The success factor behind any prosperous business is the proper functioning of its every department maintaining a harmony among the operation of each other. A business has to maintain several departments to manage all the functional aspects that are necessary for its business processes. As a business grows in size, the need for more employees arises along with the need for more departments (Romney and Steinbert 2012). However, it becomes very expensive for an organisation to maintain a large employee count. Even if the organisation manages considerable employee strength, it is still difficult for managing all the business operations effectively with sheer manual workforce. That is why many organisations are presently changing their strategy of approach towards management of business aspects. Instead of recruiting a large amount of manual labour, they are migrating towards adopting various technologies that help the organisation to manage all the business operations efficiently and at a much lesser cost (Belfo and Trigo 2013).
Many technologies are in the market that is availed by organisations to perform their business operations depending on the type of business the organisation deals in. The report focuses specifically on the Accounting Software package and the effect of its implementation in any organisation. In support of the topic of the report, the adoption of Accounting Software by National Australia Bank is chosen as a case study that will provide necessary insight on the same (Toth 2012).
National Australia Bank (NAB) is one of the four largest finance-providing institutes that cater banking services for the business houses of Australia. The banking group provides specialised help to organisations dealing in healthcare, education, agribusiness, government and community banking. The bank has its headquarters in Melbourne, Australia and it is founded in October 1, 1981. The bank provides financial solutions to clients of Asia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States of America as well. The bank has total employee strength of more than 42,000 people (Nab.com.au 2017).
The figure below depicts the organisational framework of National Australia Bank where the top of the hierarchy is held by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the organisation. The position of CEO is currently occupied by Andrew Thorburn. The next level of the hierarchy is populated by Chief Customer Officers who supervises the customer service personnel entitled to deal with clients in business and private banking sectors, corporate and institutional banking sectors, and consumer banking and wealth management sectors (ASX ANNOUNCEMENT 2016). The structure of the organisation also comprises of Chief Operating Officer, Chief Technology and Operations Officer, Chief Risk Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief People Officer and Chief Executive Officer BNZ. These tope level executive personnel are entitled with supervising the various departments of the bank.
The organisation is facing no such operational problems at present that is caused due to its organisational framework. However, it has detected certain unfair activities that are being conducted by the financial advisory personnel at the lower end of the hierarchy. The bank initiated termination of employment to those proved guilty as a measure of risk management practise (Williams 2017). It is also discovered that some of the personnel occupying some of the essential posts in the organisational hierarchy were involved in other illegal activities as well. This can create serious trust issues in different levels in structure of the organisation and hamper the functionality of the same. Another operational issue that can be faced by the organisation due to its structure is that the employee strength of the banking group is around 42,000 at present, which is insufficient for the large amount of clients that the organisation has to handle. It is necessary for the institution to increase its employee strength to match the incrementing workload in future, else the bank can face loss in business (Financial Review 2017).
National Australia Bank is a finance solution-provider and hence it will require technologies that will help it in providing efficient finance related solutions to its clients as well as provide in-house aid in mitigating all the financial issues of the organisation. That is why an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software system will be an ideal choice for implementation within the system of the organisation (Madapusi and D’Souza 2012). This is because, the ERP system is an application suite provided by third-party service providers that is equipped with software and tools to perform all the desired operations within an organisation. For example, it will contain an accounting software package that will provide expert financial solutions to the clients of NAB as well as generate and store electronic reports on all the financial transaction processes that is taking place within the bank, which can be used by the employees of the organisation for future reference (Chen et al. 2012).
The figure provided below is the system flowchart for the sales procedure for National Australia Bank.
The process in the flowchart initiates with a client placing an order request to the bank. For example, a client places an order request for obtaining a personal loan from the bank. The sales team who is entitled to receive requests from customers forwards the request to the contracts department. The personnel in the contracts department forward the order request to the legal department for validation (Nab.com.au 2017). The legal personnel of the organisation authorises the order request as legitimate based on the standard terms of the bank, else dismisses the authorisation. On receiving validation from the legal department, the contracts department processes the order and moves it to the next phase where the order is executed and the loan is disbursed to the client. In another situation where the contracts department does not receive validation from the legal department, notifies the sales department about the dismissal of the order, which the sales department conveys to the client (Nab.com.au 2017).
The organisation is suffering from considerable control problem, which is evident from the various complaints of illegal activities and misconduct that has been lodged by many clients of NAB for past few years. The financial advisors of the institution are accused of misbehaving with the clients (aussieoutages.com 2017). Some of the financial advisory personnel within the organisation were also found practising fraud activities to achieve their objective and provide incorrect financial advice to many of NAB’s clients, which has resulted in huge financial damage to the clients’ business. Unable to control the fraud activities within the hierarchy of the organisation, the top authority of the bank have already sacked some of the accused personnel and withheld the employment of many more suspects (NewsComAu 2017).
