Essay Sample on Importance of Intracompany User Guides

Introduction

Several companies are opening up their branches in different countries and also in different geographical locations. These companies, therefore undergo changes and in turn require strong and efficient ways of managing such changes. The current business environment is continually and constantly changing (By, 2005). In this case, it can be argued that the success of several organizations depends on how effective these organizations are when managing the process of change (By, 2005). The main challenge further comes in standardizing the process of management within the different branches of a company. One of the ways that have been utilized by several companies and government agencies is to come up with intra-company user guides, with the aim of smoothening the change process and further improving the management process. This paper will, therefore, conduct a literature review of five articles tackling the importance of intra-company user guides.

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Research Questions

The main purpose of this review is to determine the importance of intra-company user guides. In this case, the research questions are:

• Why are intracompany user guides important for reference by employees?
• What information should the intracompany user guide include?
• Can there be too much information included in a user guide?
• Are intracompany user guides beneficial to employees and their daily job duties?

Literature Review

Malik and Bergfeld (2015) conducted research with the aim of expounding further on the challenging process of intra-company technology transfers in MNEs. The researchers concentrated mainly on the importance of the intra-company transfer of technology regarding production process-related technologies. According to the authors examined six case studies and also conducted several interviews with some of the top managers across Europe to determine the importance of intra-company transfer of technology. Finally, the authors gave the guidelines necessary to ensure that the intra-company transfer of technology is efficient and smooth for further efficiency of the NMEs. According to the authors, several organizations have already shifted their ways of findings towards Research and Development from the overall corporate sources to the business units. The authors further argued that the shifting from corporate to business units is mainly aimed at transforming the R&D activities to be more market-driven. However, the authors argue that the majority of research on the technological transfer has mainly concentrated on the transfer at the company level but not at the business unit level. The authors also argue that most of the literature concerning the topic of transfer of technology has shown that communication plays important role in the success of the transfer. In this regard, the authors demonstrate the importance of studying the transfer of technology at the business unit, hence the intra-company transfer.

Malik and Bergfeld (2015) further presented a model, which was arrived at after consideration of the six case studies and the several interviews conducted for the different managers. In this regard, the authors suggested that communication between the sender and the receiver of the new technology was paramount for the success of the intra-company transfer. In their conclusions, they further argued that technology transfer cannot be viewed as a one-off singular event. Instead, they pointed out that intra-company transfer of technology becomes an iterative arrangement which starts when the management first understands the unique markets and opportunities of each unit within the organization in order to understand the likely effects of the proposed technology on each branch of the organization. Further, the authors suggest for the managers to be more sensitive to the difference in the knowledge backgrounds, competency levels of the different business units in the organization, as well as the skills that each individual in the business has if the management intends on achieving the long-run efficiency using technology. Most importantly, the authors point out that the process of successfully initiating and implementing the intra-company transfer of technology requires the business to have a well-established user guide which the employees will be using as a reference. The user guides are seen as a factor of reducing the time consumed in providing further explanation to the employees should they forget about some of the learned knowledge on the operation of the new technology.

Umler User guide was also analyzed in this literature review. Umler is the railway industry's central repository for registered rail and intermodal equipment in North America (Umler, 2018). In this case, Umler can be viewed as the central force of almost all railway activities in the region. According to the Umler user guide, it is important for all railway activities in the region to be interlinked with regards to operations. One of the reasons for the linkage is that Umler helps in providing the types of equipment and the type of information necessary for inspection for achieving safety in the rail routes, as well as ensuring that the companies have the necessary capabilities required for loading, and rating information for car hire accounting. As such, one can argue that almost all the virtual electronic exchange of rail equipment data depends in one way or the other on Umler.

