Knowledge Management In An Accounting Organization
Bill Whitmore, James A. Albers, Pacific Lutheran University
ABSTRACT:
Some of the typical challenges faced by today’s corporate accounting organizations include month-end deadlines, training gaps, employee turnover and satisfaction issues, and the need to operate in a highly regulated and structured environment. Due to many recent accounting scandals, these departments are subject to considerable public scrutiny. However, a knowledge management program could assist in providing accurate and timely reporting of financial results. This paper provides a discussion of past, current, and future knowledge management efforts in the accounting organization of a large American corporation. In the context of a nine-step framework, it highlights the challenges, benefits, approach, and lessons learned in applying knowledge-management principles. Examples of projects discussed in this paper include the Process Improvement Project, Expert Locator, and Knowledge Repository.
Keywords: Knowledge Management, Accounting Organization, Process Improvement, Expert Locator, Knowledge Repository
1. Introduction
Corporations rely on their accounting organizations to perform critical financial recording and reporting functions. The accounting scandals at American corporations in recent years have particularly highlighted the need for ensuring accuracy and for maintaining the highest levels of professional integrity. Some of the unique challenges of accounting organizations include rigorous month‑end deadlines, the need to train new staff quickly, and compliance with regulatory requirements. Accountants often rely on a checklist of steps to ensure process consistency. In many cases, however, formal documentation of those accounting processes does not exist.
Accounting organizations, particularly those in major corporations, operate in an environment that continually alternates between heavy and light workloads. During a few days before and after the end of each month, accounting staff often work long hours to “close the books” so that the company can report its financial results on time. In the middle of the month, attention can be directed to account reconciliations, trend analyses, project development, and other efforts.
Compliance with federal regulations requires particular diligence from
accounting staff and management. When
reporting their financial results,
Clearly, the functioning of corporate accounting departments has become subject to considerable public scrutiny. The requirement to publish accurate financial results requires stable, consistent processes within those organizations. A deliberate knowledge-management (KM) program to capture the explicit and tacit knowledge of accounting staff can help bring stability to the organization and ensure the smooth operation of each month-end close process.
Recent research suggests that a supportive knowledge-management program is a critical success factor for ensuring job satisfaction among accountants (Taylor, Yamamura, Stedham & Nelson, 2001). Nearly 40% of all Fortune 500 companies have implemented some form of knowledge-management program (Chong & Choi, 2005). Building a knowledge-management system into an accounting function helps ensure that accounting information is easy to access and in a usable format. KM processes can enable the efficient internal flow of information among accounting and audit staff. As barriers to communication fall, the business will see gains in reduced cycle times as well as lower costs from the elimination of rework and duplicate efforts (Fong, 2004).
Elements of knowledge management are being applied successfully in accounting organizations within many different firms, although many rely solely on the implementation of an IT solution. Examples are given in the following references: (Success Story, 2006), (A True Accounting Package, 2006), and (Healthcare Accounting and Financial Reporting Conference, 2006).
This paper examines how a corporate accounting department can apply KM principles. In this context, knowledge management can be defined as the “range of practices and techniques used by organizations to identify, represent and distribute knowledge, know-how, expertise, intellectual capital and other forms of knowledge for leverage, reuse and transfer of knowledge and learning across the organization” (Knowledge Management, 2006). This paper highlights the challenges, approach, lessons learned and benefits from applying KM principles in the context of a regulated and highly-structured setting of an accounting organization.
2. Company Profile And Accounting Organization
The subject of this paper is the accounting organization for a national corporation. The company provides products and services to millions of customers and has recently reported earnings in the billions. Each year the company’s executive management proposes a set of operative goals that are generally related to financial and statistical targets. In addition, the CEO has sponsored an initiative to promote a set of core values that drive how business should be conducted within the firm. Managers in the company attend formal training to explain how the values can be incorporated into their daily work life, and all employees receive communications about the values. Elements of compensation are based on a mix of performance to the annual goals as well as conformance to the core values.
The Accounting Department is charged with managing all of the accounting functions for the company. Accounting is a division of the Finance organization and currently has 117 employees. Its core charter is to provide key operational accounting functions, including financial reporting and ERP support. The normal accounting process involves five steps: (a) Retrieving information from source systems; (b) transforming and summarizing the data into a usable form; (c) analyzing the information to assess its integrity; (d) posting journal entries to load the results into SAP, the company’s ERP system; and (e) preparing schedules and reports to reconcile the accounts and provide back-up validation of the booked numbers.