To maintain a smooth workflow and provide excellent customer experience to its valued clients, National Australia Bank has collaborated with the top three accounting software service-provider company of Australia. These accounting-software package handlers are Xero, MYOB and Reckon. All the three accounting software services have the same functionality. The basic role of accounting software is to provide expert solutions related to finance and aid in any other possible methods related to the same. In this respect, the three accounting software implemented by NAB helps the organisation to provide its customers the opportunity to handle most of their operations electronically that is much more efficient and user-friendly than any manual intermediate agent (“Accounting package integration” 2017). The privilege behind collaborating with the top three accounting software companies of Australia is that the clients having account in any of the three accounting software package can enjoy the facility to view the account details of the bank account at NAB from any location and using any device with internet connection. The client will also be able to avail all the facilities offered by the bank remotely and receive direct feed about the various activities that is going on with the client’s bank account. The accounting software will also facilitate the client of NAB with weekly, monthly and yearly periodic reports and spreadsheets related to the client’s bank account that will help the client to stay informed about the status of the account (Eyers 2017). Besides the advantage, the accounting software implementation provides to the clients of NAB, the employees of the bank be also benefitted by the same in getting auto-generated reports regarding the financial processes that take place inside the institute, which helps them in future references. The accounting software system also provides the employees with efficient financial solutions that help them in performing their tasks more efficiently (Eyers 2017).
The figure shown below provides the list of the top ten organisations of Australia ranked according to the market cap as per the S&P/ASX Index done on March 1, 2017. The list shows that National Australia Bank has ranked fourth among the ten top organisations of Australia in regards of its market cap. The market cap achieved by National Bank of Australia is 85.6 billion dollars while the top listed Commonwealth Bank of Australia has achieved 141.9 billion dollars (Markets.ft.com 2017).
The graph provided below shows market statistics of National Australia Bank in comparison with Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Westpac Banking Corporation (WBC) and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANB). The graph shows the report that is collected within the monthly span of August to September 2017. It can be seen from the graph that the National Australia Bank (marked with Grey lines) is trying to keep a high profile among all the other three banking groups (Markets.ft.com 2017).
The figures 3 and 4 clearly show that the leaders dominating the market of Australia are the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Westpac Banking Corporation, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited and National Australia Bank respectively. All the organisations in the world of any size and competency have some strategies that help it to survive in the competition in the business market. A competitive strategy needs to be unique as much as possible that gives an organisation an edge against its competitors (Teeratansirikool et al. 2013). For example, the strategy adopted by Commonwealth Bank of Australia to achieve competitive advantage against other competitors is up gradation of its core banking system with robust technologies that will help the customers to avail its services with ease. The Westpac Banking Corporation strives to compete to be the best bank in the world and in its attempt to do so it has adopted certain strategies that will help it near its goal. WBC gives stress on providing an enhanced customer experience with best in class support from their personnel and upgrades the technologies on premises simultaneously to create a hybrid environment for facilitating the customers with the best possible banking options (Teeratansirikool et al. 2013). The National Bank of Australia has identified that the key factor behind providing best in class service to the customers is to gain loyalty from the employees of the organisation. To increase the loyalty of the workers the bank has decided to focus the workers in the front line and provide them with the appreciation they deserve for their performance. The workers should be provided with non-financial benefits periodically that will boost their morale and the bank will earn their loyalty. An organisation comprising of morally boosted and satisfied employees will most certainly provide the best possible service to its competitors that will give the desired competitive edge to the bank (Teeratansirikool et al. 2013).
The greatest challenge faced by the accounting software users is in terms of stability and complexity. Often the software provided by the service provider is found to be outdated and less user-friendly. In addition, there is security concerns related to using accounting software as well. Sometimes the accounting software fails to provide with the facilities that its service provider promise to provide (Teittinen, Pellinen and Jarvenpaa 2013)
It is suggested to avail the services from trusted accounting software service-providers who can provide latest and user-friendly software. It is also recommended to use proper network firewalls and security software to ensure the protection of the data used in accounting software.
Conclusion
The report concludes with the insight that accounting software implementation is necessary for all the organisations at present to improve the business prospects of the same. Although, there are some challenges that can be faced while implementing and using such software, yet its pros overshadow its cons
References
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aussieoutages.com. 2017. National Australia Bank (NAB) down? Current outages. [online] Available at: https://aussieoutages.com/status/national-australia-bank [Accessed 7 Sep. 2017].
Belfo, F. and Trigo, A., 2013. Accounting information systems: Tradition and future directions. Procedia Technology, 9, pp.536-546.
Chen, H.J., Yan Huang, S., Chiu, A.A. and Pai, F.C., 2012. The ERP system impact on the role of accountants. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 112(1), pp.83-101.
Eyers, J. 2017. NAB joins with Xero to speed up business loan approvals. [online] The Sydney Morning Herald. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/nab-joins-with-xero-to-speed-up-business-loan-approvals-20151017-gkbtjx.html [Accessed 7 Sep. 2017].
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Markets.ft.com. 2017. National Australia Bank Ltd, NAB:ASX summary – FT.com. [online] Available at: https://markets.ft.com/data/equities/tearsheet/summary?s=NAB:ASX [Accessed 7 Sep. 2017].
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NewsComAu. 2017. NAB outage strikes for the third time in a week. [online] Available at: https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/banking/nab-outage-strikes-again–leaving-customers-fuming/news-story/a310b0b146e55f56a53bf77a6051c247 [Accessed 7 Sep. 2017].
Romney, M.B. and Steinbart, P.J., 2012. Accounting information systems. Boston: Pearson.
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Teittinen, H., Pellinen, J. and Järvenpää, M., 2013. ERP in action—Challenges and benefits for management control in SME context. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 14(4), pp.278-296.
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Williams, A. 2017. Whistleblower’s NAB leak reveals persistent bad behaviour in financial planning, fuels royal commission calls. [online] The Sydney Morning Herald. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/whistleblowers-nab-leak-reveals-persistent-bad-behaviour-in-financial-planning-fuels-royal-commission-calls-20150217-13hv1f.html [Accessed 7 Sep. 2017].
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