Page 18 - Accounting Best Practices

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Planning for Best Practices
• Dependencies. The steps required to complete a project must be properly
sequenced so that any bottleneck steps are clearly defined and have sufficient
resources allocated to them to ensure that they are completed on time. For
example, a project planning person cannot set up the plan if there is no pro-
ject planning software available and loaded into the computer. Consequently,
this step must be completed before the planning task can commence.
• Funding requirements. Any project requires some funding, such as the pur-
chase of equipment for the project team or software licenses or employee
training. Consequently, the project plan must include the dates on which fund-
ing is expected, so that dependent tasks involving the expenditure of those
funds can be properly planned.
• Review points. For all but the smallest projects, there must be control points
at which the project manager has a formal review meeting with those people
who are responsible for certain deliverables. These review points must be
built into the plan, along with a sufficient amount of time for follow-up meet-
ings to resolve any issues that may arise during the initial review meetings.
• Risk levels. Some best practices, especially those involving a large propor-
tion of reengineering activities, run a considerable risk of failure. In these
cases, it is necessary to conduct a careful review of what will happen if the
project fails. For example, can the existing system be reinstituted if the new
system does not work? What if funding runs out? What if management sup-
port for the project falters? What if the level of technology is too advanced
for the company to support? The answers to these questions may result in
additional project steps to safeguard the project, or to at least back it up with
a contingency plan in case the project cannot reach a successful conclusion.
• Total time required. All of the previous planning steps are influenced by one
of the most important considerations of all—how much time is allocated to
the project. Though there may be some play in the final project due date, it is
always unacceptable to let a project run too long, since it ties up the time of
project team members and will probably accumulate extra costs until it is
completed. Consequently, the project team must continually revise the exist-
ing project plan to account for new contingencies and problems as they arise,
given the overriding restriction of the amount of time available.
The elements of planning that have just been described will all go for naught if
there is not an additional linkage to corporate strategy at the highest levels. The
reason is that although an implementation may be completely successful, it may
not make any difference, and even be rendered unusable, if corporate strategy
calls for a shift that will render the best practice obsolete. For example, a fine
new centralized accounts payable facility for the use of all corporate divisions is
not of much use if the general corporate direction is to spin off or sell all of
those divisions. Thus, proper integration of low-level best practices planning