ABSTRACT
This article in the Federal Accountant was, unknowingly, to be Willard’s last written effort in conveying his principles of management accounting. In the article he first notes the increasing influence of the financial manager on top management. Then he analyzes the meaning of information and notes that factual information about past events is not useful by itself in making decisions unless projections about the future can be generated from the past data. He identifies the requisites of an information system and discusses the probable impact of the computer in supplying forecasted information about business trends and other relevant relationships. Willard concludes this article by warning financial executives that their effectiveness depends on their ability to provide top management with estimates of the future expressed in terms of an evaluation of the probabilities rather than in terms of facts about the past.
