留学生中小型企业ERP系统方面留学作业

 

Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP) is a systematical computer  product using for daily business running and decision making progress in a company. It is involving in many areas such as costs control, day to day operation, data collection, production and sales, company personnel and customer relationship. ERP system is used to reduce the operational time and gather the accurate information for the company. By using ERP system, a company can shorten production cycle and increases demands through the successful management and organisation. What's more, it is also a excellent IT tool for adopting organisation changes and re-engineering. After implemented ERP system, the company can control their inventory levels and increase products or services quality (Drury, 1996; Siriginidi, 2000b; Nicolaou, 2003). In certain level, some financial or IT problems such as "year 2000", functional operations and processes enforce the company to use ERP system especially under the technology time (Gupta, 2000; Scott and Kaindl, 2000). Transaction is a linking part of internal business process in a company, so it is another benifits for using ERP system (Gupta, 2000). It is means that, in an ES environment, business processes are integrated and automated; data is shared across departments including real-time information (Nah et al., 2001; Themistocleous et al., 2001). Therefore, fully used ERP system is much better than other traditional system such as stock control, manufacturing resource planning (MRP) and logistics (Francalanci, 2001). 

 

ERP systems can be described as a memo which provides a historical views of business from a single information and IT bases (Bancroft et al., 1998; Klaus et al., 2000; Scapens et al., 1998). It is a process-driven module to complete business processes and represent best business practice in the industry (Robinson and Wilson, 2001). By using Internet as a linking bridge, ERP can connect a close relationship between customer and supplier for the company. 

 

The benefit of using ERP is that it gathers enough information and enhance an organizational competitiveness. To take advantage of the competitive capabilities of ERP systems, managers and employees should understand the basic knowledges of ERP so that it can be used to its fullest Potential. It is necessary for a company to implement the ERP system. Moreover, the system should be introduced within employees according to the business culture through the use of training programs and team building efforts.

 

The benefits of ERP includes the efficiency and effectiveness in business processes within different management levels (Hayes et al., 2001; Shang and Seddon, 2002; Spathis and Constantinides, 2004). ERP system is good not only for academic use but also in practice. Shang and Seddon (2002) pointed out that organization can gain by using ERP system with five dimensions: operational, managerial, strategic, IT infrastructure and organisational. Although ERP benefits have been examined in the past, their direct impact on accounting practice has not yet been explicitly examined. Nicolaou (1999) argued that the heart of each ERP is the accounting module, typically incorporating applications involving the general ledger, accounts receivable/payable, the fixed asset register, cash management, cost control and budgeting. The main advantage of ERP system is that it offers companies the ability to improve business processes and information by integrating all functional areas. Therefore, both financial and non-financial data is processed and used for decision-making purposes. Booth et al. (2000) offer evidence showing that ERP have proved more effective in transaction processing and less effective in reporting and decision support. Spathis and Constantinides (2002, 2004) said that the adoption of ERP did not have a strong impact on existing accounting practices in their study. After the test, the most highly-rated perceived benefits achieved following ERP implementation involve “increased flexibility in information generation”, “increased integration of applications”, “improved quality of reports”, “reduction of time for issuing of reports”, and “improved decisions based on timely and reliable accounting information”. This clearly suggests that ERP have an important if not a decisive impact on accounting information and practice. The benefit of accounting information and practice for ERP is not sure. The reason for choosing ERP system is mainly because “increased demand for real-time information”, “information for decision-making” and “integration of applications”. It is also show that almost half (41 percent) user want to reduce their costs and 34 percent as a means of increasing sales. Stefanou (2002) also reported that accounting information and reporting ability are not the advantages for ERP. Moreover, the argument that accounting systems are difficult to change for a number of reasons, including human and organizational parameters (Granlund, 2001; Lang et al., 2001), should also be taken into account. It is believed that, ERP system require a re-organization of business processes and organizational structure but most importantly a change of management style and culture (Wood and Caldas, 2001). 

 

ERP system reduce the personal such as accountants. It reduces scope for human labours and control the automated monitoring of activity. It is argued (Scapens et al., 1998, 2003) that keeping the use of technology is critical to increased opportunities for accountants to optimize performance and expand services. Caglio (2003, p. 145) focus on the importance of the role of the management accountants, which means dealing “less with traditional accounting activities, devoting more time advising and supporting line people as internal consultants whilst previously having acted as independent monitors and controllers of the operating activities”. Graunland and Malami (2002) show that the advantage of ERP for accounting is that it gives accountants more time to involve into business support. Scapens and Jazayeri (2003) conclude that the work of management accountants has been changed from traditional accounting activities to a more interpretative role. The implementation of ERP system results in lose of control over the design of accounting systems and lose of the procedures for the collection and provision of information. ERP helps them a lot in day to day business running. However, ERP still has the drawbacks. For example, the interviewee was not sure at the beginning whether the problems that arise are related to the system itself or to those who are using the system (technical or organizational problems), and how his views start to change as he develops his understanding of ERP. So this time the company needs the employees have the knowledges and skills of ERP system to maintain ERP in operation. This may cause the increase of cost for business operating. For example: if we look to top management we can find how the owner was interested in having the system up and running both for operational as well as status symbolic reasons. A number of accountants commented on top management concerns for not letting the system fail in the company. If, however, the case was different and management decides to ignore ERP, then the above network, where accountants were presenting themselves as experts in deriving benefit from these systems, can hardly be built. It means that company may need to spend money in training employees or helping them to adapt the changes. Therefore, ERP may cost more than the company got and so that the company should consider this before adapt ERP system. 

 

The organisation size has an impact on the decision to adopt ERP. The following points shows the difference between small company and lager company. Adoption of ERP systems by large companies is motivated more by strategic needs while smaller companies consider more about short term running. Small companies adopt business processes within ERP systems more than large companies. Smaller companies put more emphasis on implementing the entire system or several major modules at the same time.  Large companies report greater benefts in the fnancial areas, while small companies report more benefits from their ERP implementations in manufacturing and logistics. So different size of companies should consider different parts of adopting ERP system.

 

To sum up, Fahy and Lynch (1999) implies that ERP system is good for data gathering but that the system has the drawback on the more strategic decision making process in the organisations. Booth et al. (2000) share the similar idea.  It can be concluded that ERP systems seem to be useful for transaction processing while they are less suited for reporting and decision support in general. It is confirmed that ERP systems are powerful tools with regard to transaction processing and integration of the organisation, as data collection can be considered a representor for transaction processing. However, it also shows that there was no significant tendency towards a higher adoption of modern management accounting practices among ERP adopters than among non-adopters. This indicates that ERP systems do not seem to enable changes in management accounting practices. #p#分页标题#e#

 

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References:
 

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