A number of support teams provide process and technical help to the
Accounting Operations unit. The Internal
Reporting group maintains key data in SAP and provides other reporting
support. The Process Integration group
manages new development requests for SAP, and a reporting team designs and
develops new reports and applications out of that system. The Accounting Processes and Systems
(AP&S) team provides non-SAP process and technical support to the
department. The Financial Compliance
group helps coordinate the activities needed to ensure that the accounting
organization complies with SOX requirements.
3. Overall KM Framework
The overall framework that was used to plan and implement the
knowledge management program in this accounting department is shown in Figure
1. This nine-step framework could be used for implementing a KM program in any
corporate environment (Albers, 2003).
Figure 1.
Framework For Implementing Knowledge Management
The first step in the knowledge management implementation is to determine the company’s business strategy and how the accounting organization supports this strategy. It is important to understand the role of the accounting organization and its future direction. The knowledge audit discovers what knowledge exists in the organization, identifies what knowledge will be needed in the future, and determines knowledge gaps. It is important for the knowledge strategy of the accounting organization to support the overall business strategy. The principal players in the knowledge management program need to be identified. The IT assessment examines the existing infrastructure and business processes. Technology and organization change-management strategies to promote and improve the knowledge management activity need to be defined. The deployment of the KM program includes specific objectives and deliverables, roles and responsibilities, schedules, and pilots for the knowledge management activity. Measurement systems are important for evaluation and are needed to obtain continued support for the program.
4. Strategic Assessment
An appraisal of the organization’s direction is a key first step toward developing a KM initiative. The overall strategy of this company revolves around a mission to provide high-quality products and services with an emphasis on growth, profitability, and customer loyalty. Since the Accounting department performs a “back-office” function, its employees don’t normally have direct contact with customers. However, the department serves a critical function that is required for the company’s survival. It can also play a key role in the company’s mission by providing the necessary accounting functions in an efficient and effective manner, thereby keeping costs at a minimum and enabling other corporate departments to focus on optimizing their own roles.
One of the company’s 2006 goals is to make it a “
Over the next 18 months, the company will be converting to a system to publish their financial results using a new automated process. The conversion to this process will likely require significant work to reconfigure SAP and to adjust data structures. Other department-level initiatives in 2006 include a process-improvement effort, a restructuring of master data in SAP, and enhancements to the SAP reporting environment. SOX compliance also continues to be a primary emphasis for the department.
5. Knowledge Audit
With the organization’s strategy now identified, a knowledge audit is needed to study gaps between what is known and what must be known. The Accounting organization, and the corporation as a whole, currently lacks a formal and cohesive knowledge-management program. The executive leadership has not picked up the KM banner, and the IT organization is not focused on developing a dedicated platform for sharing knowledge. However, a number of individual efforts toward gathering and sharing knowledge have sprouted over the last few years.
The teams within Accounting have traditionally operated in silos. It’s not uncommon for a staff
accountant to remark that they don’t know many other accountants outside
of their work team. Even though the
department occupies a single floor of a building, teams on one end of the floor
don’t typically mix with people on the other side of the building. This independence is not a planned strategy;
it’s simply a natural outgrowth of employees focusing on their own
business objectives. It could also be a
by product of personalities in accounting that often tend to be focused on
running detailed procedures.
In Accounting, the primary knowledge assets are the processes. Everything depends on the ability of the staff to accurately record the company’s financial and statistical results, so that internal and external reports reflect the true stature of the business. Each of the 11 operations teams follows repeatable processes each month to retrieve data, transform and study the information, and produce journal entries and reports. The specific desk procedures are different between each operations team, due to unique data sources and calculations. Sometimes process steps are detailed in documents, and sometimes the desk procedures are only in the mind of the process owner.
6. Aligning Knowledge
Strategy With Business Strategy
Organizations don’t always do everything they need to do, and
identifying these gaps can help them to develop appropriate knowledge/strategy
relationships. Accounting contributes to
the company’s success by maintaining an efficient process for recording
and reporting accurate financial results.
