The core financial systems in any enterprise are Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable. This analysis looks at how the adoption of ERP systems included these accounting systems has continually progressed to the point of being the core of financial reporting and accounting. The adoption factors in ERP selection and use are discussed in this analysis as are the most critical factors from an integration standpoint.
Accounting Information Systems
The Influence of External Factors
On Routine ERP Usage
The most mission-critical accounting information systems coordinate Accounts Payable (AP) and Accounts Receivable (AR), in addition to orchestrating the many activities of an enterprise across its value chain. The long-term quality of information provided by any accounting information system is predicated on how well the procedures, processes and workflows have been designed to support the value chain structure over the long-term (Worwa, Stanik, 2010). Where Material Resourcing Planning (MRP) systems were predominantly used within the four walls of an enterprise and as a result became myopic and inward-centered over time, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have requires enterprises to concentrate on a much broader, diverse stakeholder base within and outside their immediate organizational boundaries (Ifinedo, 2011). With these facts in mind and the progression of enterprise systems from being internally-based to being more collaborative, a summary and critique of the article The Influence Of External Factors On Routine ERP Usage (Sternad, Gradisar, Bobek, 2011) is provided in this analysis.
Change Management Is The Most Critical Aspect of Enterprise Software
The common attributes that the highest-performing ERP systems share globally is that are uniquely aligned to the specific information needs, including the data and information latency requirements of the organizations they are designed to serve. Automating business processes and ensuring a higher level of acuity, accuracy and precision to data processing while increasing speed emerges as the highest priority and most valued attribute of the analysis completed in the study, The Influence Of External Factors On Routine ERP Usage (Sternad, Gradisar, Bobek, 2011). In order to validate or refute the hypotheses regarding the influence of external factors on routine ERP usage the researchers created a technological acceptance model (TAM) that was specifically designed to capture and quantify at a statistically significant level the impact of each external factor isolated for analysis in the methodology (Sternad, Gradisar, Bobek, 2011). The researchers contacted 161 ERP users within a national telecommunications companies who had been using an ERP system as part of their daily work activities since 1999. After having completed an initial review of organizational process characteristics, system technological characteristics, and personal characteristics including information literacy, the researchers were able to device their TAM Model Framework (Sternad, Gradisar, Bobek, 2011). The three core components of the TAM include ERP Usefulness, ERP Ease of Use and Attitudes to ERP systems (Sternad, Gradisar, Bobek, 2011). This framework provided the researchers with an opportunity to isolate, first-order, second-order and third-order effects based on the quality of data generated from the TAM Model and its measurement instrument.
The study concluded that the most critical external factors impacting the performance of an ERP system where those events, stakeholders, suppliers and partner organizations that could most contribute to greater accuracy of business process workflows (Sternad, Gradisar, Bobek, 2011). This study finding is consistent with previous studies that also illustrate the positive aspects of having an ERP system that is stakeholder-based and capable of scaling to support the value chain of an enterprise (Ifinedo, 2011). The finding of business process fit and the reliance on the alignment to business objectives to accelerate value chain performance also aligns with previous studies of how intelligence-based systems create time-to-market advantages by creating and sustaining a higher level of collaboration across an organization (Kahraman, Kaya, Cevikcan, 2011).
The Study's Limitations
For all the advantages of the study there are just as many shortcomings. First, there is no allowance for how ERP adoption varies across widely divergent cultures, in addition to managing the widely varying expectations regarding latency and information quality. Second, the study stops short of calculating an over value chain velocity figure, including the measurement of profitability and Return on Investment (ROI) over time. Other studies have attempted to show the correlation foo information quality, adoption and correspondingly higher levels of ROI over time (Worwa, Stanik, 2010).
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