According to Ulmer's report of 2018, all the stakeholders in the railway industry commissioned the Railinc Umler to help them I facilitating the industry's ever-changing business rules and government regulations. As such, the Railinc Umler enables users the easy access and management of rail equipment using internet application. Such access has been enabled through the efficient management and availability of access through web-based access to the Umler database, in turn enabling its users to make inquiries and to update their data on time. As such, Umler (2018) report demonstrates the need of user guides in managing intra-company transfers as it shows that such guides enable for ease and flexibility as well as ensuring that the management does not waste so much time in following up its staff. Since the user guides for the intra-company transfers are only accessible to management for editing, the management can easily make the required changes (updates) to reflect on the current requirements in the industry and then avail them to the employees in the industry for reference. As such, there will be minimized conflict of interest between the management and the employees as well as interruptions of the business processes due to the employees not aware of the next step to take, especially when the management is absent or inaccessible.

Umler report further points out that user guides are important in the survival of the industry as a whole since it leads to real-time availability of information and updates. The report also demonstrates that user guides enable the whole industry to achieve a higher level of flexibility especially if the information is readily available as is the case with the Umler management system.

Simkiss and Briggs (2018) give a deep dive into the intercompany and intracompany accounting functional setups requirements. In their report, the authors define intracompany transactions as transactions taking place between one business unit and the other of the same organization. In the same case, the authors define an intercompany transaction as the transaction taking place between one business organization and another business organization. The authors further give the difference in the different intercompany journals and how to account for them. The authors further demonstrate that for the intercompany balancing there is no clearing company usage and all legal entities are balanced by the summary net with respect to each other.

In terms of the intracompany balancing rules, Simkiss and Brigs (2018) point out that the balancing guidelines help in creating the balancing lines on journals between balancing segment values either within the same legal entity or where there is no legal entity context. According to the authors, the intracompany balancing guidelines come in play in cases where an organization is faced with a situation containing two or more balancing segment values existing on a transaction or journal entry, provided the institution made a selection on the Balance Intracompany Journals option for the ledger. In this regard, the institution can only post to General ledger after its debit and credit balances are equal to zero. Automatic balancing of the journals is possible once the institution has set up the balancing rules and commanded the software to run the balancing of cross-entity journals. However, the authors insist that since balancing is an automated process, the company should ensure that its accounting system contains at least one balancing rule with at least one accounting rule to proceed. The default accounting rule on each balancing rule is defined for the debit balancing segment value All Other and credit balancing segment value All Other.

From the deep dive into the intracompany balancing, the authors suggest that the user guides are important in ensuring that a company remains within the accepted industry standards. Specifically, the user guides will ensure that each of the units in the business conducts its financial treatments of the transactions using similar accounting standards and rules. In this case, there will be no cases of legal cases against the company for breach of contract or for engaging in illegal activities as well as not following the accepted accounting standards. It is important to note that the use of the provided oracle user guides for the intracompany balancing is important especially in cases where an employee is transferred from one business unit to another since the employee will immediately fit in the system of the new business unit. The organization, in turn, tends to have a standardized way of handling transactions, thereby making it quick for the employees to adapt to their new areas of operations in cases of transfer, hence the importance of intracompany user guides for reference.

Faess and Matthyssens (2007) further carried out research on how to effectively manage purchasing coordination and build an efficient intra-company relationship. The authors argued that the size of firms drives the opportunity costs associated with the trust-based governance of institutions. As such, the authors pointed out that user guides are important in managing large-scale organizations such as the MNEs since the likely gains of coordinating an institution's outsourcing of services increase when the size of the company increases. The authors further argue that the user guides for reference by employers are important in achieving formalization and coordination, which help the large-scale businesses to exploit their negotiation powers with their suppliers as well as enabling them to have broad understanding of the market and cost structures, as well as achieving a more improved internal communication, and realizing substantial ways of saving resources. The authors further point out that the size of an organization, therefore, leads to the achievement of the required economic stability for making necessary investments in formalization. Further, the authors pointed that size of an organization also increases the direct and opportunity transaction costs. For an institution to achieve the maximum potential of formalization, it is necessary for the firm to have a well-established user guide for the intracompany management.

The ministry of the interior of the Czech Republic also on its website offers the Intra-company Employee Transfer Card. The...