Discuss about the Evaluation of Information Systems Investments.
In the era of technological business company needs to focus on making changes not only in terms of the technology but also in terms of organisational structure they have incorporated (Doar, 2011). This is due to the fact that there are many operational problems that are encountered by the firm due to structure they have incorporated. In order to do a better strategic management use of software can be beneficial. It not only helps in doing work smoothly but gives cost benefit to the firm. Systems like ERP helps in achieving goals and objectives. This report highlights the operational issues present in organisation due to its adopted structure. It also describes the system flowchart of the sales procedure as well as the control problem and frauds present in the system. In the last part it provides the gaps and challenges that are present in the accounting software packages.
This company follows a hierarchical structure where every member has a definite role to play at definite positions. According to Abramova, Pires and Bernardino, (2016) in management of information, organisational structure plays a very vital role. Atlassian Corporation is one of the biggest Australian based Software firm. It does its business in developing and creation of products for content managers, IT officials, Project managers as well as software developers. This organisation is having around 60000 clients with around 2300 employees. With such a large network of information sources, company has developed an MIS organisational structure that is more Hierarchical in shape having pyramidal structure. It is having four levels of information resources. The level of information always depends upon the organisational structure of the firm. The upper most level supports strategic planning and the policy making at the top management level. Second level of information resources helps in the decision making and tactical planning for management control. Below this is third level that helps in day to day operations and control of the organisation. The lowermost level includes information related with transactional processing. Since at various levels of organisations decision making is specific hence the information need at each level differs accordingly.
There are several operational problems arise due to present organisational structure inside the firm. These issues arise due to several structural defects or fault. All these problems are dangerous for the organisations and aims to destroy the efficiency in their work process.
Karunakaran, (2013) suggests that due to the complex organisational structure, many kinds of errors get generated in the work process. The long chain of operations in the system makes it more error prone. This might arise due to internal or external factors. It is not good for the organisation as it changes the actual information perceived by the data. Due to long and complex structure having many nodes present in the operational mechanism. Apart from this since data abstraction needs to be installed at every level of the organisation hence some kind of inefficiency arises. It is also seen that there is rigidness in the software system that are made for manipulating the data. This rigidness in the structure leads to some kind of data loss which arises because some sources are neglected while accumulating data. These sources could have data that provides current picture of the industry and business. If the MIS requires extra processing, the information will be lesser immediate and less valuable (Shivakumar, 2018).
Since the organisation is too complex hence it needs a proper maintenance from time to time. This cannot be done by the layman hence a skilled IT professional are required for this specific purpose only. The usage of the MIS system is often not easy hence it requires training at various levels of the organisation as per the requirement. These training will enhance the usability of the MIS. It often happens that the MIS that is used in Atlassian Corporation produces the information that is vague and is different from what he actual problem is. The system with the cited firm has to allow for revision in the output and inputs. This can be done by their IT staffs or by suppliers. Making changes is not easier to be done by the normal users.
There are several methods of system acquisition that can be implemented by Atlassian to manage their routines business activities and operations. As there are large numbers of activities that are going on in the firms at the single time hence it calls for the software system that is unique and dynamic. It must be in such a way that it should help in analysing current position of the company. Its uniqueness helps in making better strategies for the development and growth of the firm.
Commercial software is those which are available in market and are produced for selling services and products. This proprietary software is adopted by the firms for managing records appropriately. For example MS office, Office writer is one of the most commonly used commercial software.
Custom software is developed and built as per the requirement of the firm. It is generally designed as per the specific organisational work. It helps in reducing the external intrusion and changes can be made easily as per the changing requirement of the firm.
Enterprise resource planning or ERP is the type of the system that helps the firm in making of the plan for effective utilisation of resources. It is business process management software which permits the firm to utilise a system of integrated applications to control the business operations and activity effectively. ERP systems are capable of forecasting the demands of the company’s product which plays a crucial role in sustainable utilisation of resources. Along with this ERP system gives the feature like data integration to Atlassians as a large amount of data can be transferred from one place to another each day.
