Accountants need to move up the value chain

The first session was by the CIMA President on the alliance between CIMA and the CPA. CIMA is the Chartered Insitute of  Management Accountants, and to be honest we had not heard of it. Its a global organisation and Aubrey Joachim, their global president was on hand to present.

The first 5 – 10mins was like ad for CIMA and the benefits for CPA’s for joining up. But after that, it got interesting because he spoke about where management accountants fit in the organisation and where he sees that role heading. The main points that were clear to us is that the role of management accountants is changing from transaction processing  to decision making. That is where management accounting needs to be  more involved.

This is because a lot of these tasks (transactions processing) are being automated and moving into shared service centres such as offshore into India and Philipines. Automation and globalisation is forcing management accountants to move up the value chain and not just provide data/information, but value and insight for decision making. They need to migrate to performance reporting and performance rating, business analytics and modelling for the future. There needs to be a shift from the mentality of “score keepers” on the sideline to “players” on the team. A move from finance competencies to businesss capabilities. An analogy that we really liked as well! These were similar sentiments expressed in an earlier session.

He stressed that this is the significant difference between organisations, given that they have the same resources it is decision making that really sets them apart. Management accountants must still retain the core technical skills and not move too far into strategic areas because this is the role of MBA’s.

One of the key differences between non qualified accountants, MBA’s and qualified accountants was strong ethical and professional standards. For qualified accountants (and we assume he means CPA, ICAA or CIMA qualified), there is recourse to disciplinary boards and members can be stood down.

Five Financial Must-Do’s

The next session we attended was by Don Graham of BusinessNAV. BusinessNAV specialises in providing management and accounting software that deal with sales, marketing, and cashflow metrics. This session was held in one of the smaller rooms and had a roundtable setup. There were like 5 roundtables, and the room had about 80 people.

This session focused on five financial must-do’s facing small to mid market companies. First, we looked at factors in the current environment:

1. Availability of cash – this has severely dried up

2. Credit Policy of financial institutions – which has dramatically changed due to GFC

3. Insolvency Practice – there is a soft underbelly in a lot of businesses which are reliant on the strength of economy.

It was designed to be more of a practical session and he ran through several case studies. The five issues that Business Nav looks at when analysing a business is:

1. Cash flow structure
2. Budgeting
3. Quality
4. Timely
5. Decision making

He mainly concentrated on an example of a services company to illustrate the first two points, which we later found out to be an law firm aggregation model. We were also provided some basic numbers in a cash flow statement and balance sheet. A lot of time went into this example and we simply ran out of time in this session.

So we only covered the first 2 points, the last 3 were rushed. We feel that the time restriction did not do it justice – his session is probably more suited to a few hours or a half day session. Most of the sessions at CPA Congress are meant to be 1 hour – which really is 50mins with 10mins for questions.

One of the examples we were really liked was Norm and his tomato business. Norm had $13million turnover for his tomatoes, as well as coffee and foods business. This business was employing 2,000 people. Norm brought in Don Graham as a financial controller. What set Norm apart from other business that he understood his balance sheet. He wasn’t an accountant but understood the important numbers. Once a week he would sit down with his accountant and ask for the following:

• A list of debtors (people owing money to him)
• Stock – he had a gut feel for how much the operations would cost (transportation, storage, growing, etc..)
• List of creditors (people who he owned money to)
• Bank statement

This would give him a good breakdown and also a top level view of where his business was at financially. If only more business owners did this! One of the biggest problems seems to be that businesses can’t keep control of their costs. They are selling a lot of stuff, but they don’t have a handle on how much it costs to sell that product or service, and how much each sale adds to the bottom line.

Gender Lunch

At lunch, we were treated to another great meal! Who said accountants don’t eat well? We will post up some pictures of the food later. The lunch sessions usually feature a bit of more light hearted topic. The last two were sports and motivation. Which is good, because we don’t think we could take another business or accounting session packed into the day. So its a great way to break up the day.

This particular session had Amanda Gore who spoke about bridging the communication gap between genders. It was very entertaining and interactive, and rather funny. She gave us an understanding how differently men and women think and how men can talk to women and vice versa.  We ended with some exercises where everyone on the table got to hold hands! It was rather strange to see 300+ accountants holding hands. Yes, we have some great pictures of this as well!

She drew up some examples on big notepads on some easels, but this was hard to see as we were sitting up the back. Perhaps this would have been aided by some larger diagrams on the tv screens. But overall, it was fun and it got everyone involved.

