Assignment Brief

BA (Hons.) International Business & Finance

Academic Year 2018-19
Module Information:
Qualification: BA (Hons.) International Business & Finance

Module Code & Title: BAIBF 10022 Strategic Performance Management

Assignment Title: Individual Report

Component Weighting: 30%

Date of Issue:05-04-2019 Due date:24-04-2019, 5 PM

To be filled by the student:

Student ID: 3034BA16

Date of Submission: 24/04/2019

*All work must be submitted on or before the due date. If an extension of time to submit work is required, a Mitigating Circumstance
Form must be submitted.

Has an extension been approved? Yes No

If yes, please provide the new submission date ….…/.…./……., and affix appropriate evidence.

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 First Marker: Second Marker:

Agreed Mark: Refer: Yes / No

General Guidelines
 A Cover page or title page – You should always attach a title page to your assignment. Use previous
page as your cover sheet and be sure to fill the details correctly.
 This entire brief should be attached in first before you start answering.
 All the assignments should be prepared using word processing software.
 All the assignments should print in A4 sized paper, and make sure to only use one side printing.
 Allow 1” margin on each side of the paper. But on the left side you will need to leave room for
binding.
 Ensure that your assignment is stapled or secured together in a binder of some sort and send the
Softcopy of your final document to assignment.bahons2016@gmail.com
 The submission of your work assessment should be organized and clearly structured.

Word Processing Rules

 Use a font type that will make easy for your examiner to read. The font size should be 12 point, and
should be in the style of Times New Roman.
 Use 1.5-line word-processing. Left justify all paragraphs.
 Ensure that all headings are consistent in terms of size and font style.
 Use footer function on the word processor to insert Your Student ID, Name, Subject, Module code,
and Page Number on each page. This is useful if individual sheets become detached for any
reason.
 Use word processing application spell check and grammar check function to help edit your
assignment.
 Ensure that your printer’s output is of a good quality and that you have enough ink to print your
entire assignment.

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Important Points:
 Check carefully the hand in date and the instructions given with the assignment. Late submissions
will not be accepted.
 Ensure that you give yourself enough time to complete the assignment by the due date.
 Don’t leave things such as printing to the last minute – excuses of this nature will not be accepted
for failure to hand in the work on time.
 A printed version of the assignment needs to be submitted physically along with ansoft copymailed
to the email mentioned above on or before the stated deadline.
 You must take responsibility for managing your own time effectively.
 If you are unable to hand in your assignment on time and have valid reasons such as illness, you
may apply (in writing) for an extension.
 Non-submission of work without valid reasons will lead to an automatic REFERRAL. You will then
be asked to complete an alternative assignment.
 Take great care that if you use other people’s work or ideas in your assignment, you properly
reference them in your text and any bibliography, otherwise you may be guilty of plagiarism.

Statement of Originality and Student Declaration

I hereby, declare that I know what plagiarism entails, namely to use another’s work and to present it as my
own without attributing the sources in the correct way. I further understand what it means to copy another’s
work.
 I know that plagiarism is a punishable offence because it constitutes theft.
 I understand the plagiarism and copying policy of the University of the West of Scotland.
 I know what the consequences will be if I plagiaries or copy another’s work in any of the
assignments for this program.
 I declare therefore that all work presented by me for every aspect of my program, will be my own,
and where I have made use of another’s work, I will attribute the source in the correct way.
 I acknowledge that the attachment of this document signed or not, constitutes my agreement on it.
 I understand that my assignment will not be considered as submitted if this document is not
attached to the attached.

Student’s Signature: Date:

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TASK I

The role of management accountant today in a computerized environment and challenges in future

Total word Limit: 2500

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MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTANT

Management Accountant is an accountant who helps managers decide how to make profits or
to save money by examining information relating to the costs of a business and analyzing how
much the profit different parts of the business are making. Management accountants have
a great experience of the business planning processes. Management accountants are key factors
in determining the status and success of a company.

They also known as corporate accountants work within one specific company. The role of the
management accountant is to perform a chain of tasks to ensure company’s financial security,
handling essentially all financial matters and through this helping to drive the business’s overall
management and strategy.

