Managing IT Change—Financial Management

While attempting to manage IT change, financial management needs to focus on two important issues: the typical financial business requirements and also the configuration issues associated with the implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. After a discussion of basic information technology (IT) change issues, this article focuses on the implications for the financial management function. The net result of the discussion is that financial leaders—and in particular, management accountants—have a much broader role in the design, testing, and execution of all of these systems. Since most business transactions occur in a department outside of the financial function, the ability of the management accountants and financial leaders to play a key role in the design and implementation has increased dramatically. So, too, has the responsibility for not only the design but the auditing of these systems, not only at the outset but as changes are made over the life of the application.