Strategic Information System - MYOB: Organizational Structure, System Acquisition Method, And Essay.

Part 1

This report deals with the strategic information system of an organization. In today’s world information technology takes an important role to manage many big projects related to human welfare and advancement of technology. This kind of evolution in the information technology brings a new era in the security and the structure of the information system. Public information is most important and should be given highest priority in order to maintain their security and reliability.

MYOB is an Australian organization which deals with various accounting software (Arvidsson, Holmström and Lyytinen 2014). It mainly helps to deal with the accounting related to the organizational as well as individual need. This organization is one of the biggest information technology companies in Australia.

In this report the organizational structure of MYOB is discussed along with the issues caused by the present organizational structure of the company. The outline about the suitable system accusation method and the system flowchart of the organization are drawn in order to find out the control problems regarding the present system structure. Development and adoption of the accounting software packages and the market details along with the leaders in this field are discussed in this report to find out the challenges and their possible solutions.

MYOB is one of the biggest organizations in accounting software and Information technology. It is an Australian company that helps to calculate tax and accounting for several services and business organizations (Boonstra 2013). Christopher Lee founded MYOB in the year 1980. This company deals with big amount of data of many organizations as well as individuals. The organizational structure of this company is well designed in order to maintain the proper functioning of the organization and it is shown below (Boulianne 2014 ).

BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Justin Milne	Independent Non-executive director, Chairman
Tim Reed	Executive director, Chief Executive officer
Andrew Stevens	Independent Non-Executive Director
Anne Ward	Independent Non-Executive Director
Craig Boyce	Non-Executive Director
Edward Han	Non-Executive Director
Fiona Pak-Poy	Independent Non-Executive Director
Executive Management
Tim Reed	Executive Director, Chief Executive Officer
Richard Moore	Chief Financial Officer
Andrew Birch	Chief Operating Officer
Helen Lea	Chief Employee Experience Officer
John Moss	Chief Strategy Officer
Luke Rattigan	General Manager, Clients and partners
Alla Keogh	General Manager, People and Performance
David Weickhardt	General Manager, Product
Carolyn Luey	General Manager, Enterprise Solutions & New Zealand
Hugh Fahy	General Manager, Engineering
Natalie Feehan	General manager , Marketing
Nick Burkett	General Manager, Operations and Service

There are many operational problems which can be caused due to the present organizational structure of the company (Galliers and Leidner 2014). Those are given below in details.

• There are many departments in an organization and the main strength to increase the efficiency of the organization depends upon the communication among this department. As there are many members in the board of directors and in the board of manager, there should be a flow of fast response in the boards. Sometimes taking a decision is harder due to the lack of communication among the directors and managers.
• Another cause of inefficiency comes due to several opinions and ideas of the directors and managers. These should work in a particular direction in order to solve an issue. Different opinions can distort the motion of a project many times. It is important to make the discussion regarding the solution in a particular direction.
• As the volume of the work and projects increases with the growth of the organization, it is natural to increase the number of employees in the organization. For this reason the organizational structure of the organization should be flexible. Sometimes the rigid organizational structure can lead to internal politics which is not good from the organizational point of view.
• The organizational structure should be designed in such a way that the new employees are motivated to work hard to fulfill their individual goal. The present organizational structure can be better by creating the post on the basis of the performances.
• Proper tutorials and plans should be created in order to manage the organizational structure from the point of view of mitigating and solving different problems.
• Sometimes errors may come in the activity of the organization that can lead to failure of projects and the management should be designed in such a way that can overcome these types of errors.

There are many methods that can be used in system acquisition. Commercial software, custom software and ERP are some of the operating software that can be used in order to maintain the system acquisition (Godfrey 2014). There are several system acquisition software and functions which operate fast and are designed with advanced algorithms. These kinds of software consist of several drivers and are designed with different modules that help to conduct different system acquisition methods. Custom software is also used to apply in different critical issues related to the system acquisition process (Gögüs and Özer 2014). The main application of the command driven or commercial software is critical from the learning point of view for the newcomers in the organization. It can be overcome by using the custom software. ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning is another tool that is used for advanced system acquisition method (Kelly 2016). The main advantage of this system is to maintain the organizational planning and management. ERP is used to deal with several activities like inventory management, materials management, marketing and sales and production planning (Kelly 2017). In an organization there are many departments like Human resource, customer services, accounting distribution, corporate performance, customer services, sales, procurement, production and production. The ERP model deals with these departments regarding the business intelligence, enterprise asset management and e-commerce (Laudon and Laudon 2016). The main advantage of using the ERP system is that it integrates the whole system and as a result the system production is more in terms of response time and quality. ERP also works as a real time operator and a common database which supports every application. From this discussion it is easy to understand that the ERP system is more advanced and suitable for the system acquisition method.

1. The current organizational structure

                       

Figure: Sale Flow Chart

(Source: Author made)

There are many cases of control problems in the organizations due to the use of system management methods (Machado 2016). These system requires business owners who takes an important role in the decision making process and the system needs proper guidance for those people. Sometimes the owners lack proper information in controlling these types of systems and it leads to internal control problems. In some cases the audit department also excuses to avoid ERP implementations (Pearlson Saunders and Galletta 2016). Also the new practitioners are from classical accounting background and they lack the technical knowledge about using the systems acquisitions like ERP. In some cases of external trades with the customers it also faces many control problems due to the lack of knowledge of those users. There are lack of in-house skills and knowledge and between the organization and the customers lead to many control problems. Frauds can be also caused for purchasing using corporate credit card for individual profit, collision and difference of opininion among the employees. The organizational data and security measures are also important to be maintained in order to overcome those risks.