Management accountants do the work that helps the company’s owner, manager or board of
directors make decisions. They create and maintain a company’s financial system and supervise
its bookkeepers and data processors.

ROLE OF MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTANT TODAY IN A

COMPUTERISED ENVIRONMENT
Management accounting is a role within the finance department, and its the main purpose is to
provide strategic support and the identification of key business performance drivers and timely
resolution of significant deviation from planned objectives. A management accountant will be
reporting directly to the head of the finance so that he or she can maintain independence and
objectivity in the role. However, he or she will be have dotted reporting line to business head that
he or she supports on daily basis. And in practice, you will find a management accountant is more
inclined to the business head rather than the head of finance due to the nature of the role which
requires maximum collaboration with the business heads. In performing this role, the management
accountant is the expected to contribute to the understanding of economic and financial dynamics;
developing corporate plan, strategy, budgets and forecasts. With highlights from the foregoing, it

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is the obvious that the person performing this role should have relevant knowledge, experience
and skills to the effectively execute this function. In addition, to the candidate should
possess/acquire the following skills: ability to the think creatively and develop innovative
solutions, have excellent interpersonal, communication and the presentation skills. Impact of
changes In this regard, business heads expect the management accountant to provide the detailed
analysis of financial performance; explain to them the impact of changes in internal drivers or
market forces; provide accurate forecast of the monthly, quarterly and yearly performance;
responding to their query with the speedy and accuracy to facilitate decision making; participate
in the strategy formulation, advise them on what the course of action to take to achieve business
targets; and challenge their assumptions so that the business can have more realistic targets and
plans. These expectations are not the exhaustive. Management accountants are the expected to
deliver beyond that. The expected performance identified above may sometimes cause the
expectation gap because management accountant may feel that he or she is stretching beyond his
or her job description whereas the business heads think their business finance partner is not doing
the enough to support the business. The gap can be real or perceived, but what is required is to
address it so that the organisations can attain desired prosperity. The resolution to this issue can be
the reached through various ways depending on the nature and set up of the organisation. I
recommend the digitisation, which is the current and the future trend in finance function, as one of
the solution to reduce or eliminate the expectation gap. Examples of the digital transformation
already initiated and or implemented by some organisations include automating most of
operational and the repetitive manual processes (through robotics, artificial intelligence and/or the
centers of excellence). With enough time and the less operational activities, the management
accountant will become forward looking, apply the data analytics and market intelligence in
advising, shaping and the driving the business. This way, digitisation will surely enable the
management accountants to be more helpful by moving away it from traditional commentaries that
in real sense explains what business heads already know, and step up the analysis to the level that
elaborate what the factors business heads need to consider in their decisions going forward, and
the point out implication of those decisions to the business well in advance. Investment For the

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digitisation to be successful, it is important to appreciate that a lot of transformation and investment
needs to be done for the individuals and respective organisations at large. Individuals require a
mindset shift, readiness to learn the new things and embrace new ways of working to deliver at the
higher levels while organisations’ management must have visions, plans and provide the leadership
to oversee implementation of digital invention and innovations. As 2018 unfolds, for the
management accountants to remain relevant, they should take bold decisions to completely
transform their career in the line with inevitable disrupting innovations and inventions brought by
digitization.

Following are some features of computerized accounting:

1. SIMPLE AND INTEGRATED: it will help all entities by automating and integrating all
the business activities.
2. ACCURACY AND SPEED: it has customized templates for users which allow fast and
accurate data entry. After recording the transactions it helps to generate the information
and reports automatically.
3. SCALABILTY: computerized accounting has the flexibility to record the transactions
with the changing volume of business.
4. QUICK DECISION MAKING: computerized accounting system generates real time
and comprehensive MIS reports and ensures access to complete and critical information
instantly.
5. SECURITY: compared to traditional accounting system computerized accounting
system has capability to kept secured data and information as confidential.
6. MINIMIZES MATHEMATICAL ERRORS: while doing mathematical work with the
help of computers, errors are virtually eliminated in computerized accounting.

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FUTURE CHALLENGES

Management accountant profession should adapt to the recent changes in order to be relevant and
competitive in the near future. Generally, there are several factors that may influence the
transformation to the current state of the management accounting profession.