Please see our part two here

The Taxabull team is attending the CPA Congress as a guest of CPA Australia.

You can follow us on twitter: twitter.com/austax

Cheers,

Taxabull team

(Note: There were some minor corrections made to “Five Financial Must Do’s” after BusinessNAV contacted us. There were (1) 80 people registered (2) Business name is BusinessNAV and (3) Don Graham was FC not BusinessNAV)

We will do a write up of each of the three days we are attending, including a separate write up of some of the key sessions we were allowed access to. By way of disclosure, we were guest bloggers with media access and given permission to cover certain sessions at the conference.

Our overrall impression was that the conference was really well run. The sessions generally ran on time and they even had a gong lady (i.e. a lady with a huge cymbal) that would signal that some of the sessions were starting! There were tea breaks inbetween and you could congregate in a common tea area for coffee, water, muffins and biscuits. In that area there were also exhibits where you could check out vendor services.

Sessions

There was a variety of different sessions to select from. Participants had to preselect which sessions they were attending, as some of them such as the roundtables had limited capacity. It was the first CPA Congress we have attended, and we actually thought it would have more accounting focus on the sessions but it was more of general business nature.

This year’s theme is “The Way Forward”, which focuses on how business will address the upcoming challenges of the global financial crisis and forge their way ahead. It is a conversation that has dominated business in the past 12 months in the workplace, with clients, suppliers, and within the accounting profession. Overrall, most of the presenters were optimistic about the next 12 months, as the Australian economy did not go into as deep a recession as other economies, and we are recovering a lot faster.

We attended a monster lineup of sessions! Check it out:

• Keynote 1: Challenges and opportunities: The economy in 2009/10
• Business Roundtable: The economy, financial markets and your business – Part A
• Using accounting information to drive strategy
• Business Lunch: Sports Panel – Strategy, leadership, and teamwork
• China/Asian business overview
• Achieve more for less – building a company, building a brand and building a life
• Case Study: NASA – managing risks in complex environments
• Complementary session: Beyond the downturn – getting ahead in small business

As you can see it was quite a lot! We will post a write up of a few of the sessions we attended.

Each session had a moderator and a presenter, and was generally full. The first keynote had approximately 1,000 attendees, possibly more to hear Craig James, Chief Equities Economist of Comsec speak about the state of the economy. Throughout the day the numbers fluctuated and you couldn’t tell how many people were at the conference as people funneled off to their respective sessions. However, by lunch time, everyone gathered for the business lunch, and the place was packed! Nearly every seat was taken. There had to be easily 700 people at that lunch.

We have a lot of great photos from the lunch including one with retired basketball star Andrew Gaze, and new CPA President Alex Malley.  We also took plenty of photos throughout the conference which we will post onto Flickr at a later date, and also within some of the posts.

Roundtables

We accidentally walked into one of the Roundtable sessions. There was a bit of a mix up, but we’re pleased to say that we did attend.  The Roundtables are closed sessions, where there are three big roundtables with an expert on each table. Participants get to ask questions of the expert on their table. As the questions were more of a personal nature for the participants, the media cannot report on the content of those sessions. What we can blog about is the format.  We liked the sessions as they were that it was more of an intimate affair, as people get to ask questions relevant to their business or situation.

It is a striking contrast to the lecture style presentation in the large auditorium where the presenter is talking to a large crowd. Having small groups facilitates greater group discussion. However, to get the most of the session, we encourage particapants to come with pre-prepared questions to kick off the discussion. You will find that one discussion will lead to others jumping in with their points and questions flowing from that. So come prepared!

The venue

We’ve have been to Darling Harbour convention centre several times in the past for conferences. But they have usually been in one place (i.e one auditorium or just the main hall). This was the first time we’d been to a full day session with a lot of different locations.  For someone that spent the whole day there, we were quite confused as to where to go. Eventually we realised we needed the timetable booklet. It had a map inside, but it was too small.

So it was just easier to ask the CPA staff and Sydney convention staff around the place. There were certaintly a lot of them around, so we quickly found out where to go. Perhaps next time they could print a bigger map on an single A4 page. By the end of the day, we knew the whereabouts of the rooms so Day 2 should be a lot smoother for us.

The Taxabull team is attending the CPA Congress as a guest of CPA Australia.

You can follow us on twitter: twitter.com/austax

Cheers,

Taxabull team.