for the long-run viability of your
plan. There are improvement opportunities galore in the
central planning group or in the individual work units:
Setting the master planning calendar of accountabilities
and deliverables, developing external competitive benchmarks, developing and communicating robust business
cases, and forecasting key performance indicators are just
a few examples. The continuous improvement process is
indeed continuous, much like the blood flow in the
human body that sustains us all.
BETTER PRACTICES
Now let’s concentrate on some “better” practices.
1. Treat Planning as a Key Business Process. Nothing
is more important to an organization’s long-run viability,
sustainability, and value creation for stakeholders than
its strategic plan. But a plan without an enabling process
is like human blood flow without the arteries and
ventricles—the connective tissue, if you will. First, establish the end-to-end process including accountabilities,
time frames, and measures of success. Engage everyone at
some level in the plan, not just the central planners or the
designated planner or planning coordinator in your
group. Good governance principles apply to strategic
planning just as they do to any other key business
process, and establishing the master planning calendar
gence or business process management software); and
(c) integration of a true risk-based approach into the
strategic planning process.
A risk-based approach ensures that the key risks to
achieving strategic goals/plan objectives are identified
and that interventions are implemented to manage the
risk to a level acceptable to all stakeholders. For example,
when the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA®)
initiated its annual planning cycle, staff responsible for
planning participated in a one-day workshop on risk
management. My main point is that risk management
is a global body of knowledge that contains resources to
guide practitioners. (For example, IMA offers two Statements on Management Accounting (SMAs) on Enterprise
Risk Management for free on its website at www.imanet.
org/publications_statements.asp#E.) Risks should be
identified holistically and addressed across the enterprise—not just traditional financial risks, but risks such
as security, environmental, operational systems, etc.
3. Beyond Budgeting…or just Better Budgeting?
with deliverables and milestones is vital to downstream
success of the process—and ultimately the plan. A critical
core competency for the management accountant
involved in a leadership role in an organization’s planning
process is project management skills, which are vital if
planning is to be implemented effectively as an end-toend process or system with key milestones, deliverables,
and resources to be managed.
2. Execution with Enablers Means Excellence (“E
cubed”). While excellence as defined by achieving strate-
gic goals is never guaranteed, a passion for execution and
a set of enabling tools and processes are critical success
factors. Several enablers come to mind: (a) a regular
process, perhaps as part of operations reviews or results
meetings, to review the status of strategic initiatives and
goals and to discuss “interventions” as necessary (e.g.,
reallocate resources, consider new pricing plans, etc.);
(b) a milestone-tracking process (integrated with most
project management software packages) to manage the
progress of strategic initiatives, to release business case
funds when key milestones are achieved, and to send out
“alerts” if milestones are missed or are in danger of being
missed (alerts are usually standard fare in business intelli-
Recall the pain points associated with traditional budgeting that I discussed earlier—cycle times that are too long,
the process incents gaming vs. stretching for the best possible performance, too much emphasis is placed on internal performance (run rates) vs. external competitive
benchmarks, and the (heart-) beat goes on! To stretch
your thinking, read the book Beyond Budgeting by Jeremy
Hope and Robin Fraser, or watch the archived free IMA
three-part webinar series focused on planning and budgeting (July-September 2007), which you can find at
www.imanet.org/development_webinar_library.asp. The
BBRT (Beyond Budgeting Round Table at www.bbrt.org)
basically suggests that the budget as we know it should be
eliminated because it constitutes a fixed performance
contract that doesn’t “flex” relative to market conditions,
the need for dynamic resources, competitors, etc. See Figure 3 for more detail or the BBRT website as to what
BBRT advocates as a replacement for the “fixed performance contract.”
The question is: Do we need to replace budgets as we
know them (beyond budgeting) or radically transform the
way we have been taught to create them? In any event,
there are several better practices for management accountants involved in budgeting:
◆ Create the budget only after the broader strategic
direction and goals have been set. This generates a context and high-level “screen” for what can or can’t be
included in the more detailed budget.
