Making the smart decision to hold your future in your hands — from Bean counter to vital business partner
It’s been almost 500 years since the current accounting function developed its feet. Essentially, it was not created to cater for the fast pace of today’s business scene. It was made to arrange financial numbers for a report to the bigwigs and supervisors to give them a clear picture of the business and aid their decision making. Unfortunately, just like coffee-making machines have eaten into the market of coffee makers, corporate performance analytical systems are now capable of doing a lot of what accountants do, and to some extent, a bit more.
These ‘usurpers’ now give the line managers all the data they need, including highlights of KPIs and other noteworthy numbers at a speed that makes being a ‘bean counter’ look almost effortless.
This is a sad situation, especially considering the wealth of talent and technical acumen of accountants that are hidden in the rigid walls of traditional finance methods. For many companies without a clue, this just means the accountants get pushed to the bottom of the food chain. On the other hand, many accountants and corporate leaders have realised the need for accountants to abandon their shells and religion of spreadsheets to bring more to the business table than the traditional finance function allows.
Doing this goes beyond getting equipped with enough grip on the revolutionary influence of technology to speed up the number-crunching, as indispensably important as that is. No, it requires the willingness and determination to make the most efficient use of the limitless talent available to accountants. Now, by trying to better understand the business spheres their organisations operate in, and evaluating the existing commercial structures to squeeze out even higher profit margins, they elevate themselves to become business partners, invaluable advisors when line managers, administrative heads and the board face the occasional big decision.
Nothing good comes easy, and this will be no different. Accountants have many things to learn to gain a competitive edge, and fast too. They must master the rudiments of business strategy, discover the way to become effective communicators and most importantly, learn about the business itself. To them, variance analysis is the crystal ball with which they predict the flow of the market, and risk management skills occupy little space in the catalog of proactive skills that ensure their competitive edge.
This resourcefulness basically comprises of studying the overall company strategy to reaching its goals, learning what makes the market tick and honestly evaluating if the numbers prove that both the company strategy and market flow have a relationship.
For example, accountants working in say, a textile factory, must be ready to study the processes involved in making the textiles, understand the actual implication of the numbers they so meticulously record by seeing clearly how it all affects production, sales and most importantly, profit-making.
By bridging this gap between spreadsheet data and solid information, accountants can successfully ditch the degrading label of being ‘bean counters’ and involve themselves in guiding the business in the best direction since they can provide the clearest perspective of the status of the company. After all, nothing is more truthfully accurate than the finance figures.
If accountants can successfully navigate through the education required to be finance advisors to the business leaders, they can be the trump card that vetoes when investments should be made or the adjustments to be made to workers’ compensations. They could be the ones to highlight which points of sales promotions would yield the most impact on the company’s financial returns or insist on which direction the research and development department focus their innovative powers.
If accountants can become so central to the optimum performance of the business, while staying on top of technological updates to keep up with the quickly changing nature of today’s business scene, then who would threaten their employment status?
