A recent post at Accounting Mechanics suggests accountants should do anything necessary to fill the gap between Finance and IT. While I fully agree accountants are in a better position than IT specialists to provide useful management information, I can think of a few issues with that positioning, though:
- Old-school finance people might see you too much like an IT resource
- IT will most definitely see you as competition;-)
- The added value is obvious once you’re part of an organization and start to deliver results, but it’s difficult to “sell” that particular skill set without sounding too much like “an IT guy”
- You run the risk of ending up maintaining systems instead of using them to answer the very questions you built them to find answers to in the first place
Still, there seems to be quite a few of us out there tackling those issues and getting involved with a whole set of typically IT-only technologies. Feel free to let me know of any experience you wish to share in the comments.
June 10, 2007 at 12:00 pm
I’m operating in the area of Management Accounting as well. The folks in our technology department call me the “finance” person while the folks in our finance department view me as a “technology” person. Heh.
June 21, 2007 at 11:45 pm
@vesance: in truth that is really sad.