Essay: Strategic Info Systems For Australian Market - Functions & Market Leaders.

Purposes and significance of the Accounting software

Describe about the Strategic Information Systems for Australian Market Signify.

The past researched conducted on the accounting software industry signify that the Australian market has developed numerous enterprises that offer employment in the software accounting domain. In the background of the existing subject, Arnold et al. (2013) asserted that besides the advancement and the progression in the technology, the software demands have increased with an emerging speed. The enterprise of every possible the sectors like IT, medical, finance, logistics, etc. the above industries have a high demand for the accounting software due to its high capability of managing high configured data of the companies and improvising the security measures. According to Boczko (2012), the accounting software is required for maintaining the financial records of the enterprises, which involves the aspects like raw materials, inventories, logistics left outs, perishable and non-perishable items, etc. It facilitates the management to handle huge base of financial data. These data offers the previous, present and future predictions that can be useful for the brand shortly. Thus, due to a high relevance of financial record management the accounting software has emerged. The current study attempts to evaluate the functions of the accounting software in the present organisations and its significance.

The accounting software has indifferent operational benefits besides the account information handling of the organisation. The accounting software accessible present has enormous aspects that are highly utilised to receive the systematic management software handling process for the organisation. The features of the accounts management software systems are detailed below:

Account and register handling

Guesalaga (2014) determined that the majority of the enterprises is initiating the external as well as the internal business transaction process. Therefore, high technical accounting software is required to mitigate the financial aspects. The software presents a systematic and clear the accounts that are more beneficial for the enterprises are to attain the depicted monetary success. The appropriate data storage and easy convenience are offered by effectual accounting software (Romney and Steinbart, 2008). The details concerning the organisational product lines are kept in the accounts. Hence, the security is also another significant feature of the accounting software.

Invoice Management:

In the background of the particular statement, Kay and Ovlia (2013) mentioned that the invoice management is a primary integral aspect of the accounting software, which helps the financial department with the billing process of each department and helps the products to progress under this system. The invoice management is comprised of the invoices of the procurement process and sales related information of the company (Protogeros et al. 2011). Based on which the expenditures are made by the enterprise on its several products and raw materials.

History of the Australian accounting software

Salary management

The payroll and accounting software helps a firm to keep track of the employee wages and compensation structure. In this context, Kay and Ovlia (2013) stated that compensation management system is an integral part of an organisation. It is a proven fact that the salary administration and payroll software help to keep the record of the alteration of the wage structure within a particular time span. On the other hand, lack of adequate accounting structure might create issues in the financial record of a firm. Thus, a potential accounting software package is required to keep records regarding the employee wages and other benefit options. Also, Protogeros et al. (2013) stated that a potential accounting structure follows a decentralised system, which helps the managers accessing the details for individual employees from any places. 

The development of accosting software has occurred in a gradual way. At the initial stage, the accounting software was not available, and the accounts were managed in the registers. On the other hand, with the technological advancements, the first accounting software was developed in the year 1995, which generated an extreme identity across the globe. In this regards, Boczko (2012) stated that the first accounting software was less user-friendly, and it used to take a huge time before a single processing of the payroll software. Eventually, large brands started researching on the same and the new concept of programming came into the scenario. The launching of IBM’s relational database created a mass opportunity for the accounting software developers to customise the applications. Eventually, managing accounting database has become an easy task for the entrepreneurs.

 The SAP module has come up with the finance module, which has enabled the worldwide organisations to store and access various data within the software package. The concept of SAP is widely accepted in the present technical aspects.  In the later phase, the Microsoft has invented excel sheets with high the accounting values and finance database in a systematic approach. However, the excel sheets had numerous problems due to which further researches were conducted to resolve the issues of the accounting software (Romney and Steinbart, 2008).

On the contrary, Zimmerman and Glavach (2011) stated that the traditional accounting software was easy to look and complex on the usability. Thus, simple GUI and usability features have been incorporated in the modern accounting packages to enhance the global user satisfaction. The author noted that Teleware Inc first resolved this issue. The current accounting software like Tally is considered useful in managing the complex accounts process in the global business scenario.

