Management Accounting’s Challenge
Currently numerous approaches, techniques and tools are available for management accounting. Nevertheless, research has revealed a significant gap between the profession’s offerings and its ability to satisfy managers’ information needs. The adoption of a new approach – rumored to bridge this divide - habitually goes from euphoria to disappointment. The initial euphoria invariably triggers a feeding frenzy by service providers (consultants and software vendors) who seek to cash in on a lucrative opportunity. Experts appear overnight and ‘refinements’ to the approach (in reality often due to software limitations) abound, leading to a wide variation in practice and a downward spiral in quality, consistency and ultimately the benefits managers receive.
A Community
A primary objective of the RCA Institute is to ensure an organization’s successful adoption of RCA. Breaking the typical adoption cycle in management accounting is an important step in achieving this objective. The RCA Institute will cultivate a controlled community where certification and a carefully managed adoption process will serve as the stepping-stones to a general release of RCA to the market.
The community phase is intended to cultivate a knowledgeable and highly skilled group of users and service providers able to support RCA’s general market release without the compromises that have hitherto characterized the roll out of new management accounting approaches.
Managed adoption is an important aspect of building a vibrant and robust community. RCA is not for everyone. Until the principles and concepts of the IMA Conceptual Framework for Managerial Costing and RCA practices and benefits are more widely understood, adoption in less than ideal business environments will be avoided. In the community phase the adoption process will entail screening of potential adopters, which will significantly mitigate adopter risk. Companies interested in using RCA should review the Testing the Waters section on this website to familiarize themselves with ways of getting involved with RCA. The first formal step in becoming an adopter is to complete the adopter survey on the Adopter Evaluation page.