Integrating Process Mapping Into The AIS Students Toolset

Abstract

Over the past decade, the impact of technology on accounting practice has been profound. The professional landscape is rapidly changing, and todays accounting students have more career opportunities than ever before. While many accounting majors are still choosing the traditional routes of public or corporate accounting, others are tailoring their education toward management or systems consulting. As AIS educators it is imperative that we maintain currency in our curriculum for both the traditional majors and those students seeking a consulting career path.

Although the AIS curriculum is applicable to both types of accounting majors, certain content is especially pertinent to those students interested in consulting. One subject that consultants draw upon extensively is systems documentation. Current AIS curriculum focuses on analysis, design, and documentation of systems from an internal control and data flow perspective, and students learn to use traditional accounting documentation tools. These techniques include document and systems flowcharts and data flow diagrams. While these tools may be sufficient for their intended purposes, they are not the primary documentation techniques used in the consulting profession. The objective of this paper is to advocate the inclusion of a popular management consulting documentation technique, process mapping, into the accounting curriculum. Process maps are used to better understand a business entity's current business processes and communicate these in a non-technical way. Additionally, process mapping can provide an initial foundation to successful process management.