Strategic Information System - AIS - ERP - Case Study Assessment Answer

Strategic Information System Assignment

Assignment Task

Our company, Bliss Software Systems is one of the top providers of ERP solutions. We provide cloud hosting services and SME solutions. We integrate ERP/AIS together as there is no basic difference in the two. AIS is the part of ERP, itself. We will study two separate companies in this paper and we will provide the solutions for two case studies. Our solutions will depend on the size of the firm, number of people working in it and the budget for the system. We hope to get desired support from the management and the employees of the company. We expect full cooperation from the top management and high degree of faith.

Executive Summary

ERP system is the reason for the origin of the accounting information systems (AISs). The new age AISs have proved best in solving the accounting and the central managerial issues. The system has helped in the high performance of the business. The management has great control over the AIS systems. The overall firm performance can be based on the different modules of ERP/AIS system. The accounting system shows a significant improvement after the implementation of the ERP system. AIS system is a backbone for the financial matters of the company. ERP can be described as the complex structure of the computer applications for integrating the processes and the functionality within an organization. The database of the company becomes centralized and in this way this solution provides the overall solution for the financial and management analysis. The AIS/ERP system is much needed in this era of globalization, for the tremendous growth of the company.

Overview of the Report

The ERP introduction, in addition to the AIS systems not only increases the efficiency but also impacts the various procedures like reporting, and account management. The traditional methods of accounting have been substituted with the new methods like “ABC method, financial ratio analysis and budgeting etc.”The companies have found less time consuming and more efficient ways of meeting the financial complications. AIS have become the power tool worldwide and the qualities it offers are- wider scope, accuracy in timing, high level of integration. It is used along with ERP system to make it more efficient. This report will discuss the need of implementation and software and other requirements of AIS/ERP system. We will be discussing the AIS/ERP models for the two companies separately.

Literature Review for Proof

Researchers like Gul and Mia(1993-1994), suggest that AIS should not only be used for fulfilling the traditional roles of the accounting system but they should have a broader scope. Salehi et al argue that the AIS system is good for the financial health of the company as it improves the accounting performance and takes it to a higher level. On the other hand researchers like Al-Eqab and Ismail, believe that the AIS/ERP managed systems are frequent in access and they are a magical tool in the hands of the managers, as through these systems the managers can easily grasp the market demands. The financial reports can now be prepared in less time and the reports thus generated are accurate. The AIS/ERP systems have made it possible to generate reports at weekly, monthly and quarterly level easily. (Daoud &Triki, 2013)

Factors which show the efficiency of the AIS/ERP implementation

1. Quality and flexibility of the system – The AIS/ERP system impacts the performance levels of an organization. The system must be flexible and should have efficiency. The system should have a good quality in terms of the user interface. The users should not feel any difficulty in understanding the system. The system should be compatible with the data changes on regular basis. The system should have space for the change in business models. The system should be flexible enough to handle the business model changes. The information should be safe and remain protected from any malicious use.
2. Cost-efficiency system – The given system should positively affect the business of the company. The system must reduce the overall costs of operation and increase the communication in between different departments. The manual work should be minimum and time required to complete a job must be reduced significantly. The successful ERP systems help to save the cost and time.
3. The quality of the output – ERP systems impact the performance through the kind of output they produce. They have a strategic planning and they sales growth if they are used efficiently. (Shkurti, Mbreshtani,& Maloku, n.d.)

Case Study 1

1. Business Process: Disk4U is a company dealing in the CDs and vinyl records. The company is a family based business and has merely four outlets in Sydney metropolis. Selling is done physically through the shop and orders are taken through mail or phone calls. A new channel has been opened through Ebay. The budget is $150,000.
2. Business Requirements:

