In today's world, accounting is not an isolated discipline or marginalized from other related subjects. On the contrary, it is embedded in the very way of doing business and feeds back on the challenges and changes that organizations must make to achieve their mission.
In the 21st century, the concepts of phenomena such as globalization, competitiveness, quality, productivity, strategic alliances, world-class companies, free trade, added value and reengineering of administrative processes, are terms that have come to enrich the normal vocabulary of a businessman and to increase the degree of difficulty in the operation of companies.
Globalization.
Today, some trends that can be considered signs of our time have taken root in companies today. Among all the trends that we can visualize to a greater or lesser degree, two of them may be responsible for many of the changes that are taking place not only in business but in general in all areas of economic, political and social life. of contemporary history: globalization and competitiveness.
In today's world we may go to the supermarket and find products that have been brought from various corners of our planet.
The foregoing is not only applicable to articles of great value such as automobiles, but to goods whose value is sometimes so small that we are surprised that they were brought from distant places. In the case of automobiles, we are likely to be proud of the nationality of vehicle manufacturing we own.
However, we would be surprised to know that in cases like these, the parts that make up these vehicles may come from more than thirty different countries, located in the most different corners of the world. To this globalization to which we refer, countries have been summoned, their governments in different spheres of authority, and companies, large, medium and small.
Competitiveness
In addition to globalization, a trend clearly reflected in the current way of doing business, there is another no less important, competitiveness. In simple and understandable terms, competitiveness is offering the client of an entity goods and services with attention, quality, opportunity and price that represent a value superior to what the competition would provide.
Competitiveness is perceived in the different characteristics of the good or service, in aspects such as subsequent repairs, low prices in proportion to the quality received, satisfaction of the needs and expectations of the client, delivery time of the good offered, etc., which offers the smallest set of the above factors, it is the most competitive within an economic system.
If we combine these two trends, globalization and competitiveness to some extent, we will realize the magnitude of the challenge of competing in a global context.
A challenge that is felt in all the functional areas of a company: in its sales and purchases, in its production and marketing, in the version and in the financing, in the financial, human, material and technological resources with which it is bill.
Quality and productivity.
This has resulted in organizations in general, public and private, whatever their nationality, have had to make efforts aimed at productivity and obtaining total quality, as a way to survive and compete in a global environment.
Quality is a topic that all of us talk about and that is of vital importance for companies. In this sense, quality will be defined as the performance of an activity with simultaneous efficiency and effectiveness. Efficiency is doing things with the best use of available resources.
Efficacy is doing things as fast as possible. You can have efficiency and lack efficacy or vice versa, but no matter how developed one of them is, not having the other one will not have quality. So quality is doing things right the first time and in the shortest possible time, making the most of the resources available at that time.
The quality standards day by day are changing due to the competition, since they also seek to win the race. In this sense, the one that does not advance, retreats, since the others approach him or add the advantage that he has over the immobile individual or organization.
The concepts of quality, productivity, globalization go hand in hand since some determine the others. Without quality in the production processes, administration, sale, information, etc., there is no productivity and if you are not productive, you cannot be competitive in an environment of globalization.
Value added.
The quality in the information processes and more than those of an accounting nature, plays a very important role in the competitiveness of companies, since many of the decisions made are based on results or products of accounting processes.
When it comes to quality and its relationship to accounting, it is well known that a company has external and internal clients for financial information. The first are the shareholders, creditors, the treasury, etc., as for the second, there is a large number of users who wait for this information to carry out their work and provide customers with the services necessary to meet their expectations.
For example, the work that the accounting department does falls indirectly on the product or service offered by the company, since it provides the data to calculate costs and determine the sale price, this is called value added. Those functions within the organization that do not offer added value to the good or service to customers must be eliminated and in this way a company is made more efficient. The characteristics of timeliness, objectivity and accuracy of accounting are a reflection of its quality; the more timely, objective and accurate it is, the more reliable and useful it will be.
In this way, if the information processes, especially accounting ones, are produced through quality and continuous improvement programs, all internal and external users of said information are impacted and make them more competitive.
If the entire company is to be of sufficient quality to compete, continuous improvement programs must be implemented in all areas. As already mentioned, the quality standards change from day to day, or rather, the requirements of the financial information of the clients change daily, so it is necessary to search daily for ways to improve the processes of preparing it, to give users a useful tool to compete.
In summary, the continuous improvement in quality and the constant increase in the productivity of all its functions, both administrative and operational, are the tools with which organizations today are facing the challenge of competitiveness in a global context.