Current Market Leaders and market Share

The Australian software market is comprised of the leading giants like Xero, Intuit and MYOB. It has been observed the specific companies has managed to provide the all possible technical aspects regarding the accounting system. According to the opinion of Koumpis (2011), the rigorous competence between these leading firms brings more technological evolution and advancements while offering accounting software in the target marketplace. In this current scenario, it has been observed that Xero is one of the major players that holds 65% of the market share in Australia for accounting software.

On the other hand, the firm, Intuit grasps 20% of market share. The present report of Australian accounting software division reflects that Xero has emerged with a huge market share for having around 400,000 customers in the global context (Guesalaga, 2014). However, MYOB has managed to have a high turnover and profit ratio of $27 billion. Furthermore, the leading firms are now trying to implement a cloud-based system service to deliver most suitable and flexible software solutions to the target group of customers.

The three major players, facilitate the customers by providing an innovative software solution with various features and facilities. This initiative has helped the companies to uphold the sustainable position in the target market area. Considering the view of Boczko (2012), the other firms would take the competitive advantage of the market if the companies do not take the strategies to develop new product innovation. Adding to this, it has been speculated that the customers are getting highly benefitted due to the competition amongst the organisations. In the opinion of Kay and Ovlia (2013), the companies are also devoted to meet the requirements of the customers which is enhancing the competitive advantage of the organisations. Furthermore, it has been identified that the companies hire the highly qualified and skilled professionals for introducing unique and innovative product list (Romney and Steinbart, 2008). Hence, it could be inferred that the benefits of the accounting software companies are relatively extraordinary for making competitive advantage in the market of Australia.

The organisations are presently trying to develop a cloud-based services which would help to store and access data easily. But this system needs high-security concern, so that the hackers do not hack the data easily. In the opinion of Arnold et al. (2013), password protection I highly required for accessing the set of records.  Hence, security issues could be a major challenge in this condition.

The usage of accounting software is significant to the companies and the leading companies in this domain have to identify the requirements of the accounting software. Moreover, Guesalaga (2014) stated that the enterprises needs to represent the software that enables to provide a high data storage, data security, data backup facilities, data integrity, access and other necessary conveniences. Moreover, requirement analysis is essential for the organisations while selecting the accounting software.

References:

Arnold, J.T.R., Chapman, S.N., Clive, L.M. and Arnold, R.T.J. (2013) Introduction to materials manmagement. 7th edn. London, United Kingdom: Pearson Education.

Boczko, T. (2012) Introduction to accounting information systems Harlow, England: Financial Times Prentice Hall

Guesalaga, R. (2014) ‘Top management involvement with key accounts: The concept, its dimensions, and strategic outcomes’, Industrial Marketing Management, 43(7), pp. 1146–1156.

Kay, D. and Ovlia, A. (2013) Accounting information systems: The crossroads of accounting and IT. 2nd edn. Boston: Pearson College Div

Protogeros, N., Vontas, A., Chatzikostas, G. and Koumpis, A. (2011) ‘A software shell for environmental accounting’, Environmental Modelling & Software, 26(2), pp. 235–237.

Romney, M.B. and Steinbart, P.J.J. (2008) Accounting information systems (11th edition) 11th edn Indianapolis, IN, United States: Pearson Prentice Hall

Zimmerman, S., and Glavach, D. (2011) Cyber Forensics in the Cloud, The Newsletter for Information Assurance Technology Professionals, 4(1), pp. 4-7, 2011

Bibliography:

McKenzie, W. (2009) FT guide to using and interpreting company accounts (4th edition) (financial times series). 4th edn. Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall.
Grance, T., Chevalier, S., Kent. K. and Dang, H.,(2005). Guide to Computer and Network Data Analysis: Applying Forensic Techniques to Incident Response, NIST Special Publication 800-86, 2005 
Xiang, G.-F., Jin, H., Zou, D. Q. and Chen, X. G. (2012) ‘Virtualization-Based security monitoring’, Journal of Software, 23(8), pp. 2173–2187.