Effects of Business Intelligence on the Management Accounting Function

Abstract

As Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems affected the management accountants’ activities in the past, Business Intelligence (BI) Systems are emerging as the next whole organization encompassing technology which will affect the management accounting function in the present. Since BI systems main function is to handle financial and non-financial data it only makes sense to examine how BI effects the management accounting function. There are not a lot of studies conducted on the intersections of BI and management accounting, however, the changes ERP systems have caused on the management accoun-ting functions are relatively well documented.

The goal of this thesis is to examine the changes BI has caused in the management accounting function. The chosen research question was: Based on current literature in the field of management accounting, what are the effects of Business Intelligence systems on the management accounting function? To help answer this question, the effects of ERP systems in management accounting will be used as a fra-mework which will be a lens to understand the changes BI has caused. The thesis was conducted by first examining the management accounting function and how the role has changed. After which looking at the chosen Information Systems; ERP and BI.

The chosen method was a literature review and the method used for the analysis was a thematic ana-lysis. The analysis was split into two parts. Firstly, identifying three themes in how ERP systems effect the management accounting function. The second part of the analysis starts by documenting the chosen peer-reviewed BI literature that touches upon the changes BI systems has caused in the field of mana-gement accounting. After which the chosen themes were used in the context of BI as well. The findings showed that the effect of BI systems on the management accounting function can be seen as more signi-ficant than the effect of ERP systems. BI systems have also automated some routine tasks, enable create more accurate and timely reports and key performance indicators. The skill sets required for future management accountants will most likely evolve as well, requiring some rudimentary understanding of statistics and programming.