Practices of agile accounting for organisational advancement

The global business framework tends to ennoble itself rapidly, which helps it bide its time, gain competitive advantages, and diversify the organisation's goods and services.

The operational tasks of the companies are also getting updated regularly, which sometimes demands innovation in a critical situation, or revising the existing policy to satisfy the customer needs and enhance productivity. Agile accounting is a revising concept of traditional accounting, which prioritises conducting the financial transactions of an organisation collaboratively, that focuses on real-time data, actual cash flow management, and prudent decision-making process.

In traditional accounting, the managers are accountable for making reports of daily financial transactions on a quarterly or annual basis, providing financial data to the relevant stakeholders, and making investment decisions. The relevant activities under the accounting department of a particular organisation are divided into different segments, while each segment is assigned to a person, and sometimes there is a flaw in the output due to mismanagement or lack of proper coordination.

Agile accounting highly focuses on the proper coordination of work in the field of finance and accounting, which leads to the assembling of the tasks of each segment in one place, which assists in making effective business decisions prudently. Mohammad Rakibul Islam is officer (Finance) at Reckitt Benckiser (Bangladesh) Limited. He is also a Management Level student at the Institute of Cost and Management Accountants of Bangladesh (ICMAB). Talking about agile accounting, he said, "Agile accounting is a concept of modern accounting, which basically deals with flexibility, coordination, and real-time data analysis, that helps to enhance effectiveness and efficiency of the business. Also, it increases productivity as agile accounting goes through an automation system, where there is a benchmark, and the respective authority has to go through that. So, the proper working system runs properly without disturbance, which plays a positive role in the organisation."

"Currently business houses, especially multinational companies are trying to adopt agile accounting in their organisations, as they have branches of their businesses in different countries. So, it makes their work effective by adopting the practices of agile accounting, as it enhances efficiency, better decision making, and improved collaboration," he added.

Traditional accounting does not acknowledge the changes that are created in the firm from internal or external environments including inflation in the market, fluctuation of the currency rate, high tax rate, reducing tax rebate, international trade barrier, etc. Traditional accounting runs in a banal system, which sometimes withers for the lack of uniqueness and better customer engagement.

On the other hand, agile accounting is a flexible accounting system, which brings changes in the organisation's financing model over time and envisages the real market scenario, which is considered to modify the current financial system and update it to global standards. It also adopts employee feedback, evaluates the work controlling systems, develops the motivation procedures of the accountants, and makes a bridge among all the departments of the firm, so that every department can easily communicate with other departments, which helps to gain economic advancement.

ANM Wazed Ali is general manager of Abul Khair Group. He shared his opinions regarding the importance of agile accounting in the business. He said, "Till now, most of the companies are using a traditional accounting model which is comparatively sluggish than agile accounting in terms of productivity. If we can ensure the application of agility in accounting, finance, and related fields, obviously it will increase the competitiveness of the industries, which will assist them to run the industries more perfectly than before."

He further said, "I think the concept of agile accounting can be established in Bangladesh through several ways. First of all, journalists should write on this topic continuously, so that it draws the attention of business leaders, who make business decisions and make changes in the organisational model. Moreover, there should be some training sessions, where the experts will describe the importance of agile accounting to the board of directors and the related management body, which will also be helpful to make this concept popular in Bangladesh."

In developing countries including Bangladesh, the concept of agile accounting is not very popular among business houses, which sometimes incurs financial distortion. Being a tactic to compete in the national and international market, the monetary transactions should be up-to-date, while recording daily transactions in the account books, or preparing financial statements. The concept of agile accounting should be practised in those companies, which ultimately allows them to sustain themselves in the competitive world.

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