Environment of Business – Globalization, Customer focus and Rapid changes in technology

Responses by business – Flattering hierarchical structures, World class manufacturing, Cell type
of layout,
Business to Business, Business to the Customers, Reduce the inventory costs and Value Chain
Management Accounting tools - Benchmarking, Activity Based Costing, Enterprise resource
planning, Balance Scorecard, Target the Costing, Supply chain management and Just in Time
inventory.
Challenges in computerized accounting includes:

THEFT OF COMPUTER TIME:

Information created that the data is his own and he is the actual creator of that particular data. In
computers there will be chance for one person may be easily copied by another person who can
claim is nothing like original copy and duplicate copy.

MANIPULATION OF PROGRAMME:

A competitor can manipulate, make changes or delete one or more programs of a company making
the complete software unusable.

STEALING SOFTWARE:

This is the most common problem in computers. An employee of the company can copy the
software purchased by a company and copy it in his home computer. Precautions and preventions
can be employed for protecting hardware and software from illegitimate use.

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CONTROL ACCESS:

Controlling of hardware and software is the first system security. The system should be under lock
and key for prevention of hardware theft. Physical and electronic access control techniques
including keyboard locks, automatic logs, restricted access to systems and limited after-hour use.

PASSWORDS:

Passwords should be provided at all levels of computer system. They should be changed frequently
or as and when needed so that unauthorized users cannot enter into the system.

ROLE OF MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTANT IN COMPUTERIZED

ACCOUNTING

Changes occurred in a new competitive environment have created enormous new

opportunities for management accountants. The new competitive environment demands
much more accurate cost and performance information on the organization's activities,
processes, products, services, and customers. The cost information is needed to do the
following:
 Design products and services that meet customer satisfaction and expectation
and can also be produced and delivered at a profit
 Signal where either continuous or discontinuing (reengineering) improvements
in quality, efficiency, and speed are needed
 Guide product mix decisions
 Choose among alternative suppliers
 Negotiate about price, product features, quality, delivery, and service with
customers

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  Structure efficient and effective distribution and service processes to targeted
market and customer segments.

In the new competitive environment, operators and managers must also have timely and
accurate information to guide their learning and improvement activities--information that will
help make processes more efficient and more customer-focused. Ideas for continuous
improvement (to reduce and eventually eliminate defects and waste, to improve quality, and to
shorten cycle and throughput times) best come from operators--the people who are closest to the
work being performed and who see, first-hand, the types of defects that occur and the principal
causes of these defects. Companies now encourage their employees to solve problems and to
devise new approaches for how to perform work and satisfy customers.

To implement such improvements, local operators cannot be held strictly accountable to

predetermined standards. They need freedom to experiment with solutions to fix the root causes
of defects. They also need information--first to identify the sources and likely causes of defects
and, second, to see immediately the consequences of attempts to fix the causes of the defects. In
this total quality philosophy, operators are problem solvers. They are part of the process that
helps to find solutions for eliminating defective output, waste, and activities that do not add
value to customers. For this task, information is needed to inform their problem-solving
activities, not to control them against preset and soon-to-become-obsolete standards. The new
environment stresses cross-functional linkages to promote effective and efficient performance of
business processes, not the individual tasks within a process.

Manual cost-controlling systems, however, emphasize stability, control, and efficiency of

isolated machines, workers, and departments through the use of such tools as standards and
variance reporting. Management accountants act as scorekeepers--neutral observers on the
sidelines who are distant from the action. Often they do not even observe the production and
delivery of products and services. Instead, they issue periodic reports--days or weeks delayed--
about the scores of "games" played in the past in production and service departments.

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I have observed in three aspects of the new value-adding role for management accounting
information:

1. Operational control systems

2. Activity-based cost management

3. The balanced scorecard.

These three areas not mean exhaust all the interesting and innovative work currently occurring
within the management accounting and control field, but my forecast is that management
accountants in the year 2000 will be actively participated in implementing, maintaining, and
improving all three of these systems.

OPERATIONAL CONTROL SYSTEMS

Several initiators of the new total quality management (TQM) approach have claimed that
financial control systems should be discarded--that financial information is at best irrelevant and
at worst dysfunctional to the continuous improvement philosophy underlying TQM.