Documentation is a practical approach to ensure that this happens. Desk procedures for all work groups are
needed to ensure continuity during staff turnover and to eliminate the
“it’s all in my head” syndrome. These procedures must be accurate,
up-to-date, easily understood, and readily available. The accounting teams also need sufficient
documentation about the technical solutions provided by AP&S, to gain
confidence in the database applications that may seem to be a “black
box” to them.
Communication is another key element to Accounting’s success. To reduce a tendency to struggle with technical problems, accountants need to know the experts they can turn to for answers. To improve communication within and between work groups, a more robust social network should be established. A curriculum and training staff are needed to orient new employees, reinforce key concepts, train employees on SAP and encourage innovation. Accountants enjoy working with numbers, so capturing explicit information is easy. However, the sharing of best practices and lessons learned has not yet occurred in a structured format within the department.
7. Knowledge Management Team
Having completed the strategic reviews, attention now turns to identifying resources, and successful knowledge-management initiatives depend on dedicated staff. In line with the traditional management style in Accounting, however, new initiatives are sponsored only if they present a high probability of success and will provide a concrete benefit to the organization. This makes sense in a structured environment that is sensitive to cost control and regulatory compliance. Thus, the field of Knowledge Management might be viewed as irrelevant or (at least) as a poor investment. Accordingly, a budget proposal to form a KM organization within Accounting may be a tough sell, especially if the opportunity cost from not focusing on other work assignments is high. A solid business case however, could prove a KM program’s worth by establishing its benefits, determining the value, and associating the benefits with a cost and/or expected return (Yelden & Albers, 2004). The business case, as well as concrete successes from grass-roots KM programs, could demonstrate sufficient value to justify KM projects.
Proposed resources for the knowledge management team include a senior manager (the “knowledge champion”), knowledge manager (project leader) and knowledge committee including cross-functional team members serving as content editors and web developers. The AP&S team currently manages the department’s intranet site, and these resources would likely be tapped to build some of the IT backbone to support the KM program.
8. IT assessment & IT
Change Management Strategies
Steps 5 and 6 of the KM framework focus on a review of IT resources, with an eye toward how those resources can be leveraged for knowledge management. The company relies on customized adaptations of a billing platform to invoice its customers, and a wide variety of other software applications fill supporting roles. The IT department operates in a production environment, and each request to update the billing system and other production platforms must follow a formal approval and prioritization process. The competitive industry requires a continual stream of new products and services, and new offerings often require system customizations. If Accounting needs to change the billing system, the IT organization assigns one or more business analysts to gather the functional requirements and to shepherd the request through the project‑submittal process.
As might be expected within an accounting organization, the primary technical tools used by the accountants are spreadsheets (Microsoft Excel) and SAP. A handful of accountants are also proficient using Access databases. The AP&S team uses a variety of technical tools, including SQL Server, Business Objects, and web-development software, to help the Accounting department to streamline, stabilize, and upgrade their procedures.
The operations and projects of the Accounting department occasionally
suffer from inefficient technology, and this is due in part to a lack of
attention from senior management on those issues. For example, the network storage drive used
by Accounting, Tax, and other Finance teams runs out of space about once a
year, prompting AP&S to request additional space. In another illustration, most of the
employees in Accounting submitted biographies in 2005
using a Word document template, and these documents were posted onto the
Intranet site. A search utility
isn’t available, the biographies haven’t been updated in months,
and consequently the documents are just “gathering dust” on the
Intranet.
Currently, the accounting organization lacks an efficient document repository system, with documents typically saved in deep directory paths on the network shared drive. AP&S has installed SharePoint 2003 on a development server, and the implementation is scheduled for Q4 2006. Until then, the Intranet site could provide a place to store the accumulation of process documents, but this requires a clumsy update process and isn’t currently being used.
Accounting also lacks a place for employees to exchange and capture tacit
information, either through discussion boards or a chat utility. A system doesn’t exist that would allow
employees to submit and share documents of best practices or lessons
learned. A “Yellow Pages”
expert-locator directory doesn’t currently exist, and a process to better
manage files also needs to be established.
