Managing IT Change—Financial Management

Published date01 March 2016
Date01 March 2016
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1002/jcaf.22142
67
© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).
DOI 10.1002/jcaf.22142
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Managing IT Change—Financial
Management
Art Worster, Thomas R. Weirich, and Frank Andera
In the past three
series articles in
this journal (“IT
Applications and
Managing Change,
September/October
2015; “Managing
IT Change—A
New Role for HR,”
November/December
2015; and “Managing
IT Change—Fully
Integrated Manufac-
turing: Impacts on
Manufacturing,” Jan-
uary/February 2016),
we discussed ways
in which a function’s
decisions on busi-
ness process design
affect other depart-
ments, both in busi-
ness process design
and in the ability of
the other depart-
ments to complete
their work properly.
This is true in general; however,
before introducing enterprise
resource planning (ERP) appli-
cations, understanding these
relationships and dependencies
becomes even more important.
This is because areas that are
not aligned no longer have the
luxury of correcting
the misalignment by
using information
technology (IT) to
interpret and redefine
the data. In the first
article, we discussed
fundamental aspects
of process design
that need to be evalu-
ated during the early
design phase of any
project, whether
initial implementa-
tion or the addition
of other functions,
whether these are in
the native application
or are in any of the
host of other pack-
ages that may have
to be coordinated
and aligned with the
existing applications.
While attempting to
manage IT change,
financial manage-
ment needs to focus on two
important issues: the typical
financial business requirements
and the configuration issues
associated with the implemen-
tation of an ERP system. After
a discussion of basic IT change
issues, this article will focus on
While attempting to manage IT change, financial
management needs to focus on two important
issues: the typical financial business requirements
and also the configuration issues associated with
the implementation of an enterprise resource
planning (ERP) system. After a discussion of basic
information technology (IT) change issues, this
article focuses on the implications for the financial
management function. The net result of the dis-
cussion is that financial leaders—and in particular,
management accountants—have a much broader
role in the design, testing, and execution of all of
these systems. Since most business transactions
occur in a department outside of the financial
function, the ability of the management accoun-
tants and financial leaders to play a key role in
the design and implementation has increased
dramatically. So, too, has the responsibility for not
only the design but the auditing of these systems,
not only at the outset but as changes are made
over the life of the application.
© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
This is the fourth installment in a series of
articles that have appeared and will appear
in the coming issues of JCAF. Art Worster
and his associates, Thomas R. Weirich and
Frank Andera, address matters that arise
during and after the implementation of
integrated IT applications in a business.
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