Literature Review

Describe about the Strategic Information System for Accounting System by Software.

The software coming under the Accounting Information System (AIS) refers to the software, which keeps evidence and analyzes all the accounting business proceedings. It can be purchased from an external company, can be developed internally by the industry using it or can be external software with some reforms by the organization. The packaged software in the present scenario also takes into account the decision making abilities and competitive edges of an organization which is useful for the management of the company along with providing the accounting statements and financial reports.

This paper justifies the importance of accounting software and packages used in Australia, and a literature review has been done on the background of the creation of such software and packages, the restrictions faced by them, the market in which it operates and the usage and challenges encountered by the consumers. An effort has been made to familiarize the Accounting software, which is used by all the organizations as a whole. A spotlight is given to the usage of accounting software in Australia. Optimum efforts are made to analyze the research process, especially in the Literature Review using organizational examples from papers and journal articles to carry out the disagreements provided in this paper.

The literature review in this paper is analyzed on the organizational research methods for finding out the development of accounting packages and software in Australia. The analysis wraps around the relevant topics like the history and development and also covers the present problems and usage of this software. The conclusion provides the suggestions and recommendations, which are necessary to improve the accounting software applications and improve the competitive edge of the organizations working with this software. 

The Literature Review on done of paper based on the historical growing up and increase in usage of accounting software. A proper methodology needs to be followed up to generate an intensive literature review on this topic.

There have been a lot of changes in the market demand for accounting software in Australia with its introduction in the market to the current market scenario. But the most important change in the software and information technology is the urge to understand the effects of IT silos. IT silos mean that every department of the same organization works freely from each other resulting to contradictory of work (Dunbar, Laing and Wynder 2016).

This problem was understood by the Australian companies with the introduction of Bespoke Accounting software in the market. This was the initial step towards the mechanization of organizations because the accounting requires a lot of computation of numbers and digits and chances of making mistakes are very high. With time, the organizations started creating their suitable software to reduce the cost of accounting, but the industries preferred to use software which is ideal for use for all the organizations in common because accounting undertakes a lot of general factors in the calculation (Boonstra 2013). This led to the development of uniformed accounting software like Tally etc. which were reliable and easy to use for the all the organizations in concern.

The demand for Bespoke software started falling because this software took a longer period to develop where as these packaged software like Tally could be operational within a week of purchase. This software needed minimum training thus reducing costs and also the workers could start working without delay leading to full computerization of the accounting functions. This software and packages were also very user efficient and could be used with ease. But with the growing business and new problems developing rapidly the organizations also started facing difficulties out of this software. The accounting department was associated with recording the transactions on a computer, but the problem they encountered was that all the data came from different departments having different patterns of evidence. There were even manual errors of duplication of information, which resulted in a heavy task to rectify all the information at the end of the year. A lot disagreement was created, and it needed a lengthy process to identify and rectify the problems. Without the process of a centralized system in the software, a lot of information acted as the basic problem of repetition of data (Apostolou et al. 2013).

The problem opened up the idea of a nucleus business idea which can be beneficial for the practicality of the business. This introduced a movement in the IT sector to eliminate the problem of variance. The movements were known as enterprise resource planning, enterprise application integration, and business process management. 

These new creations tried to introduce the important accounting mechanism into the core of the software. Thus accounting was made an important duty of the software like ERP and EAI. The analysts also tried to develop smaller packages of this software if the clients did not feel like using the full package system in the beginning. This mini-package will be helpful at a later stage if the organization wishes to purchase the full package because along with the accounting functions of the mini packs, the decision making, finance, etc. functions will just be an “add on” over the mini package reducing the cost of installation for the organization (Ward and Peppard 2016).

The work of ERP was to harmonize the singular use of the functions developed historically and that which had worked in silos. The software EAI jumped into helping out the industry for development of application widely. ERP took the help of the tools and equipment created in the early periods like for example UNIX, which provided exclusive independence and favorable circumstances to industry. A combined database of Oracle and other operating systems provided abilities to unify all the logics to eliminate the inequality, which was in consideration in finance divisions and accounts. This system was necessary for the functions of accounting. A centralized information base is beneficial for the organizations to take advantage of it. But still there remained a huge space and the EAI tried to establish a bridge between all the departments.