One case easily disproved this assertion by documenting the innovation of a departmental
manager who had created a daily income statement for his employees. Initially, I was highly
skeptical that such a statement could be useful for improving quality and yields. After all, we had
criticized managers for ignoring long-term consequences of quality improvement because of
their short-term focus on quarterly income statements, much less daily ones.Most important, the
daily income statement empowered operators for on-the-spot decision making. Here was a vivid
counter example to the erroneous claim that financial information is irrelevant in a TQM and
continuous improvement environment.

We are still at a relatively early stage in understanding the design principles of these new
systems that provide feedback for learning and improvement activities. But the lessons indicate
that both physical information (about throughput, yield, quality and cycle times) and financial

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information (about the costs of inputs consumed, imputed prices on output produced, and also
accurate spending and expense data) will be vital information in support of employees' learning
and improvement activities.

Even management accountants may not have primary responsibility for providing the physical
information, only they can provide the relevant, accurate, and timely financial information to
employees. This financial information, however, is unlikely to be the standard costs and
variances from the organization's traditional accounting system. The new financial and cost
information must be derived from intimate knowledge of the underlying technologies,
capabilities, markets, and strategy of the organization.

ACTIVITY BASED COST MANAGEMENT

Activity-based cost (ABC) systems were developed to provide more accurate cost information.
About business activities and processes, and of the products, services, and customers served by
these processes. Activity based cost systems focus on organizational activities as the key element
for analyzing cost behavior in organizations. Management accountants have stopped worrying
about how to allocate costs (the traditional domain of cost accounting) for financial reporting
purposes. They now link organization spending on resources to the activities and business
processes performed by these resources.

Activity cost drivers collected from diverse corporate information systems (e.g., production and
inventory control, purchasing, engineering, order entry, and sales management) can then trace
activity costs to the products, services, and customers that create the demand for (or are
benefiting from) the organizational activities. These procedures produce good estimates of the
quantities and the unit costs of the activities and resources deployed for the individual products,
services, and customers.

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BALANCED SCORECARD

The balanced scorecard can unify strategic planning and operational budgeting, two management
processes that formerly were distinct and virtually unconnected. With the unified process, long-
range strategic planning is performed simultaneously with the coming year's budgeting process.
The outcome from this process is a set of operational measures and targets that must be achieved
if the business unit is to be on a trajectory for achieving its long-term plans. During the year,
monthly and quarterly reviews focus not only on performance against financial targets but also
on whether near-term targets, as in traditional budgeting, for customer performance, internal
process capabilities, innovation, and employee learning and improvement are being met. The
reviews assess whether the business unit is still on the planned trajectory for achieving the long-
term strategic goals.

The balanced scorecard approach not only set up priorities on which processes are most
important to improve, but it often identifies entirely new processes that must be established to
achieve the organization's breakthrough performance objectives for customers and shareholders.
The targets for the scorecard measures can be used to establish priorities for reengineering and
transformation projects. In this way, these extensive efforts can focus on improving processes
that are critical and strategic for business unit success. The scorecard also provides the metrics--
such as reduced time to market and shorter order fulfillment cycles--that can be used to assess
the benefits of reengineering and transformation projects. These measurements make it possible
for transformation projects to be something more than severe cost-cutting exercises.

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CONCLUSION

The best management accounting systems cannot guarantee success in the competitive
environment of the 21st century Organizations will continue to succeed and prosper by:

Designing products and services that are valued by customers, Producing these products and
services with efficient, high-quality, and responsive operating processes and Marketing, selling,
and distributing their products and services effectively to targeted customer segments

If management accountants are to become effective members of the management team, they have
to spend less time dealing with financial accounting, auditing, and tax issues. More of their time
must be spent learning about product and process technology, operations, systems, marketing,
strategy, and the behavioral and organizational issues relating to the implementation of new
systems and processes. The new opportunities for management accountants have developed
rapidly during the past ten years and will undoubtedly continue to evolve in the decades ahead.

REFERENCE

https://dictionary.cambridge.org (20/04/2019 9.27am)

https://www.theunitutor.com (20/04/2019 11.15 am)
https://www.sciencedirect.com (19/04/2019 12.30 pm)

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