Strategic management accounting in the Republic of Serbia

The transition process in the Republic of Serbia – and the transition from a planned to a market economy – makes managing a company more demanding and sophisticated. In these circumstances, to be competitive, companies must have a strong and sophisticated information system that will provide information support to allow management to react in a timely manner and be proactive to market changes. One of the most important sources of such information is, of course, management accounting. Using only the traditional management accounting (TMA) could no longer fulfil the purpose of management requirements. For this purpose, strategic management accounting (SMA) and strategic cost management (the term ‘SCM’ is more commonly used in US literature) have been developed. This article explores the usefulness of using the aforementioned SMA techniques in obtaining timely and relevant information. Also, the intention was to identify synergetic effects of their implementation in terms of positive impact on cost control and costs reduction. The results were much more positive than expected.