Page 17 - Accounting Best Practices

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How to Use Best Practices
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• If there is new management. Most people who are newly installed as managers
of either the accounting department or (better yet) the entire organization
want to make changes in order to leave their marks on the organization. Though
this can involve less effective practice items like organizational changes or a
new strategic direction, it is possible that there will be a renewed focus on
efficiency that will result in the implementation of new best practices.
In short, as long as there is a willingness by management to change and a good
reason for doing so, then there is fertile ground for the implementation of a mul-
titude of best practices.

PLANNING FOR BEST PRACTICES

A critical issue for the success of any best practices implementation project is an
adequate degree of advance planning. The following bullet points describe the
key components of a typical best practices implementation plan:

• Capacity requirements. Any project plan must account for the amount of
capacity needed to ensure success. Capacity can include the number of people,
computers, or floor space that is needed. For example, if the project team
requires 20 people, then there must be a planning item to find and equip a
sufficient amount of space for this group. Also, a project that requires a con-
siderable amount of programming time should reserve that time in advance
with the programming staff to ensure that the programming is completed on
time. Also, the management team must have a sufficient amount of time
available to properly oversee the project team’s activities. If any of these
issues are not addressed in advance, there can be a major impact on the suc-
cess of the implementation.
• Common change calendar. If there are many best practices being imple-
mented at the same time, there is a high risk that resources scheduled for one
project will not be available for other projects. For example, a key software
developer may receive independent requests from multiple project teams to
develop software, and cannot satisfy all the requests. To avoid this, one
should use a single change calendar, so that planned changes can be seen in
the context of other changes being planned. The calendar should be examined
for conflicts every time a change is made to it, and also be made available for
general review, so that all project teams can consult it whenever needed.
• Contingencies. Murphy’s Law always applies, so there should be contingen-
cies built into the project plan. For example, if the project team is being set
up in a new building, there is always a chance that phone lines will not be
installed in time. To guard against this possibility, there should be an addi-
tional project step to obtain some cellular phones, which will supply the
team’s communications needs until the phone lines can be installed.