Financial analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Financial analysis - Essay Example The flagship Barclays Bank has around 1700 branches spread across UK and other countries (Hoovers, â€Å"Company Description†). The group has its operation across Europe, Africa, the United States and the Middle East countries. The company deals in financial products and competes within the global financial services industry. The control and authority of an organisation lies with the corporate managers. Undoubtedly, it indicates that the managers must be conversant with the accounting position of the organisation. â€Å"The term management accounting refers to accounting the management i.e. accounting which provides necessary information to the management for discharging its function† (Anbuvelan, â€Å"Management Accounting†). Management accounting provides variable assistance to the management to carry out the managerial functions with more efficiency. There are a number of tools and techniques in Management Accounting arena. The whole process includes gathering required information and analysing them to make decision making process much uncomplicated. A number of companies use ‘Activity Based Costing’ to identify and allocate the cost of the products or services. This includes identifying the cost pools or the activity centres and within the organisation and allocating cost to the activities using the cost drivers. The assignment of the cost is done based on the contribution of various activities in any particular product or service. As this costing process considers multiple cost drivers with different activities, the distortion risk is minimised considerably, providing the required cost information. As ABC indentifies each of the overhead costs with the products and services, produced and delivered to the customers, the process is more advanced than the traditional cost techniques. The significant steps in ABC are identification of the companies’ key activities, identification of related cost amount, establishment