Ha2042 Accounting Information Systems-Enterprise Accounting Assessment Answers

In groups of three or four, you are required to conduct desk research on AIS/ERP Systems for your above client. Prepare a Business Report for the client detailing the following processes of selecting an AIS/ERP:
a) What a Baker does Discuss the business activities/processes of the organisation to show your understanding about the business. 
b) What processes are indispensable to be performed
c) What outcomes are required from these processes to achieve business objectives

a) What are some of the possible software features or functionalities that the firm should consider to achieve their IT investment objective
a) Visit the web sites of accounting software package vendors (e.g. SAP, MYOB, Xero etc.). You need to visit at least 3 (three) software vendors’ websites.
b) Which category of accounting software (low, medium or high-end/ERP) suitable for the firm? Give your justifications in detail. 

a) Compare and contrast the features/ functionalities of two accounting software packages offered by accounting software package vendors (e.g. SAP, MYOB, Xero etc.) within your selected category in question 4. 
c) Which one would be the most suitable vendor (and accounting software package) for the Bakery business and why.

B Bakery is a family owned company with approximately 70 workers and  income of  $ 13.5 million in the previous year. It is observed that the company contracted an accountant who maintained the company’s accounts along with delivering financial report each year. Considering this, the company observed they needed more data for maintaining the business productively (Apostolou et al. 2014). The report intends to describe the business activities of a company along with elaborating vital business processes. In addition, the paper will also explain software functionalities and features that can be used by the organization in attaining IT investment objective. Moreover, comparison of functionalities of two accounting software along with final vendor selection related recommendations will be offered to the bakery company.

2. Defining Business Processes

B Bakery is renowned as family owned business with approximately 70 workers that has attained increased profits in previous year. It is operating within same industry for more than 50 years and offers bread along with confectionary items to various successful organizations, including general stores and bar chains. The firm has encountered mixed fortunes over years after business expansion, however over the recent years it has encountered development in orders for new bakery items (Bai, Koveos and Liu 2016). In such case, B Bakery has recently lost certain records because of not being capable to deliver some of its items at a competitive cost. Despite the fact that the firm contracted an accountant who was keeping maintaining accounts for them and creating the financial report every year, the firm noticed that they required considerably more data to truly maintain their business proficiently. They felt that they expected show an interest in an accounting programming to take their business to the next level.

At B Bakery they cherish baking foods (Dameri, Garelli and Ricciardi 2013). They keep up the best of customary systems while grasping what current innovation and thinking brings success to the B Bakery. As an organization they are centered, prepared and energetic about their items. Utilizing these customary strategies, B Bakery’s master group of pastry specialists keeps on producing an excellent range of healthy breads, cakes and dessert shops. Here at B Bakery they are glad to be one of the renowned sweet shops full of management bread shops. Each bit of the company’s palatable craftsmanship is wonderfully made in a new style and exclusively customized to the customers’ needs (Delfmann et al. 2015). Admirers of culinary craftsmanship depict their plans as spectacular and delightfully life-changing. The most ideal approach to become more acquainted with the company is by using their items. B Bakery offers rich smooth cakes and desserts along with solid and tempting sandwiches and servings of mixed greens.

• B Bakery precisely picks all its scope of business success.
• Scrupulousness guarantees consistency of the idea and brings straightforwardness to the company’s customers. B Bakery’s designs and plans assume a key part in this procedure.
• B Bakery utilizes just best quality materials sourced from around the globe to meet the guidelines of a top notch cooking brand.

Lifestyle components and pictures in the stores emphasize on the B Bakery legacy:

• normal brickwork
• genuine oak wood planks
• hand completed, polished
• lacquered store furniture
• dark steel
• top notch picture outlines
• Comfortable furniture

3. Developing Business Requirements

3.1. Processes Indispensible to Perform

B Bakery is confectionary organization that supplies items to general stores and has diverse bar chains. The company has blended client base with established organizations as their client. They create bakery items and supplies them to several organizations, shops and so forth (Kebebe et al. 2015).  

A pastry shop business needs some generation unit, store network administration, transaction and advertising, records, fund and HR administration process. The store network administration will deal with purchasing crude material from different organizations, similar to poultry farm, natural product shop, flour provider and so on. At that point the bakery will deliver pastry shop item. At that point the stock and coordination’s administration should store those items and conveyance the requests to various shops, bars and so on. Records will deal with the accounting exercises, installment to providers, and installment from clients, and finance administration of the staffs and so on. The HR administration will deal with the usage, finance and so forth of the staffs (Ko?cielniak 2014).

Advertising will deal with advancement of the business. Each of the business forms are subject to each other. In the event that one procedure is influenced it will affect entire business process. For instance, if there is issue with supply creation that will influence transactions, at yearly records. Similarly, if the business loses a few records, at that point the business will have fewer deals that can affect the HR administration. In this manner for operating a bakery, it requires dealing with every business forms, the assets like preparing gear, cooks, culinary experts and so forth. B Bakery will take after something like what a typical baker does (Lambert 2015).