Atlassion, (2018) suggests that among all these kinds of system acquisition method Atlassians have adopted ERP software. This is due to the reason that ERP software is more effective in providing information regarding the utilisation of resources. It is to be noted that Atlassian utilises this because of its uniqueness and the support it provides to business and trade processes. It also helps them in handling of large number of client at once as all the resources can be aligned systematically. ERP systems help in making sure that they have a trade processes that are unique and helps company in smoothening their business operations. It smoothen the work process by streamlining the working process as well as bringing collaboration between different departments as the data gets stored into the centralised system. It also enhances mobility as well as reduces the cost of the operations.
According to Galliers and Leidner, (2014) system flowchart is a flowchart that is basically a physical design technique which indicates the activities and operations that would be performed in an information system. Apart from this flowchart indicates the process using which the cited firm does its business and sells its products and services in the global market. With the help of software application these system flowcharts assists in calculating the business operations as well as controlling sales. Session regarding training and development can be appropriately carried by initiating the organisational system flowchart. Apart from this innovative and appropriate accounting services can be given with the help of system flow chart.
The flowchart of the sales procedure is given in the picture provided below.
This helps the firm in smoothen the process and finding the way in which sales can be increased. The system flowchart is a part of sale that is initiated through the firm. By taking use of the system flowchart, the flaws can be easily found out hence enhancing the revenue and sales. This is done through giving accounting services to large numbers of consumers.
On the contrary Laudon and Laudon, (2016) believes that there are several types of controls that are present in the business hence equivalently large numbers of control problems are also present. Some of the familiar types of controls are Preventive control, Detective control and Corrective control. All these controls are present at different levels. In the operations it is seen that there are various types of risks associated namely Access, Frauds, Errors and Mischiefs. These problems arise even after the control shield is applied by Atalassian. This is due to the fact that external factors tend to find the weaknesses in the control system and attack it.
Apart from this other control problems through which Atlassian has to deal with are data collection, cyber-security. With the advancement in software especially related to cloud and activities of hackers, the data with the company is at risk. Safeguarding the data is very essential and hence different techniques needs to be used. Due to active hackers there is always a chance that system can get hacked and hence data could be leaked to unauthenticated persons. Hackers can stole many kinds of information related to business operations of the company (Gullkvist and Jokipii, 2013).
(Willcocks, 2013) states that due to many of the reasons, it is always possible that a data that is present with the company can get corrupted since sometimes hacker just tries to damage the data. This is hard to find and can lead to improper information to be obtained from the data for example financial statement fraud (Cassidy, 2016). Atlassian is at higher risk to face financial frauds. This could be dangerous for the profits and revenue of the firm. Apart from this due to the increased application complexity the firm is unable to reduce the application complexities within the firm.
Monk and Wagner, (2012) believes that Accounting software that is used by the firms generally falls under the category of accounting information system. It is widely used in the recording and processing the transaction among handle modules. Adding to this, it must be said that accounting software relies on complexity and cost. Adding to this accounting software enables a better decision making related to financial affairs of the company. It helps the management of expenses that is done on weekly basis. In the firms like Atlassian accounting software are used for earning more returns and revenues, improving productivity, enhancing the security of the financial data.
They have developed number of accounting software as per their own requirement as well as the demand of the consumers. Previously they were using Jira and Confluences software for themselves and their clients but recently they were rolled out by software named Xero. Jira was a highly useful as it helps in removing the bugs in the process and helps in eliminating the flaws in the project management. This was a tool that is made for the agile teams which provides higher flexibility to the clients to manage their projects (Kallunki, Laitinen and Silvola, 2011). It enables clients to scale the tools to their fast changing, dynamic work environment. On the other hand Xero’s culture promotes openness, flexibility and creativity. Their tool achieves the right balance between freedom of clients and standardisation.
Now they are taking use of all the three tools in collaboration so as to scale up their performance. Their major competitors in the market include Basecamp, Trello, Share Point, Google Docs and have captured the larger part of the market (Anderson, et al., 2011).
The cited firm has around 75000 clients in around 170 markets and nearly in all the industry. This is due to the innovations they have made in their products like software packages. Jira, Confluences and Xero help them in capturing a very large part of the market. All these tools are used by all their clients. Atlassian is one of the biggest partner companies of other organisations in Australia and many other countries (Romney and Steinbart, 2014). With the further development of all their products they are capable to reach to each and every corner of the globe. Jira’s market share in various countries has been highlighted in the image below.
