Imagine Mozart, Beethoven, Gershwin, and Bach all used different notation systems: Would they understand each other? Could the musicians quickly interpret the music? A situation that seems unthinkable, that is more likely to create chaos than understanding. Meanwhile, in business there are many different layouts of reports, presentations or visualizations, even within one company. In his keynote "IBCS® Standards. What management accountants can learn from musicians?", Dr. Jürgen Faisst presented his idea of how to use International Business Communication Standards (IBCS®) in order to lead to faster, better and less expensive results in business communication and at all stages of decision-making processes.
The inspiring talk was organized by WHU’s Institute of Management Accounting and Control (IMC) and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), the world’s leading, and largest, professional body of management accountants on our WHU Campus in Düsseldorf. Jürgen Faisst, who has been working with Rolf Hichert for more than 20 years and serves as Managing Director of the IBCS Association, provided the audience with practical proposals for the design of reports, presentations, dashboards and the diagrams and tables contained therein. The Q&A session as well as the Networking opportunities after the talk were greatly appreciated to engage in further discussions.