1. Business Process Required: Disk4U is a small sized firm and have small infrastructure. Budget is also low. The need of the hour is an AIS/ERP system which is manageable, requires less time for implementation and less support. The support from the Information Technology personnel should be less. The company has a fixed budget for technology and support staff. The company should choose a company in spite of purchasing the whole system for ERP implementation. The company has many competitors and main aim is to cut costs and increase profitability.
2. Expected Outcomes for Fulfilling Business Needs: ERP system will change the way the company is dealing in business. There will be software for the order processing and IS software for keeping the records of the inventory of CDs and also for all the financial transactions. The AIS will also help to keep a centralized financial data for the four stores. There will be no need to physically sell the records as the whole business will be online and through ERP it will be centralized. Any customer can visit the site, know the CDs or records in store and purchase through online AIS. (JustFood, White Ppaers)
3. System Requirements: In order to meet our software and Information technology requirements we will consider robust ERP software of reliable company. The obvious option is NetSuite, which is a cloud management company. It will be good as it will keep the data safe on its servers and provide robust structuring. This company has a workflow management S/W called SuiteFlow, which will be used for our company processes. The S/W will handle tasks like “data entry, follow up tasks, sales processing, customer records, process activation and inactivation and service level queries handling.”
4. Reason for Selection of NetSuite Vendor: The company Disk4U is a small company with minimum resources and the budget is low. So, we cannot search for multiple options. We will aim at the best ERP/AIS software, which will solve our needs. The solution to our case is NetSuite because it provides various application modules like “finance & accounting, purchasing, payroll, order management, inventory” and management of four stores together. So, NetSuite will give the functionality of an e-commerce software with CRM. (Saran, 2016)

Case Study 2

1. Business Process: Sungate Foods in Victoria is rise producer, producing eighty tones per hour in peak seasons. The staff in the company is 100 employees in three warehousing units and a marketing office in Melbourne. Sungate buys from 350 farms and has domestic and international selling. Each entry is made multiple number of times and the present system is error prone. The staff for information system and formatting of reports is in large number. Inventory is always in high so that no risk is involved. The main problem is the huge staff for managing accounts and reports.
2. Business Requirements: The system we will choose for Sungate should be competent enough to provide real time information and should manage the reports well. The AIS/ERP systems are useful not only in present scenarios of the company but also in the future predictions. The researchers believe that the ERP systems are much in use for their unique features which include- flexibility, easy usage, high level of reliability, less time of response, understandability and integration. The AIS/ERP systems offer strategic management to the leaders. They can have easy operational budgets. The impact of these systems on the organizational performance is undoubtedly remarkable. ERP products with accounting software help the business grow leaps and bounds. The growth in business requires the additional headache for managing the finance and company functionality. The need for more complex reporting and automation of the accounts is answered by the AIS/ERP combination. Good accounting software offers “financial management, budgeting and planning.”(Finances online) The ERP/AIS package can be implemented for the other modules like supply chain and human resource management. (Finances Online, 2106)
3. System Requirements:

The accounts team of the company should be taken into confidence for the implementation of the new software. The staff should be asked for their suggestions and they must be convinced to work with our team or the team of Bliss Systems. Company’s IT department should also be given time to interact with our S/W professionals. So that they can also know what all is going on. There will be need of more robust hardware and reliable software. The staff at Sungate needs to be trained on given software. The Sungate and Bliss teams will work towards more data space, robust media storage and reliable back up procedures. The software suggested for Sungate are- Quickbooks, Peachtree and MYOB. These few software will fit in the budget of the company and will be easy to train the employees. We will be choosing one of these software- MYOB, QuickBooks or Peachtree. The choice will depend on company budget and the goals we can expect it to reach. For AIS software Bliss Software Systems can be your Value added reseller. We will set up the accounting software and train your employees. We will be giving annual maintenance and for that the charges will be reasonable.