The business process management introduced in the current period acted as a practical approach which helped in reducing the gap which was in existence with the firm ideologies and goals of an organization and the software like ERP which were developed to support the business of a firm. The business process management introduced the idea of constant improvement through the process management and through other frameworks, which could also back the accounting mechanism. This was beneficial for the industries to create an acceptable model of evidence and renovate the accounting processes to adjust with the business objectives. The BPM model also faced problems in the primary stage but was able to recover and initiate the proceedings of bridging gaps, which still prevailed in the horizontal and cross-functional BPM remedies (Galliers and Leidner 2014).

The reintroduction of an effective organizational system against all the restrictions is awfully demanding. Prospering in enforcing a well established organizational system is very hard and has its competencies. The chances of prosperity in such undertakings are very less and require a vast investment. There are many circumstances where there have been failures to implement these efforts. Still, it is better than having an independent process for every organization. The backing of the top level management on an improved management reform with the support of project management will result in a noteworthy success, and the industries will harvest rich dividends and profits after a successful implementation. Thus the industries today have been able to conserve a lot of time and capital due to the centralization of constant mechanism and thus does not require any settlement.

According to Ismail, N.A. and King, M., (2014) Journal of Information Systems and Small Business,1 provides the information that accounting and finance mini ERP system have been one of the best popularly used information system for mechanization of business.

Conclusion

The purpose of this research is to expand the knowledge about the history, development challenges and competitive edges of accounting software in Australia and their implementation. The literature review gives us an in-depth knowledge about the introduction of accounting software, its utility in the organization and development of better processes with time. It is recommended that accounting software is an important aspect of an organization and most of the industries use this to perform their financial mechanism with ease. This software is useful in taking business decisions and implementing better policies for the improvement of the organization. The better the software, the better will be the efficiency taking into consideration the user friendliness and effectiveness of the software. Thus the mostly demanded software will be the one which is easier for the clients to use and is economical as well. Mini ERP is thus one of the most used and common software having a huge market size with the competitive edge of brand name and user friendliness of the product over the others.

Reference List

Apostolou, B., Dorminey, J.W., Hassell, J.M. and Watson, S.F., 2013. Accounting education literature review (2010–2012). Journal of Accounting Education, 31(2), pp.107-161.

Boonstra, A., 2013. How do top managers support strategic information system projects and why do they sometimes withhold this support?.International Journal of Project Management, 31(4), pp.498-512.

Dunbar, K., Laing, G. and Wynder, M., 2016. A Content Analysis of Accounting Job Advertisements: Skill Requirements for Graduates. The E-Journal of Business Education & Scholarship of Teaching, 10(1), p.58.

Galliers, R.D. and Leidner, D.E., 2014. Strategic information management: challenges and strategies in managing information systems. Routledge.

Haux, R., Winter, A., Ammenwerth, E. and Brigl, B., 2013. Strategic information management in hospitals: an introduction to hospital information systems. Springer Science & Business Media.

Ismail, N.A. and King, M., 2014. Factors influencing the alignment of accounting information systems in small and medium sized Malaysian manufacturing firms. Journal of Information Systems and Small Business,1(1-2), pp.1-20.

Majchrzak, A. and Malhotra, A., 2013. Towards an information systems perspective and research agenda on crowdsourcing for innovation. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 22(4), pp.257-268.

McManus, L., 2013. Customer accounting and marketing performance measures in the hotel industry: Evidence from Australia. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 33, pp.140-152.

Piepenburg, D., Archambault, P. and Joergensen, L.L., 2015. PANABIO-a strategic approach to large-scale data integration analysis and modelling by means of a geo-referenced information system for predicting the response of benthic biota to environmental change in Arctic seas.

Rassam, D.W., Peeters, L., Pickett, T., Jolly, I. and Holz, L., 2013. Accounting for surface–groundwater interactions and their uncertainty in river and groundwater models: A case study in the Namoi River, Australia.Environmental modelling & software, 50, pp.108-119.

Tucker, B.P. and Schaltegger, S., 2016. Comparing the research-practice gap in management accounting: A view from professional accounting bodies in Australia and Germany. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal,29(3), pp.362-400.

Ward, J. and Peppard, J., 2016. The Strategic Management of Information Systems: Building a Digital Strategy. John Wiley & Sons.