Of these technical advances, the two that will provide the greatest benefit
to the accounting organization are the planned enhancements to SAP and the
launch of the SharePoint tool. As the
accounting teams learn how to further leverage SAP, the system could be
extended to improve process automation, simplify end-to-end reporting
procedures, and reconfigure how transaction data is loaded into and extracted
out of the platform. SharePoint will
enable the accounting staff to share documents easily, opening the way to
introduce a knowledge-sharing environment that will increase collaboration and
reduce poor work habits.
9. Organization Change
Management Strategies
If the value and objectives of knowledge management are clearly identified, organizations of all types can become receptive to KM initiatives. The conventional structure of the Accounting organization, with a vertical employee hierarchy and traditional principles of management, provides an appropriate environment to ensure operational efficiency. Stability and structure are needed to support Accounting’s requirements for accuracy, timeliness, and regulatory compliance. A contemporary structure with an adaptive culture would probably be less effective in an accounting environment (Daft, 2007). Obviously, while creativity is necessary to foster innovation, “creative accounting” leads to punishments, not rewards! Nevertheless, a knowledge-management program can still work within a highly-structured organization, particularly as the documentation of tacit knowledge reduces the time required for training.
The tendency of the accounting staff to work in silos naturally reduced opportunities for social interaction, but evidence is appearing that this situation is improving. Socialization among the accounting staff improved in early 2005 through the work of four Employee Survey teams. In order to address issues revealed in the corporate Employee Satisfaction Survey in 2004, the department organized itself into four teams that each addressed a key satisfaction point, including Work Environment and Coaching. All employees in the organization (up to the level of Senior Manager) were randomly assigned to a team. Through these teams, staff accountants have had the opportunity to interact with their colleagues throughout the department. The survey teams have paid off, with several new creative programs and substantially higher satisfaction scores in the 2005 and 2006 surveys.
However, the culture of the Accounting organization still needs to become
more collaborative. Individual groups
occasionally spend a day participating in a team-building event or doing
community service. AP&S invited the
other teams in Accounting to a series of Friday BBQs during the summer of 2006. But little cross-team socializing is
apparent, and the level of informal knowledge sharing between teams appears to
be low.
“Knowledge sharing” should be explicitly included as an Accounting goal for 2007. The employees need to begin relying on each other more for solving problems; in order to reduce the time wasted trying to “reinvent the wheel.” Employees tend to be rewarded for individual contributions and accomplishments on specific projects, and this motivation system may limit the willingness of employees to seek help from others. Changing this reward strategy may help encourage knowledge sharing.
Other reward systems are also in place. The most significant example is the Rewards and Recognition ceremony at the quarterly Accounting all-hands meeting, during which gift certificates and travel awards are given. An award system could also be effective to encourage employees to share best practices and lessons learned.
To benefit from a KM process that will reduce costs and improve internal
procedures, the Accounting leadership team should develop an appreciation for
“knowledge management” and embrace the formal implementation of a
KM process. A process-improvement
project currently underway may serve as a catalyst for such a development. Accounting management has only recently
become more active in employee-satisfaction issues as they begin to offer
guidance to the Employee Survey teams.
But a concerted effort and leadership toward improving employee morale
may be needed in order to further boost employee-satisfaction scores and reduce
any related turnover.
To address these issues, an organization change-management strategy should emphasize programs that break down communication barriers, both within the Accounting department as well as between the department and other organizations in the company. For example, an online expert-locator directory will help Accounting employees reach out to their peers for help with technical and business issues. Monthly Brown Bag presentations sponsored by one of the Employee Survey teams had been discontinued, and these need to be resumed. Employees should be encouraged, even given incentives, to offer their insights, best practices, and lessons learned.
10. Deployment Of KM Systems
10.1. Past KM projects
KM initiatives tend to be most effective when implemented in phases over a period of time. In this corporation, a number of recent attempts have been made to launch projects directed at knowledge-management activity. These initiatives include the Virtual Analysis Team Project, the Knowledge Management Device and Service Management Team, and the Process Improvement Project.