Before using the new well developed system acquisition software and the accounting software there was a huge demand for this type of software and system. MYOB is itself a big organization which brings a revolution in this system advancement by utilizing many accounting software (Machado 2016). The main need of this software is that it can bring a new era to the organizational accounting response and the need of this software can create a large move to the advancement of the system. With the introduction of the cloud computing organizations are interested to utilize the powerful processing unit of the cloud in various functions of the organizations (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta 2016). In this way the information and the organizational operations are synchronized in order to provide a better service. Xero, MYOB and Quck Books have brought a lot of software that helps to find out the solution of the tasks related to the accounting of the organization. These kinds of software are also taking an important role in the business management (Rahman et al. 2015). The facilities provided by the software are increasingly making the service of this organization faster and as a result the organizations are using these kinds of software to attract more consumers. Easy invoicing, smart reports and mobile software accessibility are the important applications of such software.

2. Operational problems due to the present structure

MYOB is one of the biggest organizations in the market of accounting software and it is growing day by day (Sampaio and Bernardino 2016). This organization is producing accounting software and other system management products in a faster rate that is shown in the below figure.

                             

Figure 2: Production and share graph

(Source: Investors.myob.com.au 2017)

There are many competitors in this market in order to make the system acquisition software. The amount of need for the accounting software is increasing day by day. Leadership in the market is recognized by the largest production, profit and the introduction of new innovations by the organizations (Schiff and Szendi 2014). MYOB is undoubtedly one of the biggest organizations in this market and it generates a huge amount of accounting software. Xero and Quick books have also introduced a lot of accounting software in this market.

There are many advantages of using the accounting software in the organizations and with the use of these applications the system software is facing lots of challenges regarding the software (Wali, Sadq and Rasheed 2016). The issues and challenges regarding the accounting software are discussed below.

• The data security is an important issue in the organization that is important to be well maintained. There are many possibilities of hacking and theft of information in the accounting software. In many cases encryption is not done properly and the firewalls are also not acting properly in order to secure information.
• Sometimes reliability is an important issue for the organization point of view. The data which is used in the organization can be from wrong sources. The output of the software can contain wrong information.
• Sometimes the software which are used in the organization for accounting, are not updated. This can cause failure of some projects also.
• Sometimes the software is not properly synchronized with the organizational structure and the operations.

• The software should be fully upgraded.
• This software should be utilized in a well structured way so that it can be synchronized with the organizational structure.
• Software should be fully dedicated and should be active for whole day.
• The main feature of this software is that it provides real time response and in order to maintain these fast responses it should be maintained bug free.
• To maintain the security encryption and the firewall should be designed in a strong manner.

Conclusion:

From the above discussion it is conclude that the accounting software should be designed in such a way that the security is well maintained. The software companies should be more responsive to make the accounting software more advanced and dedicated. In order to do so encryption and firewalls are to be added to the security features of the software. MYOB is one of the biggest organizations which produces and utilizes the accounting software. The organizational structure of MYOB is discussed and it should be more responsive in order to maintain the organizational stability.

References:

Arvidsson, V., Holmström, J. and Lyytinen, K., 2014. Information systems use as strategy practice: A multi-dimensional view of strategic information system implementation and use. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 23(1), pp.45-61.

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.

Boulianne, E., 2014. Impact of accounting software utilization on students' knowledge acquisition: An important change in accounting education. Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, 10(1), pp.22-48.

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

Godfrey, D.E., 2014. Creating an Accounting Software Program: Small Business Focus.

Gögüs, C.G. and Özer, G., 2014. The roles of technology acceptance model antecedents and switching cost on accounting software use. Journal of Management Information and Decision Sciences, 17(1), p.1.

Investors.myob.com.au. (2017). MYOB | Investor Centre. [online] Available at: https://investors.myob.com.au/Investors/?page=share-price---graph [Accessed 16 Aug. 2017].

Kelly, M., 2016. Quickbooks Online: Accounting Software Small Business.

Kelly, M., 2017. Best Business Accounting: Quickbooks–51 Reasons Why.

Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016. Management information system. Pearson Education India.

Machado, M., 2016. Management accounting software and accounting practices: empirical study on SME enterprises. WSEAS Transactions on Business and Economics, (1), pp.94-103.

Pearlson, K.E., Saunders, C.S. and Galletta, D.F., 2016. Managing and Using Information Systems, Binder Ready Version: A Strategic Approach. John Wiley & Sons.

Rahman, M.M., Ahammed, M., Uddin, M., Rouf, M. and Uddin, M.M., 2015. Obstacles and implementation of accounting software system in Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs): Case of South Asian perspective.

Sampaio, D. and Bernardino, J., 2016. Open source accounting software for SMEs. International Journal of Business Information Systems, 23(3), pp.287-306.

Schiff, A. and Szendi, J., 2014. Helping small business entrepreneurs avoid critical mistakes in QuickBooks accounting software. The Entrepreneurial Executive, 19, p.169.

Wali, A.I., Sadq, Z.M. and Rasheed, J.S., 2016. The Role of Strategic Information System Characteristics on Customer Service Quality (An Empirical Study at Soran and Sardam Private Hospitals in Iraqi Kurdistan Region Erbil City). International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies (IJHCS)? ISSN 2356-5926, 3(2), pp.1778-1790.