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ACCA Strategic Professional · Advanced Performance Management · Data science and analytics

Calder Foods' board receives a monthly report with sales by region. Region A's figures come from a system updated daily and fully reconciled to the ledger; Region B's come from spreadsheets compiled by local managers, who also earn bonuses on reported sales, and are not independently checked. Which governance improvement would best address the risk to the reliability of the reported data?

Assign clear data ownership and introduce independent validation and reconciliation of Region B data to the ledger, with access controls on spreadsheets. The risk arises because bonus-earning managers prepare unchecked figures. Quarterly reporting, bigger bonuses or extra charts would not improve reliability and could worsen it.

  1. AAssign data ownership and introduce independent validation and reconciliation of Region B data to the ledger, with access controls on the spreadsheetsCorrect
  2. BReplace the monthly report with a quarterly report
  3. CIncrease Region B managers' bonuses to motivate accuracy
  4. DAdd more charts to the board report

Explanation

The risk is manipulation or error because those rewarded on the data also prepare it without checks. Clear ownership, independent validation, reconciliation to the ledger and access controls tackle this directly. Less frequent reporting reduces timeliness, higher bonuses increase the incentive to manipulate, and charts do not affect reliability.

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