In 2003, members of the Finance department formed a group called the Virtual Analysis Team. The concept behind this team was to “assemble some of the key analytical resources in the organization for a quarterly ‘Best Known Methods’ sharing session . . . a communication forum to share tools, techniques, methodologies and to push out information about improvements in data and the development of new data sources and analysis tools enterprise wide.” Although this team met for only a brief time, the idea evolved into a Community of Practice that meets monthly to discuss projects that involve analysis, data mining, or a data modeling technique. The idea behind this CoP is to share knowledge about how to approach different issues from a statistical and/or analytical standpoint. Currently, there are 92 members on the group’s invitation list, and the meetings draw employees from Finance, Marketing, IT, Engineering, and other departments. As of mid-2006, the group’s Intranet web page contained links to 18 presentation documents.
Another sign of the growing interest in KM within the company was the establishment of an operations support group called the Knowledge Management Device & Service Management team. The job description for a manager to lead this team includes the responsibility to “Design and manage procedures to capture both implied and explicit knowledge into an enterprise knowledge management solution.” The goal of this team is to optimize a technical support model through the use of Knowledge Management methods and technology.
Within the Accounting organization in 2005, a knowledge-management program also began to take shape. A local consulting firm was hired mid-year to facilitate an initiative that would document all procedures within the department, and to find a way to shorten the month-end close process. The result was the Process Improvement Project. By the start of 2006, this project had developed a series of recommendations which, when implemented, reduced the month-end cycle time by a full day. In addition, for the “Wave 1” documentation pilot, one of the key accounting disciplines was studied and fully documented, generating a binder of information including process flows, desk procedures, and recommendations for process and technical improvements.
10.2. Current KM Projects
To build upon efforts to (a) make knowledge accessible, (b) streamline employee training, (c) improve the flow of information, and (d) reduce rework costs and productivity losses, the Accounting department is deploying a number of KM initiatives during the short term. These efforts could be characterized as independent knowledge-management tasks, since an intentional, funded KM program does not yet exist. These projects include further momentum of the Process Improvement Project, a renewal of the Brown Bag series of presentations, and pilot programs to develop an expert locator and knowledge repository. Related initiatives, such as a new training program targeted for Finance, will support the nurturing of a knowledge-sharing culture.
Continuing into 2006, documentation is being developed for several additional accounting disciplines as part of the on-going Process Improvement Project. A few members of the AP&S team and Accounting management, under the guidance of the consultant, are facilitating sessions to gather the process information from the staff accountants. Five disciplines were tackled during the first half of 2006 (“Wave 2”), and two others are targeted for the remainder of the year (“Wave 3”). Meetings to discuss processes and procedures have been effective toward collecting tacit as well as explicit knowledge from the accounting staff. New binders are being created to hold the process maps, desk procedures, and improvement recommendations, and this documentation will eventually be posted onto the Intranet.
Work has also begun to convert the current Word-document biographies into a searchable “Yellow Pages” expert locator on the department’s Intranet. The new application will consist of a listing of Finance employees and corresponding key attributes, including technical background, areas of expertise, and current job role. The intent of the directory is to encourage the Accounting staff to seek help on technical issues. The AP&S team will build and maintain the directory based on SharePoint, and plans to launch it in Q4 of 2006.
The Brown Bag presentations will be resumed by AP&S either in partnership with the Employee Survey teams or as an independent effort. The initial presentation will address how to write desk procedures, in order to help accounting staff deliver a consistent format for the Process Improvement Project. This first session is slated for mid-October 2006. AP&S will host the meeting, providing both the lunch and the presentation. Future Brown Bag topics may include technical tips (using Excel or SAP), the use of statistics for allocations and trend analysis, and presentations from other organizations in the company.
An online knowledge repository for best practices and lessons learned will first be structured as a searchable discussion board, although the need may eventually develop to better organize that information. AP&S will manage the content delivery through SharePoint, allowing new material to be posted by staff accountants and the management team. Incentives for contributing material may initially be offered, but the use of on-going rewards is not anticipated. Once sufficient knowledge resides online, the accounting teams will be able to rely on it for answers. The repository could also be used for publishing common KM measures for the department, such as average employee tenure and KM‑program cost savings. The knowledge base may not be launched with the initial release of SharePoint, but it will likely be available by Q1 of 2007.
11. Measurement Systems
Measuring the effectiveness of any knowledge-management program can be a
tricky endeavor (Dalkir, 2005), and Accounting may be
inclined to rely on statistical metrics, particularly to justify a KM
budget. For the Process Improvement
Project, key indicators will include the number of documents on the Intranet
and the volume of hit counts on those pages.
