Posted by Mark Maybloom on April 23, 2002 at 10:58:42:

As an I.T. consultant with experience in Unix and NT operating systems in large corporations, I am now challenged to implement the paperless office into a small to medium accounting practice of five partners, fifteen accountants and four administration staff.

My purpose of opening this discussion is to obtain your professional input into what changes to culture I need to include in the project to ensure that the document management system I implement, leads to an increase in knowledge.

Knowledge is essentially generated in an accounting practice by researching and providing solutions to clients and establishing repeatable processes to complete the tasks assigned. In this high level view of solutions, many services are provided that generate paper from tax returns, engagement letters, audit work papers, company secretarial documents, financial reports etc. etc. Because an accounting practice makes money by billing the client, there is a resistance to performing knowledge gathering tasks that may see a drop off in productivity measured by employee billable hours. Some of the key cultural issues, (being a top level management responsibility), need addressing to preserve and grow knowledge are as follows:-

· Motivating staff to log problems and solutions into the document management system that can be re-used to the benefit of improving service times and quality solutions to other clients.
· Motivating staff to notate conversations with clients so that knowledge of the client is independent of staff. i.e. tacit knowledge is recorded.
· Removing the isolated practices by individuals and have staff use repeatable processes.
. Preventing staff returning to old habits by keeping information in their heads and on paper
· Convincing management to provide field staff with lap top computers to ensure audit other work papers are uploaded daily and hence protected. Eg. Enron case.

To assist me in finding solutions to these issues, I have read:-

. How Companies Thrive by Sharing What They Know by Nancy M. Dixon (Hardcover –March 2000) and
. Getting Down to Brass Tacks with Knowledge Management by Tim Kounadis DM Review March 2002.

The readings tend to assume that staff do not need to change their process, as the desktop applications will assist to capture everything without staff filling out long forms. Well, in an accounting practice, creating forms from templates is a very big activity while electronic lodgement of documents and web-based research is also important. Hence, to partly address my bullet points listed above, senior management in the accounting practice will need to lead by example and prove the benefits to staff of the new system. For the remainder, I look forward to your professional advice on the initiatives I need to include in my systems implementation project plan to address these cultural issues.

Mark M

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Follow Ups:

• KM & accounting Denham 11:24:47 04/23/02 (2)
  • Re: KM & accounting Mark Maybloom 19:58:15 04/24/02 (1)
    • Re: KM & accounting Prepaid calling cards 10:26:24 05/10/02 (0)

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