Evolution of Strategic Information Systems

Question: Discuss about the Evolution of Strategic Information Systems. Answer: Introduction and overview of Accounting Software Industry: Australia has a huge and sound market for softwares for accounting. The increase in the use of technology in each and every area has made the industry of accounting software more in demand and more productive. All the small, large to medium companies use these accounting softwares to manage their accounts. The accounting softwares as become widely famous due to the ease and comfort provided by the accounting softwares. Compared to the manual management of accounts and registers, the software based accounting is quite easy and quick. The financial data of the company is highly secured and managed by the accounting softwares. The accounting softwares provides huge storage facilities (Deshmukh, 2006). These facilities help in comparing the past sales, the current scenario of the company and the future indications about where the company can lead. The accounting softwares not only store the data and manage the inventory, but can also be widely used for the sales forecasts and sales analy sis of the company. The accounting software is multipurpose and has numerous benefits. This has increased the significance and use of the accounting softwares in the Australian market (Gupta, 2010). Functions and importance of the Accounting softwares As discussed, the accounting software are multipurpose sifts wares and play many important roles for a single organization. There are some extremely beneficial uses and implementations of the accounting softwares which can be used in various manners (Akram, 2011). The most important usages of the accounting softwares are identified and mentioned below: Account management The main purpose for which the software is built is the account management. The account management is a huge and hectic task. Previously the companies used to manage the accounts by documenting the daily accounts in the registers and books. The management of accountings gregisters was such a cumbersome task as if the registers get lost, or get damaged or stolen the entire data of the company and the account information may get lost and the company then has to suffer a lot (Heidarkhani, 2013). Also the identification of the records stored in the manual register was more difficult from the huge registers. Thus the accounting software is revolutionary and provides ease and comfort in saving the data and managing the accounts. Thus the significance of the accounting softwares is high due to the quick access and huge storage the softwares provide. The accounts showcase the previous and current sales of the company, the details regarding the assets and the liabilities, the details regardin g the companies associated with the organization, the stakeholders etc. Thus account management is a prime and most important use of the Accounting softwares (Kulbir Baljeet, 2012). Invoice and Bill generation: Invoice and billing systems are extremely important for traders and purchasers. These are the proofs and evidences of the trade done. The invoices are extremely important as the evidences of the business done. This area stores and generates the bills for the things sold and purchased. It also stores the information regarding the buyer and the seller which would make it easy for the company to refer to its traders (Reddy, 2009). Thus this area plays a strong role in enhancing the use of the Accounting softwares. Pay and wages management The data regarding the salaries and pay of the employees is very important to maintain. The hard work and efforts of the employees are paid by the salaries thus it is very important to manage the pay and salary register properly. The very important function of the accounting softwares is to manage the pay and wages of the employees. It stores the details of the employees. The details of his/her shifts and work, also the information regarding any extra work done by the employees is stored and registered. The details regarding various appreciations, compensations, over time etc is stored in this pay and wages section (Shields, 2011). This software thus helps in paying fair wages to the employees and managing the records of the employee data. Sales forecast Sales forecast is not the need or requirement of the accounting software but it provides the information regarding the past, present and future of the company sales and thus it helps in forecasting the sales. Also the data regarding the employees can also be forecasted. The companies can identify the performances of the employees by identifying the performances of each employee (Goldberg, 2010). This helps in performance management also. This helps in forecast and analysis of the sales and the data. This would not only help in analyzing the previous data and records of the company and the forecasting the future directions but also would give a brief overview of the sales details of the company (Kabir, 2013). History of Australian accounting softwares Australia has developed a he number of accounting software companies nowadays but the scenarios previously were not the same. Te Australian history regarding the accounting softwares is quite revolutionary and constantly changing. This system started from little companies and organizations implementing the software based accounting and started taking steps toward the more useful and reliable development of accounting softwares. Considering the very ancient times when there was not software in the market, the Australian organizations used manual registers for storing and managing the data. This was done by preparing large registers for storing the information regarding the each sales transaction. This was the only way through which the companies used to store and manage the sales transactions (Shields, 2011). Gradually as per the need of accounting softwares, an electronic firm came up with the idea of accounting software. This accounting software was developed on the mainframe super computers which were huge computers used for calculation and storage of data. These computers had very less storage capacities and were immensely time consuming when coming to performing operations and loading the transactions. Thus this idea did kick start the process of accounting software development though it was not that effective and useful (Kabir, 2013). This era was developed a need of high speed and efficient accounting softwares. Due to this, emerged various programming languages. IT companies like IBM started developing programming languages to develop software. The concept of database and user interfaces developed. There were several companies which developed accounting softwares but did lack in proper GUI and efficiency. Soon the SAP came into existence which provided a better GUI and amazing database and storage facilities. This software is still used widely in accounting softwares. The revolutionary product in context to calculations and databases was excel sheets and these excel sheets provided a notable platform to store the records (Goldberg, 2010). This software was however not that efficient as desired but since the evolutions and changes made in the software and its features, it got better and is significantly used nowadays. It provides easy calculation formulas which helps in making the calculations easy and quicker. Also teleware was a software which became widely famous due o it is easy and effective GUI. This made the software very famous among small organizations and enterprises. The current market is extremely filled with effective and quicker softwares like Tally which provides amazing facilities and features (Shields, 2011). Current Market Leaders and market Share: The accounting software market of Australia is accommodated with few companies which hold much and most of the share of the accounting softwares. These companies are MYOB, Xero and Intuit. These companies occupy the huge market share of the accounting softwares in Australia. These companies compete with each other in the market for attaining higher market share and greater positioning (Deshmukh, 2006). For this purpose these companies come up with new and advanced features which are not developed and proposed by the other companies. Considering the market positioning, the company Xero occupies a share of 65%, Intuit has a share of 20%, while the other share is distributed among various other companies under the Australian market. Xero is a huge company having 400,000 customers. While the other companies like Xero has huge revenues and profit ratios of $27 billion. These companies develop new platforms for attracting more number of customers (Kabir, 2013). Competitive Advantage: Competitive advantage is the most important thing for the companies. The companies can get benefits out of the emerging and increasing competition in the market. The competitive advantage leads to the growth which the companies undergo while competing with the other companies in the same area or sector (Deshmukh, 2006). The companies need to come up with various technological advancements and features to sustain in the market and hold a strong position. The companies purposing to get more customers would constantly develop new strategies and techniques. Due to this the customers and the company both will get benefits. This would lead to growth of the company on regular basis. Challenges and Issues: The companies are looking forward to develop various services to make the accounting process more easy and flexible (Masum et al, 2013). For this purpose the companies have started developing cloud based services. The problem in cloud based services is the safety and security of data. These services used internet which is not probably a safe and secure medium for the softwares. If not secured properly, the important data of the companies can get hacked. This may lead to some unsafe and adverse conditions. Thus for developing a cloud based service platform, the companies must first develop the security element and assure the safety of the companys data (Deshmukh, 2006). Recommendations: The companies can identify the user requirements by surveys and questionnaires and can then develop the softwares excluding the developments done by the other companies. The companies must develop the strategies which are required by the users and are important for them (Ryan, 2012). This would lead to higher sales and distribution of the products. References: Deshmukh, A (2006), The Evolution of Accounting Software,Idea Group Inc., USA Goldberg, M (2010), The Benefits of Using Intuit QuickBooks Over paper Ledger, available at https://wwww.financialnewsline.com/Finance/the-benefits-of-using-intuit-quickbooks-over paper-ledger (viewed on November 10,2013). 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