In addition, employees who use that material can offer subjective
feedback on the effectiveness of the presentation. An early success of this process was reported
from the team whose procedures were documented in “Wave 1” of the
Process Improvement Project. A manager
who was transferred into that team was able to study the binder and get up to
speed on that area quickly. However, the
Accounting department still lacks a way to publish these successes, and it also
isn’t measuring the time savings from using the documentation.
Similar opportunities and challenges exist in the other areas, too. For the expert locator, web hit counts can
indicate the frequency of access, but they can’t (a) tell whether or not
the user contacted the expert, (b) indicate whether any expert’s advice
saved time or reduced costs, or (c) capture anecdotal stories about how the
advice helped. The effectiveness of the
Brown Bag meetings could be measured by counting the number of meetings,
checking the attendance levels, and soliciting feedback using surveys and
evaluations. But again it’s hard
to quantify the degree to which accounting processes were made more efficient
as the direct result of any given presentation.
Hit counts from the knowledge repository can quantify access levels, but
they won’t reveal how the knowledge might have been applied and the
extent to which the business profited.
In broader terms, other measures can help determine the effectiveness of
knowledge management. Scores from the
annual Employee Satisfaction survey give an indicator of employee perceptions
and morale. A commitment to fund KM
staff would be another indicator that knowledge management is important and
relevant. A tangible ROI can be
determined for each program investment to the extent that the time savings and
cost reductions from a KM initiative can be captured.
12. Future Direction Of KM Efforts
Developing a knowledge-management process in Accounting won’t be a
static, one-time project. A number of
initiatives will continue to build, and new programs will evolve. For example, the Process Improvement Project
is slated to continue into 2007 as additional accounting disciplines are
documented. Management of that project
should ultimately transfer from the consultant to an internal team (probably
AP&S), and the department needs to find ways to measure the effectiveness
of the project.
To promote future KM activities, the goal of “knowledge sharing” should be incorporated into the Accounting goals, and the management team will need to offer support and commit the proper budget dollars. AP&S can help by drafting business plans designed to justify KM staff levels and to plan appropriate initiatives. Eventually, a management position within Accounting or Finance should be established to run KM programs.
A number of technical advances will also support knowledge management. SAP enhancements, the implementation of SharePoint, and the development of a more stable document-sharing network will help provide the infrastructure for effective KM initiatives.
Other KM programs can supplement these efforts and increase
Accounting’s gains from knowledge management. The ability to capture both tacit and
explicit knowledge will be a key component to the success of KM. As these programs highlight information
needs, Communities of Practice may naturally develop in Accounting over time,
and management will need to ensure that proper time, facilities, and support
exists for these CoPs. Accountants may also wish to begin sharing
knowledge through their own chat rooms and discussion boards, which should work
well on the SharePoint-driven Intranet.
13. Lessons Learned
It is easier to develop a knowledge management program in an accounting organization if the overall organization embraces and has a formal on-going knowledge management program. It is also important that the leadership in the accounting organization and managers outside the organization encourage open sharing and transfer of knowledge. Our experience has shown that knowledge management is an evolutionary process which requires an incremental approach, and is certainly not a one-time project. It is also important to start small and be able to show some success in order to obtain and continue to build support for the activity. In order to be successful, the organization needs to have a reasonable IT platform that can enable the timely exchange of knowledge, procedures, and processes.
To ensure best practice sharing, it is important to have a strong social network by providing opportunities, such as Brown Bag exchanges, for employees to informally interact. The organization needs to encourage and sustain Communities of Practice, and provide incentives for teams and individuals for knowledge sharing. Measurements need to be considered up front in the planning process and “not after the fact.”
14. References
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Healthcare
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About the Authors:
Bill Whitmore is a manager in the Accounting Processes and Systems
(AP&S) team cited in this case study.
He has nearly 20 years experience working in technical teams to support
operations departments, including marketing, financial planning, and
accounting. With an undergraduate degree
in Education, Bill focuses on helping non-technical colleagues understand
technical concepts. He is scheduled to
graduate with an MBA from
Dr. James A. Albers is a Faculty Fellow in Technology & Innovation
Management in the