Hi5019 Strategic Information Systems: Bhp Assessment Answers

Answer:

Introduction:

The substance named BHP is framed from the joint effort between the BHP Limited and the BHP Billiton plc. It is termed as the Angle-Australian company, which is currently involved in the processes and operations of the mining industry. The main center of the organization is in Melbourne. Established in 1885, the organization turned into the biggest mining organization of the world by 2015. It additionally turned into the fourth biggest multinational organization working together in Australia.

The following report includes the performance in the business of the company and the various strategies undertaken for improvement. The report further includes the organizational structure, software uses and the vulnerabilities or problems associated with the business. Moreover, the discussion of the software accounting packages is also included in the report.

Discussion:

By the time of 2001, the two organizations, the Australian Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited (BHP) and Billiton plc, converged to shape the BHP Billiton. This merger company supposedly took all the shares of both the company and made their own market capitalization. According to the reports of the Australian market capitalization, the company has its name included in the list of the top companies involved in the processes and operations of the mining industry.

Part 1: Organizational structure

The organizational structure is subjected to changes as the company recently announced the operation of a new structure that will help in the growth and prosperity of the business model (CRONJE and VAN WYK 2017). The main involvement of the company is to get the geographical allocations and scalability.

Fig: Organizational structure of BHP Billiton

(Source: CRONJE and VAN WYK)

Operational problems:

Due to the presence of this organizational structure in the company, there is presence of many operating problems. The risks and the problems are due to the presence of such international scope of the made in the world.

The change in price is the first risk faced by the organization as the market is always subjected to changes and risks. Due to this, the price of the end products can vary leading to changes in the profit margin. If the cost of input goes well beyond the output value, the company can experience great loss.

In addition, the changes in the currency of the involved business are also subjected to changes and risks (Noble and Smith 2014). For example, a business organization taking inputs in some other currencies and selling in other is always at risk due to the fluctuations in the stock market.

Another risk or threats are the changes in the financial aspects of the market. The clients are the main businesses of the company or organization involved and the changes in the market capitalization or liquidity is a concerned risk, which serves as a great disadvantage for the involved business.

System acquisition method:

The BHP Billiton Company has announced the introduction of new technologies for doing business. The company has made informative announcements regarding the investment on new technologies in decision automation and information security. It has also announced the presence of emergence of digital innovation in the company (Noble and Smith 2014).

The software used in the BHP Billiton is the software defined networking (SDN) that helps in the automation of the management and the scalability of the operative processes. The software is commercial software solution that is used to address the operational needs of the company involved. The main features of this software solution is the acquisitions of better infrastructure related solution while scaling down the costs needed to implement it. The features of the software include programmable access, centrally managed and open standard solution.

Sales flowchart:

The company mainly does business by acquiring the sales of its products and listing the products for auctions.

Fig: Sales flowchart

(Source: Washbourne)

The company is involved in the criteria of reducing the cost and increasing the assets for more business acquisition. The organization additionally centers its interest in the economy, which involves ten operations and four products (Washbourne 2017).

Control problems:

Accounting for the increasing demands in the market, the businesses are focused on the adoption of more innovative technologies to consume more resources and produce many resources. This led to the adoption of new technologies that are making room for the unethical users to target these organizations.

Breaches:

The supply chain is the main portions in these companies where the presence of breaches is evident. Due to the adoption of new and innovative technologies, the mining industries are integrating automated services for product optimization (Lee et al. 2017). This leads to higher quotation approval and information. The unethical users target these sources, as they are full of information and thus cause the source for breaches in the system.

Control problems:

In addition, the presence of problems in the market capitalization is another problem associated with the mining industry, which leads to the disruption of operation in the system. Financial aspects are a strong portion of any company and the need for optimizing it is a necessity. The disruption in prices of input assets is a major risk because the profit margins increases or decreases depending on it. This may result in profit or loss depending on these factors, which is a matter of uncertainty. In addition, the financial aspects are also shaken up by the separation of companies. The separation of the sister companies leads to decreases in the share prices and thus cause various businesses to lose their clients. Moreover, the concerned organization is also associated with problems in taxes (Lee et al. 2017). As this is an important aspect in terms of government activities, actions can be undertaken against the company, which may include extreme actions. The concerned organization is accused of doing their operational activities from Singapore for lowering the taxes involved.

Frauds:

The BHP is also subjected to many fraudulent offers made by individuals with no linkage to the organization. These include the fraudulent emails and broker frauds. People often receive emails asking them to apply for a job offer in return for a small amount of money to which they abide.

Other frauds are the broker frauds where the shareholders are offered lucrative share investment offers to buy in the name of the organization.

Part 2: Accounting software packages:

The accounting software is a type of technology that is used to determine the transactions of the account concerned in billing tasks. It is also used to store the account related information relating to an account. The product can be obtained or can be an outsider based programming. The BHP Billiton also uses the XBRL accounting software for the recordings of the transactional processes and the budget analysis. The full name of this product is extensible Business Reporting Language (Doni, Gasperini and Pavone 2016). The software can be used by the companies involved in purchasing as well as the companies involved in selling. The main transactional processes and the budget analysis are recorded by the use of this software.