1. Reason for choosing the System:
2. Overall Module Improvement: The ERP made data available at the centralized place and the data was available in one single screen. The job of the employees in accounting staff was very tedious and also error prone. The time taken was very much and a delay of a minute might cause disaster. The cost to maintain the employees and the records was very high. However, the use of ERP maintenance module along with AIS module showed that the clients were easy to manage and the employees in the accounting department had much lower pressure. The ERP/AIS integration promised more efficiency and fewer overloads. The benefits of using this system were- more data integration and enhancement in accountancy work, all time availability of financial and supporting non-financial information and the account department had more time to manage the other processes and to improve their system performance. The salaries of large number of employees were now used for the data and process efficiency.
3. Inventory Control: To improve the cost of surplus inventory and for cost issues Sungate needs a system which can keep a check on the unused or excess inventory. The cost to keep record of such inventory and to store the inventory should be minimized. Although the 350 clients from whom the rice is obtained have their own warehouses for storing yet the inventory needs to be stored at Sungate warehouses, when it is purchased by them. The storage of extra inventory costs more. Sometimes, the excess inventory remains on shelves of the warehouses for many months. With the use of ERP/AIS system, the inventory will be managed properly. Before buying the records will be centrally looked for and then an order will be placed for certain client. There will be specific item codes and the record updating will be automatically made in records. The fast moving inventory will be separated from the medium and slow moving inventory. Even the never moving inventory will be known and the item from that particular client can be discontinued. The ERP/AIS system will help in fast decision making and items can be categorized as per requirement in the market.
4. Overall Improvement: ERP/AIS integrated system had to change the manual work at Sungate to the fully automatic system. The new system has to be the best fit for the organization and its various modules. There will be surplus customization costs. ERP/AIS helped to minimize the workload of the accounts people. The role of AIS was significant and ERP integration helped to make the system viable and feasible.
5. Accountants New Roles: The ERP/AIS integration will provide the accountants power to decide, select and implementation of the system. ERP and AIS upgrades will provide the improvement in technical skills and they will better learn to work in teams. Less book keeping will give them break from monotonous job of filling the ledgers and they will attain more focus in the automatic management of the records. The traditional accountancy at Sungate will get a new makeover and analysis and audits can be done on monthly and annual basis in spite of quarterly basis. (Al-Muharfi, 2014)

Other Implementation Options which are Unique

ERP solutions at Bliss Software are specially for the SMEs(small to medium scale enterprises). We have a provision for implementation of the ERP system at a comparatively low cost than others. The total investment of the companies includes the software cost, hardware cost, training cost and cloud computing cot in case the company opts for the storage in the cloud server. Hosting reduces the overall implementation costs. We offer 99.99% of availability of resources needed for implementation. We have our own cloud computing infrastructure. The cloud hosting helps the companies by providing all the resources and data protection. We offer 24X7 data access and no charges for the data protection. Our data protection systems are robust. The company can access its applications and reports anytime.

Barriers in Implementation of ERP/AIS

There are below-mentioned barriers to the implementation of the ERP/AIS:

1. Lack of support from top management: Many times the management support, specially the top management support declines and the phase of the ERP is stopped in between the implementation process. Sometimes, the management of the company does not agree on price as they have less knowledge of the ERP resources and their implementation costs. We hope that the management at Sungate cooperates to its best possible levels with us.
2. Non-availability of the technical resources: At times, the company has less skilled resources and this may hinder the training of the employees on new system. The company people must have a technical background; else it may happen that the company installing the ERP S/W like Bliss Software is blamed. Sometimes, the employees feel exhausted during the training periods and they start condemning the new system. We hope Sungate will never pay attention to such employee issues.
3. Internal Management Mindset: The mindset of the management if Sungate and the employees will help in the successful implementation of the ERP/AIS system.
4. Business Process Reengineering: The implementation of ERP system will bring out a complete change in the working of the company. The processes and procedures will change. In order to meet up the demands of the new system the company must adopt a strategy of going with the flow. (Venkatraman &Fahd, 2016)

Conclusion

ERP systems in addition with AIS help to make the organization centralized and improve the working efficiency to remarkab

le levels. These systems are the need of every organization which wants to go ahead of their competitors and which want to have a consistent client base. ERP system help to convert the available data into informative form, so that it can be processed for future needs. The information storage in these systems is intelligently stored and is secure. The globalization trends need availability of the products with complete information and that too in very less time. An ERP system offers precise and timely data delivery. There are separate modules for inventory, human resources, product description and accounting. All these systems can be used together for making the company operations fast and accurate. The tracking of order to the dispatching of the order is all done automatically and all that is needed is hands on experience. Data is integrated at one place and can be accessed from anywhere. All these factors make the ERP/AIS, a huge success in the field of strategic management of the organizations. There are various models of ERP systems and one of them is implemented in a firm depending on the size, number of employees and span of operations.