Company Specific Strategies Discuss the information and value that financial analysts may derive from comparing and contrasting the strategies employed by companies. Consider the framework for strategic analysis.

Managerial accounting provides a series of various financial measures and metrics that are designed for planning and decision making purposes. By contrast, the standard accounting models are more focused on reporting measures than as a basis for determining a high level strategy. Managerial accounting metrics, on the other hand, can help an organization develop a strategy that can be used to derive a set of organizational objectives and help identify opportunities in the market and often provide the insights needed for the company to determine its competitive competencies and how it can create value for its investors. Such metrics may focus on factors such as productivity measures or resource usage that could be used to evaluate the company's progress and how it stacks up among its competition. Such metrics often focus on specific targets such as product costing, relevant costing, capital budgeting, and operational or strategic planning.

The value that is derived from a managerial accounting approach considers far more than simply value in terms of financial data....

For example, in decision making there are many different factors that might need to be consider such as the quality of human resources for instance that is difficult to measure in raw financial terms. However, it could be achieved more feasibly by providing a rough metric to the experience of the staff that could also be compared to the competition. If the competitions staff was inexperienced and your organizations staff was more capable, then this might be an area that you might want to exploit strategically in order to create a competitive advantage. This could serve as an example of how a managerial accounting can take various data collection methods and developed these into a more systematic and rigorous process that can be used to guide strategy (Ittner & Larcker, 2001).
Furthermore, managerial accounting and the creation of various internal and external benchmarks can also assist with directing and controlling operations in a company. For example, a manager may want to compare a set of estimated costs against the actual costs either internally or compare these to an external competitor or possibly the industry average. Such calculations can help management determine how the organizations compares to itself at different points in time, how it compares to its competition,…