Saint Paul Chapter (No. 130)

NEWS

AConducting a Training Needs Assessment

Jamie Carpen
District Public Relations Manager
Accountemps
205 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 3301
Chicago, IL 60601
P: 312.616.8200 x374
F: 312.616.8726
jamie.carpen@rhi.com

Have you been charged with having your accounting team trained but don’t know where to start?  Consider a training needs assessment as your first step. The primary purpose is to determine whether additional instruction is -- or will be -- required and, if so, identify the nature of the content to be included.  The process questions which skills and knowledge are required by your staff to be more effective, identifies the gaps and considers whether the shortfalls can be feasibly solved by training activities.  Below is advice for conducting a successful program:

Carefully define your needs.  Keep in mind that your objectives may be entirely different today than they will be down the road.  Take a look at workload patterns during the last six months to identify vulnerabilities -- whether it is a need for certain skills, specialties or experience levels -- and solicit staff input.  You may learn that employees have another perspective on the situation.  Consider which training programs are essential for staff to succeed.

Planning for the ‘what ifs’ keeps you ready for them.  The recent economic downturn showed that change can occur with little or no notice.  Improve your response time by preparing for worst-case scenarios (e.g., a star employee resigns or your budget is cut in half) and train your staff on how to deal with them.

Look ahead.  It’s critical to structure your team so that training can be accomplished quickly.  If you start out with a system so complicated that only one or two people know how to make things work, it will lead to problems in the future.  It’s best to set up a format that’s simple enough to accommodate adding people later in the process.

When designing professional development opportunities for your team, take the time to consider your needs carefully, seek input from employees and show them you are serious about helping them grow professionally by providing the time and resources to build their skills.  Doing so will improve productivity and make the work environment more satisfying for existing staff.

Accountemps is the world's first and largest temporary staffing service specializing in the placement of accounting, finance and bookkeeping professionals.  The company has more than 330 offices throughout North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and offers online job search services at www.accountemps.com.  For more information, call the St. Paul office at (651) 293-3973.

AccountAbility Minnesota
Tax & Accounting Services
for those in need

Minneapolis Chapter
Presents the first ever fundraising event to benefit
AccountAbilty Minnesota
Tax & Accounting Services
for those in need

Thursday, February 24th
from 5:30 to 7:30 PM
At
Nochee
500 Washington Ave. S.
Minneapolis, MN

The event includes gourmet hors d’vores, winetasting as selected by Nochee’s owner and executive staff, Silent Auction, and the opportunity to support AccountAbility MN in its mission to provide tax assistance to low-income individuals and small business owners.

Cost to attend is only $30 in advance by February 21st, 2005 and $35 at the door.
Parking is free at the Portland Ave Ramp next door.
Register in advance by contacting Gabriela at AccountAbility MN at 651-287-0187
to use your Visa, MasterCard or American Express.
Credit Cards, Check or Cash at the Door,
or visit us at www.accountabilitymn.org

Click here to download the registration page.

November 2004
Meeting Summary

The November IMA meeting hosted by the St. Paul chapter highlighted the topic of Integrating Lean, Six Sigma and SCOR (Supply Chain Operations Management). The speaker was Jane Malin, Sr. Management Consultant with Pragmatek Consulting Group. This presentation has importance for financial management executives because these methodologies are helpful in selecting and guiding initiatives and measuring success.

The speakers first helped to define the methodologies and their differences:

Six Sigma – Looks for process/product defects

Lean – Drives waste out of the organization and maximizes value
Lean asks the question: “Would the customer pay me to do this?”

SCOR – Links strategy with day-to-day performance
SCOR delivers a portfolio of projects driven by the defined strategy (Supply Chain Optimization)

In other words, Six Sigma is the approach (How will I get there?), Lean is the means to get there (“the gas”) and SCOR is the roadmap, strategy, benchmarks, gap analysis that links the market strategy to financial performance on a day-to-day basis.

The speaker discussed approaching this type of project in three phases. Phase I was covered in detail during the meeting.

Phase I: Define Supply Chain
Customer segments, product lines, geographic regions

The key is to be market segment driven and define a market strategy for the supply chain. This requires an analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT). This phase also requires that both internal and external metrics are defined. External metrics look at delivery, reliability and quality as examples. Internal metrics look at costs and asset management as examples.

Phase II: Map Physical Material Flow

Phase III: Develop Work & Information (Transactional) Flow
By converging these methodologies you should be able to:

• Optimize process, policy, organization, and systems
• Achieve speed in the value chain by eliminating waste
• Achieve continuous improvement through the reduction of variation

Results of Membership Survey

We would to thank all those that participated in the recent St. Paul chapter membership survey. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Where possible, we compared survey results against our general membership database and saw that these results closely matched the demographics of our total membership. Therefore, we believe we have fairly representative sample of the chapter’s membership.

We are still reviewing the information obtained from the survey but would like to share with you some preliminary information.

Demographics:

58% of respondents have over 10 years experience in the field of management accounting/finance. 29% of respondents have been members of IMA for over 10 years and 52% have been members for over 5 years. 59% of respondents have the CMA, 20% have the CFM, 20% have the CPA, while 35% of respondents have no certification.

51% of respondents are in professional roles in their organization while 45% are in management roles. 46% of respondents work in locations that employ over 1,000 people and 21% work at locations that employ less than 100 people.

The key functional roles for the respondents are: financial/general accounting (52%), budgeting/planning (44%), cost accounting (33%), corporate finance/treasury (29%), consulting (19%), risk management (15%), and information systems (15%). Covering less than 10% of respondents were the roles of tax, auditing, mergers/acquisitions, non-financial, public accounting, personal accounting, governmental accounting, and education.

75% of respondents stated that their company sponsors their membership.

Member Benefits:

Of the many benefits of membership, respondents stated that the key reason they joined the IMA was for certification opportunities were 66% of respondents rated this as Very Important (86% as Important). Professional association was next with 52% rating as Very Important (89% as Important). Networking opportunities was rated Very Important by 43% of respondents (86% as Important). Educational opportunities was rated Very Important by 42% of respondents (86% as Important). Leadership opportunities, social opportunities, and perks were rated as Very Important by only 18%, 7%, and 2%, respectively, by the respondents.

To a high degree, most respondents stated that they have realized the benefits they expected upon joining.

Communications:

98% of respondents receive IMA National communications and 96% have used IMA National web site. 91% receive the St. Paul chapter communications and only 44% have used the chapter web site.

Chapter Meetings:

44% of respondents do not normally attend chapter meetings. 15% attend 1-2 meetings, 22% attend 3-5 meetings, and 20% attend 6-9 meetings. 52% of respondents stated they anticipate increasing their attendance in the future.

For meeting location, respondents stated that 78% preferred the inner St. Paul suburbs (inside the 494/694 loop). 70% preferred downtown St. Paul and 62% preferred the Eastern suburbs (outside the 494/694 loop).

The key factor preventing respondents from participating in chapter meetings was meeting date/time with 47% of respondents rating this as Very Important (84% as Important). Family responsibilities was rated 45% as Very Important (80% as Important). Job responsibilities was rated 45% as Very Important (76% as Important). Topic or speaker was rated 44% as Very Important (85% as Important). Meeting location was rated 31% as Very Important (86% as Important).

The key factor enabling respondents to participate in chapter meetings was meeting date/time with 64% of respondents rating this as Very Important (97% as Important). Topic or speaker was rated 61% as Very Important (94% as Important). Meeting location was rated 50% as Very Important (83% as Important). Job responsibilities was rated 41% as Very Important (78% as Important). Family responsibilities was rated 34% as Very Important (68% as Important).