The primary attributes of the product are the straightforward entry in exchanging between clients. The main contents of the software is excel based which makes the reporting by various personnel easy (O'Riain, Curry and Harth 2012). The report supports the integration of Java, which is used to convert it into any other formats. The report also helps in solving the errors related in the transactions of the accounts. In addition, these reports can be constructed in readymade templates. The utilization of XBRL has helped the organization to take an interest during the time spent making IFRS monetary reports that had US SEC consistence (O'Riain, Curry and Harth 2012).

Market size:

The BHP Billiton is supposed to rank in the list of the top companies present in Australia. In the first half year of 2017, the company supposedly made 3.2 billion $ in the first half and 4.2 billion $ in the next half due to the price surge (Floris, Grant and Cutcher 2013). The shareholders of the company is associated with a 0.52$ price of each share. The price surge occurred due to the increased demands of the ore in China.

Fig: Market share of BHP Billiton

(Source: Floris, Grant and Cutcher)

Market leaders:

Although the company is included in the top list of the companies, it gets fierce competition in the market from its competitors. The Rio Tinto and the Glencore is also among threat list, which gives serious competition to the company. The requirements of operational qualities and infrastructure efficiencies are the most necessary things needed for thriving in the market for prosperity (Miller, Van Megen and Buys 2012). Different rivals in the market incorporate the Xstrata PLC, Anglo American plc, MMC Norilsk Nickel and numerous others.

Fig: Share price of BHP Billiton

(Source: Miller, Van Megen and Buys)

Gaps or challenges:

The main accounting software packages are used in mostly all companies or organizations to record the transactional aspects. The efficiency in accountancy aspects is the main advantages of using the software. However, the cost increase is a major disadvantage of this software. In addition, the system requirements and the internet access is the other aspects that are to be met before complying with the packages. Backing up of the system requires the presence of technical requirements and the cost for implementing this is high which accounts for the challenges in the software implementation. Moreover, the software is a complex one and the user interface knowledge is necessary for general accountants to do work. This increases the requirements of training which takes up resources from the company. Maintenance is another aspect, which is a hindrance as the operations of a day, is damaged due to the unavailability of devices.

This is the major disadvantage of the system and the company needs to address them in an efficient manner. Efficient personnel are needed to handle the accounting aspects pertaining to the use of software concerned.

Conclusion:

The report concludes by stating the presence of the company among the top lists of the companies in the world. The structure of the organization provides a framework to the organization but the presence of certain factors in the integration of this structure can help the company to thrive in growth and prosperity. The company involved also needs to analyze the software requirements and the possible risks it poses to the underlying architecture. This way, the risks will be mitigated and the process of ensuring longevity in the business involved will be maintained.

References:

Artho, C., Suzaki, K., Di Cosmo, R., Treinen, R. and Zacchiroli, S., 2012, June. Why do software packages conflict?. In Proceedings of the 9th IEEE Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories (pp. 141-150). IEEE Press.

Bagley, P.L., Dalton, D. and Ortegren, M., 2012. The factors that affect accountants' decisions to seek careers with big 4 versus non-big 4 accounting firms. Accounting Horizons, 26(2), pp.239-264.

Boulais, C.M., 2017. Mining Capitalism: The Relationship between Corporations and Their Critics by Stuart Kirsch. Anthropologica, 59(1), pp.172-173.

CRONJE, F. and VAN WYK, D.A.V.I.D., 2017. CHAPTER TWO CORPORATIONS, COMMUNITIES AND IMPACT: THE CASE OF COAL FREEK CRONJE AND DAVID VAN WYK. Revisiting Environmental and Natural Resource Questions in Sub-Saharan Africa, p.25.

Doni, F., Gasperini, A. and Pavone, P., 2016. Early adopters of integrated reporting: The case of the mining industry in South Africa. African Journal of Business Management, 10(9), p.187.

Floris, M., Grant, D. and Cutcher, L., 2013. Mining the discourse: Strategizing during BHP Billiton's attempted acquisition of Rio Tinto. Journal of Management Studies, 50(7), pp.1185-1215.

Friederich, M.C. and van Leeuwen, T., 2017. A review of the history of coal exploration, discovery and production in Indonesia: The interplay of legal framework, coal geology and exploration strategy. International Journal of Coal Geology.

Hall, J.A., 2012. Accounting information systems. Cengage Learning.

Kapranov, O., 2017. 6 Conceptual Metaphors Associated with Climate Change in Corporate Reports in the Fossil Fuels Market. The Role of Language in the Climate Change Debate, p.90.

Lee, K.C., Hsieh, C.H., Wei, L.J., Mao, C.H., Dai, J.H. and Kuang, Y.T., 2017. Sec-Buzzer: cyber security emerging topic mining with open threat intelligence retrieval and timeline event annotation. Soft Computing, 21(11), pp.2883-2896.

Miller, E., Van Megen, K. and Buys, L., 2012. Diversification for sustainable development in rural and regional Australia: How local community leaders conceptualise the impacts and opportunities from agriculture, tourism and mining. Rural Society, 22(1), pp.2-16.

Moorthy, M.K., Voon, O.O., Samsuri, C.A.S.B., Gopalan, M. and Yew, K.T., 2012. Application of information technology in management accounting decision making. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 2(3), p.1.

Noble, H. and Smith, J., 2014. Qualitative data analysis: a practical example. Evidence-based nursing, 17(1), pp.2-3.

O'Riain, S., Curry, E. and Harth, A., 2012. XBRL and open data for global financial ecosystems: A linked data approach. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 13(2), pp.141-162.