(Gelinas, Dull and Wheeler, 2011) suggests that there are many competitors present in the market. Some of the bigger competitors in the market are Trello, Rally, Asana, Pivotal Tracker, Bugzilla, Basecamp, Redmine, VersionOne, TFS, FogBugz, GitHub Issues, Axosoft etc. Apart from this they are losing market to TYPO3, Google search Appliances, Adobe CQ, Siteimprove, Liferay, dotCMS etc. (Maditinos, Chatzoudes and Tsairidis, 2011). In the current market VersionOne is the market leader as it provides software platform that is designed specifically for unified Agile and DevOps.
Their product strategy distribution model along with their organisational culture gives them competitive advantage for their company. Their products are highly valuable for teams and start-up. Their products elements like easy to adopt, built for teams, usage, and adaptability and versatile in nature. Apart from this it is integrated and open. Traits of this model include simple and affordable, innovation driven, expensive and organic, data driven and scale oriented. All these are essential for working in the present global environment hence it attracts more numbers of clients. This gives them competitive advantage over their clients.
In the views of Hall, (2012) there are many current gaps and challenges that are encountered by the users of accounting software packages. All these needs to be properly address so as to ensure higher sale of the products. This is one of the biggest challenges for the company as the number of potential hackers is increasing on everyday basis. In such environment they need to make sure that the software packages that are being used by the users are highly safe (Rainer, et al., 2013). Since the cases of frauds have also increased hence it is also crucial that company maintains a standard that helps in ensuring that number of threats gets minimised. It is important for the firm to ensure data abstraction feature. For this, they need to have a good platform where the accessibility to the data is given to few stakeholders (Nazemi, et al., 2012). This will help the firm in increasing the safety of their clients and themselves also.
In the amount of risk that exists in the market, it is beneficial that company and their user’s starts taking use of the firewalls that are protected by the passwords or other authentication systems. Apart from this they also need to make sure that they have a better internal control over their ERP system so as to have protection against the risks that are generated in the business. They need to install a better network security infrastructure that helps in creating an infrastructure that is strong and gives their clients maximum benefits.
Conclusion
From the above based report it can be concluded that Organisational structure of Atlassian is hierarchical and the structure of the MIS that company takes into use is Pyramidal. Each layer of the pyramid supports the decision making of each of the each level of organisational structure. In all the system acquisition method ERP system is one of the most likely system acquisition models to be adopted. It follows a particular kind of system flowchart. Apart from this there are many control problems that exist in the system where many types of frauds can be possible. JIRA, Confluences and recently Xero have been one of the best accounting software packages. Its market size is very large and gives services in approx. 170 nations. There are several market leaders like VersionOne and TYP03. Several challenges are faced by the clients of this software and hence proper tool must be used for safeguarding them against these challenges.
References
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Anderson, M., Banker, R.D., Menon, N.M. and Romero, J.A., (2011) Implementing enterprise resource planning systems: organizational performance and the duration of the implementation. Information Technology and Management, 12(3), pp.197-212.
Atlassion, (2018) Atlassion empower all industries and teams [Online]. Available at: https://www.atlassian.com/customers?page=1&sortParam=date_created%20desc. [Accessed on 6th May 2018]
Cassidy, A., (2016) A practical guide to information systems strategic planning. CRC press.
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JIRA Software, (2018) JIRA software alternatives. [Online]. Available at: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/comparison. [Accessed on 6th May 2018].
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Karunakaran, S., (2013) Impact of cloud adoption on agile software development. In Software Engineering Frameworks for the Cloud Computing Paradigm (pp. 213-234). Springer, London.
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Monk, E. and Wagner, B., (2012) Concepts in enterprise resource planning. Cengage Learning.
Nazemi, E., Tarokh, M.J. and Djavanshir, G.R., (2012) ERP: a literature survey. The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, 61(9-12), pp.999-1018.
Rainer, R.K., Cegielski, C.G., Splettstoesser-Hogeterp, I. and Sanchez-Rodriguez, C., (2013) Introduction to information systems. John Wiley & Sons.
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