Page 23 - Accounting Best Practices

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How to Use Best Practices
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informing all employees of the change, this may be tolerated, but a continuous
stream of them will encourage a revolt. In alphabetical order, the various causes
of failure are noted as follows:
• Alterations to packaged software. A very common cause of failure is that a
best practice requires changes to a software package provided by a software
supplier; after the changes are made, the company finds that the newest
release of the software contains features that it must have and so it updates
the software—wiping out the programming changes that were made to
accommodate the best practice. This problem can also arise even if there is
only a custom interface between the packaged software and some other
application needed for a best practice, because a software upgrade may alter
the data accessed through the interface. Thus, alterations to packaged soft-
ware are doomed to failure unless there is absolutely no way that the com-
pany will ever update the software package.
• Custom programming. A major cause of implementation failure is that the
programming required to make it a reality either does not have the requested
specifications, costs more than expected, arrives too late, is unreliable—or
all of the above! Since many best practices are closely linked to the latest
advances in technology, this is an increasingly common cause of failure. To
keep from being a victim of programming problems, one should never
attempt to implement the most ‘‘bleeding-edge” technology, because it is the
most subject to failure. Instead, wait for some other company to work out all
of the bugs and make it a reliable concept, and then proceed with the imple-
mentation. Also, it is useful to interview other people who have gone through
a complete installation to see what tips they can give that will result in a
smoother implementation. Finally, one should always interview any other
employees who have had programming work done for them by the in-house
staff. If the results of these previous efforts were not acceptable, it may be
better to look outside of the company for more competent programming
assistance.
• Inadequate preparation of the organization. Communication is the key to a
successful implementation. Alternatively, no communication keeps an orga-
nization from understanding what is happening; this increases the rumors
about a project, builds resistance to it, and reduces the level of cooperation
that people are likely to give to it. Avoiding this issue requires a considerable
amount of up-front communication about the intentions and likely impact of
any project, with that communication targeted not just at the impacted man-
agers, but also at all impacted employees, and to some extent even the corpo-
ration or department as a whole.
• Intransigent personnel. A major cause of failure is the employee who either
refuses to use a best practice or who actively tries to sabotage it. This type of
person may have a vested interest in using the old system, does not like