◆ Develop rolling outlooks at a reasonable level of
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detail combined with an aligned incentive scheme. This
can “force” thinking beyond the in-year budget whose
time horizon naturally shrinks as the fiscal year approaches its year end (a six-quarter rolling outlook, for example,
continually forecasts another six quarters ahead for key
performance measures such as revenue, margin, etc.).
◆ Rely at least as much on external benchmarks (metrics like expense to revenue, productivity ratios, etc.)
from benchmarking organizations such as The Hackett
Group and APQC and vertical industry associations as
you do on internal run rates and “what I did last year”
plus or minus x%.
Finally, I suggest you read the 2007 book Competing on
Analytics by Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris.
In short, the book’s premise (based on 30 case studies) is
that analytics—forecasting, data mining, statistical analysis of trends, etc.—is truly becoming the “nextgen” competitive differentiator, requiring that organizations create
and imbed an entirely new skill set in their day-to-day
activities and planning—yet another opportunity for the
management accountant as strategic business partner and
influencer in the organization!
4. Predictive and Decision Analytics…There Is Life
strategic plan and progress on strategic goal achievement
is critical to ensure that all stakeholders are appropriately
engaged in executing the plan successfully. Continuous
communication ensures that the strategic plan doesn’t
collect dust on the bookshelf. Comprehensive communication to all stakeholders—shareholders, investors, customers/members, audit committee, the board of
directors, and, of course, ALL employees who have a stake
in the success of THEIR strategic plan—is critical.
Two suggestions: Make the communications a bit fun
and creative—hold employee meetings and celebrations
to kick off the new planning cycle—and be honest and
totally transparent with your employees. Don’t supply
only “smiley-face” happy news. Show the progress on key
goals, highlight successes, but also highlight challenges
that require all employees to be engaged. Your employees
expect nothing less!
Beyond Basic Excel. No, you don’t need to become a
Ph.D. statistician, but knowledge of basic statistical tools
and techniques for data analysis and forecasting should
be part of the management accountant’s toolkit. In Excel,
as an add-in option, go to Tools, then Add-Ins, and add
in the “Analysis ToolPak.” This gives you access to intermediate statistical functions such as correlation analysis
(e.g., the “strength” of the relationship between two variables such as customer growth and advertising over a historical time frame) and regression analysis (life is more
sophisticated than the straight-line ruler to forecast historical data such as expenses or revenues—multiple
regression allows you to forecast an “independent” variable such as revenues based on historical relationships
with a set of “dependent” or driver variables such as
advertising, customers, pricing, volumes, etc.).
Here are three brief examples in which management
accountants use predictive technologies and decision analytics (the preferred Google terms) to drive business performance: (a) In an ERM presentation at IMA’s 2nd
Annual Global Conference in May 2007 in Dubai, Ananth
Rao (professor at the University of Dubai) used intermediate Excel capabilities to have workshop participants create risk-adjusted decision scenarios; (b) in his keynote
presentation at IMA’s 88th Annual Conference & Exposition in June 2007 in Phoenix, Ron Riebe (vice president
of KeyBank and most recent winner of the IMA/Robert
Half Financial Executive of the Year Award) focused on
several practical decision analytic capabilities for management accountants who take on positions in pricing, economic analysis, and business forecasting; (c) the article
“Sustainable Performance Improvement through Predictive Technologies” in the June 2007 issue of Strategic
Finance magazine discusses the emerging body of knowledge called “predictive technologies.” (Contact me for
ways to view or read the first two presentations.)
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5. Communications: Continuous and Comprehensive
for all Stakeholders (“C cubed”). Communicating the
PUMPING NEW BLOOD
As I hope you’ve been able to see, there are exciting possibilities for management accountants in the areas of
strategic planning, budgeting, and forecasting that should
pump new blood and life into these processes. These are
areas that are forward looking, rely on sound analytics
and business judgment, require good communications
and business influence skills, and relate directly to creating and sustaining stakeholder value. This is a great
opportunity for you as management accountants to
advance the profession and drive business performance in
your organizations! ■
Jeffrey Thomson is vice president of research at the Institute
of Management Accountants (IMA®) in Montvale, N.J. Jeff
has considerable experience leading strategic planning
processes at the largest global telecom, in academia, and at
IMA.You can reach him at (201) 474-1586 or
jthomson@imanet.org.
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