Why You Should Get a Business Process Review Before Implementing an Accounting System

It’s not quite the chicken or the egg conundrum, but putting a management accounting system implementation ahead of a business process review doesn’t make sense. It should be the opposite, in fact – you should always get a business process review before implementing a management accounting system.

Why? Because management accounting systems are expensive and implementations are complicated. If you don't do a business process review – that is, you don't look at what you're doing now, how it does or doesn't work, and what you'd like to be doing in the future – you can't choose the management accounting system that's best for you. And if you don't choose the management accounting system that's best for you, you'll have wasted a lot of money and have nothing to show for it.

Done correctly, an effective business process review is one of the biggest contributing factors of a successful management accounting system implementation.

Here are the two biggest reasons to do a business process review before choosing and implementing an management accounting system.

You Can Keep the Right Processes

Although a management accounting system will absolutely improve your business processes, it's not logical to think you have to scrap everything and start over. Some of the processes you've been doing for years are most likely still working, and working well. You need to identify those processes, because they’re the processes you want to keep.

Some of your existing processes have gotten you this far and can continue to offer you a competitive advantage. Not performing a business process review before the implementation, however, prevents you from identifying, maintaining, and carrying forward the advantages of those already successful processes.

You Can Eliminate the Wrong Processes

That's not to say that all of your processes are working well. If they were, you probably wouldn't be adopting new software. Correctly customizing a management accounting system, however, requires hundreds of configuration decisions, so failing to do a business process review and clearly defining your processes means that you're making those configurations decisions based on ... nothing. Without a business process review, you don’t know what works, what doesn’t work, and what needs changing – you're operating in the dark.

Don't be the business with the blind leading the blind. Do a business process review before implementing a management accounting solution so you're not making random, reckless decisions that will lead to a failed implementation.