Best Practices Problem Avoidance (#53)

In this podcast episode, we talk about the various techniques that can be employed to improve your odds of installing best practices. Key points made are:

  • Determine who manages the process to be changed. Could be trouble if you are impacting the area of responsibility of another manager. If so, try some other best practice.

  • You may not be in the right; review the issues of other parties to see if their concerns about a best practice are valid.

  • If you have not installed a best practice before, obtain lots of advice before proceeding.

  • Space out installations, so that the department has a chance to settle down in between major changes.

  • Slice up large projects into smaller pieces, so that some items can go live sooner. Improves the odds of overall success.

  • In-house capacity impacts your ability to complete installs; need to free up staff time.

  • Each successive project frees up more staff time, making it easier to work on the next project.

  • Review projects for dependencies, and verify in advance that you can work through them.

  • Verify that a new best practice integrates into the corporate system of controls.

  • Stick with off-the-shelf software; it rarely makes sense to develop a customized solution.

  • Maintain a full list of best practices to work on, so that you can easily switch over if there is a problem with the current project.

  • Chat with other managers periodically to see if any of them are interested in a best practice.

Related Courses

Accounting Information Systems

Lean Accounting Guidebook