3.2. Outcomes Needed From Processes to Attain Business Objectives

Each procedure of a bakery business, as explained in the past segment, is critical and vital. Conversely, important business forms are, SCM, generation, HRM and records. However, accounts are most imperative for business and acts as fuel to entire business process (Last et al. 2014). The situation of B Bakery is that it has huge development in most recent couple of years. So, at present it is confronting a few troubles with accounts. They are committed accountant group with accounting experts that deals with accounting and so on for the business.

The business needs maintaining accounting data framework for business. They need to put resources into some accessible accounting programming for such reason. Consequently business prerequisites for B Bakery are,

• Improving their records.
• Incorporating business procedures and accounting framework for improving basic leadership (Li et al.2017).
• Putting resources into some accessible accounting programming and modifying it as per their business procedure.
• Usage of ERP along with AIS for business. ERP will facilitate coordinating business forms and will give a superior stage to AIS or accounting Information System.

The B Bakery business requires a few key yields from major business procedures to accomplish better execution of business in advertising. The primary thing requirements from business forms are data. All value-based and operational data are needed for handling and maintaining basic leadership. Accounting serves as procedure in a business that is associated with all different business process. Along these lines, for attaining data from records procedure, it will require data from business forms that are available within business. It maintains data like suppliers payables, stock in inventory, and sum of sales, profit margins, and raw materials costs, price, work charge and so forth (Liu and Vasarhelyi 2014). These are essential to setting focused cost of certain item. Several data those are required from the business forms are the payrolls of staffs of organization and so forth.

For gaining these data from business forms, it requires a mix of business forms along with frameworks utilized for business forms. Improved combination will ensure similarity and speedier business process. At last that might facilitate in gaining more income. The AIS executed over ERP or coordinated to ERP usage will give a structure to business which will enable business to gather, process, to oversee, store along with recovering financialand accounts data by business investigators, directors, accountants, charge advisors, examiners and so on (Lo and Cruz 2014).

Then again ERP might coordinate capacities and procedures of business. The incorporation of ERP and AIS might bring significant information from business data. AIS will give business certain anticipated data by breaking down chronicled data.

4. Determining System Requirements

The company will require ERP and AIS usage for business. Both executions are essential for accomplishing business targets of organization. The ERP programming will incorporate all business forms and there might be mutual and focal database for all business forms. The focal database will be additionally accessible to AIS procedure. Therefore AIS programming will approach data from whole business process along with development will be effective as well as more precise (Ancini, Vaassen and D Ameri 2014).

Any AIS gives three central capacities to the business procedure. Those are,

• Powerful and proficient information development through utilizing the information procured from various exchanges by the organization. For that capacity it should catch all those exchange sources, documentation and so on. All of these exchanges ought to be recorded to diaries. A diary sequentially records each value-based occasion identified with the organization. At that point it should exchange information from diary to records. In verification, it will sort information in view of various records.
• The AIS programming will help the administration in basic leadership by giving data from the databases and examination. There are basically two classifications of data to be imparted to administration, administrative reports and monetary articulations.
• The AIS programming will give needed internal control to guarantee unwavering quality of data being delivered by product, for guaranteeing effectiveness of business exercises and agreement to destinations of administration.
• There are different sub frameworks of AIS programming. Those are, money related cycle, utilization cycle, HR, income, creation along with general ledger and reporting cycle.

5. Software Selection

B Bakery is an owned family based firm based business. The company has employed around 70 workers. It has generated income $13.5 million in most recent year. Along these lines organization can be considered as medium to large scale organization. In this way, it will require some reasonable answer for their business. In view of the business investigation; there are three classes of accounting data framework programming for organizations in light of the span of business. Those are explained under:

5.1. Entry level solutions 

The section level accounting programming is appropriate for private companies and locally established organizations with more than one individuals. The product from class is fit for conveying essential budgetary accounting functionalities, survey, detailing and so on. AIS like QuickBooks, SAGE 50 US Edition, XERO, Fresh Books, and Wave and so on are cases of AIS programming having a place from this class (Mittelstädt et al. 2015).

5.2 Small to Medium scale Business Solutions 

This AIS programming are appropriate for small and medium scale organizations with five to 100 dynamic clients. The product can bolster a bigger number of functionalities than the past class. There is increasingly demanding transactional data support for revealing and so on. The product is profoundly versatile and related database will be powerful. A few examples are SAGE 100 ERP, EXACT Max, QuickBooks venture, CYMA, Microsoft Dynamics (GP, NAV, SP), SAP By Design and so on (Schmidt 2017).

5.3 Enterprise Accounting Software 

This AIS programming are appropriate for associations having more than 100 dynamic clients. These frameworks have strong capabilities and expanded functionalities. The examples of such programming are SAP, Oracle, and SAGE ERP X 3 and so on. In light of the business necessities and hierarchical points of interest of B Bakery, the suggestion is for choosing decent SMB arrangements (Schut et al. 2015).

6. Vendor Selection

6.1. Comparison of Functionalities of Two Accounting Software

Among the SMB accounting framework arrangement suppliers, the conspicuous merchants are SAGE 100 ERP, Microsoft Dynamics (GP, NAV, and SP), SAP By Design and so forth. Here is an explanation about of these three frameworks alongside accessible varieties.

6.1.1. SAGE 100 ERP 

SAGE 100 ERP has distinctive variety of AIS programming for SMBs. Those are SAGE 100 Advanced ERP, SAGE 100 Standard ERP and so forth. It can support around 50 dynamic clients at once for assorted scope of accounting and budgetary exercises, business knowledge, HR, web administrations, assembling and circulation, CRM administrations (Seethamraju 2015). The arrangements are profoundly adjustable in light of various business forms. The product is exceedingly modularized, steady and adaptable. It underpins for recording boundless authentic expenditure plans, production of different money related reports from accessible formats, making of BOM or Bill of Materials.

It requires Microsoft Windows condition and Microsoft SQL based backend database. It can be executed in view of customer server with online stage. There are seamless help for setting up and utilizing product. There is consistent combination among modules of software. It is simple to utilize and highly reasonable. There are vigorous highlights that will amplify the ROI of the business. The software gives simple to construct reports and moreover presentations. The Business insight module will help in better basic leadership. Clients can include client characterized fields, business rules and so forth to perform particular errands. In any case, customization like these is costly and now and again requires up gradation. Personalization of work processes in view of various clients is likewise possible (Tarhini, Ammar and Tarhini 2015).

6.1.2. Microsoft Dynamics 

Microsoft Dynamics additionally has varieties of AIS programming accessible for SMBs like B Bakery. The varieties are Microsoft Dynamics NAV, GP, SL and so forth. Among this Variations Microsoft Dynamics GP is a general accounting programming that offers functionalities for controlling assets, fund, basic leadership, HR and so forth. The ERP based AIS programming is anything but difficult to send and utilize. The interface is like Microsoft Office. There are exceptional help for tax and regularity, internet training and so forth (Turner and Weickgenannt 2016).

6.1.3. SAP Business by Design 

SAP Business by Design is a general accounting solution for small to medium scale organizations. This is for the most part reasonable for SMBs that are searching for SaaS based cloud accounting software. It gives a powerful arrangement of expert administrations alongside coordinated process for fund, CRM and so forth. The organizations having within light manufacturing industry is likewise appropriate for usage of this framework (Wibowo and Wang 2015). The focal points of this product are,

• The product is exceptionally versatile. Expansion of new clients and increment the measures of exchange are conceivable.
• There are support for international account and monetary transaction support.
• Multi-currency and multi-language support.
• The cost of possession is diminished. Management of the resources over the association is more controlled and proficient.
• Cloud based software and does not require any equipment foundation to be executed.
• There is fabricated is calamity recuperation framework.
• Upgraded support for security.

6.2. Vendor Selection Recommendations

B Bakery needs an AIS programming to contribute to the company’s business profitably. They need the software to work at an integrated stage associating the greater part of their business forms, fit for examination more business operational and value-based information to the basic leadership process (Last et al. 2014).

The recommendation is to utilize SAGE 100 ERP accounting programming for their business. There are various favorable circumstances of utilizing the same in their business procedure. The reason behind such recommendation is,

There is an incorporated CRM module with SAGE 100 ERP. It works like a CRM transaction tracker. It helps in enhancing product efficiency, ease of use, maintenance, joining, reporting and so on. Joint effort with web-based social networking helps in conveying better CRM encounter. The CRM coordinated effort module offers support like trade of information among client. These functionalities won't just help in conveying better client relationship administrations; rather it will likewise help in building better workforce, more coordinated effort among the clients and staffs in the association (Schut et al. 2015). Organization culture will be enhanced alongside execution of the business procedure.

Versatile business is turning into a pattern quickly. It is probably going to develop in coming years. Organizations are intrigued and moving towards it. There is committed versatile transactions module in the SAGE ERP 100 programming that helps the directors all together in preparing, installment gathering and so on. These data can be added to the genuine ERP framework whenever:

• The organization will have the capacity to procure more income and advantages on the off chance that they use the forces of the accounting programming (Ancini, Vaassen and D Ameri 2014).
• Accepting ROI or Return on Investment will be speedier and moved forward.
• Getting request and finding potential client will help in extension of the client base. Development of client base means there will be more business and chances for gaining more incomes.
• Management and satisfaction of requests will be simpler and productive.
• There are a few value included features accessible in the software. The business can essentially add it to their AIS usage and can offer with several advantages.
• Overall the business procedure will be incorporated, disentangled, vigorous, productive and adaptable.

7. Conclusion

The report intended to describe the business activities of a company along with elaborating vital business processes. In addition, the paper also explained software functionalities and features that can be used by the organization in attaining objective of IT investment. It was gathered from the report that B Bakery needs an AIS programming to contribute to business success. They need the product to break away at an incorporated stage associating the greater part of their business forms, fit for examination more business operational and value-based information to the basic leadership process. The suggestion is to utilize SAGE 100 ERP accounting programming for their business. There are various favorable circumstances of utilizing the same in their business procedure.

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