The report introduces the concept of Accounting Software implementation to organisations in support of an analysis made on Macquarie Group, an Australian based organisation that has implemented Accounting Software package for maintaining its various financial and organisational aspects (Hall 2012). Accounting software is a tool or a service provided by third-party vendors to organisations of any scale and competency that serves the purpose of providing professional support in maintaining financial records electronically and providing expert solutions in financial matters as well.
Macquarie is a finance-providing organisation that provides its clients with financial help in terms of asset management, banking guidance, investment and such. The company’s foundation dates back to 1996 and its existing managing director (MD) as well as CEO is Nicholas Moore (Macquarie.com 2017).
The organisational framework of Macquarie is non-hierarchical and is divided into five distinct groups. The executive committee is at the heart of the hierarchy that comprises the MD, Deputy MD, Risk Management Head, Global Chief Operations officer and Chiefs of Macquarie’s main operating departments. Aside the operational divisions, four service divisions help in the support, infrastructure and framework that is needed by the operational divisions for business management. The four service groups include Financial Management, Risk Management, Corporate Operations, Legal and Governance Group (Macquarie.com 2017).
Figure 1: Corporate Framework of Macquarie Group
(Source: Macquarie.com 2017)
The organisational framework of Macquarie is the basis of the operational issues faced by the company. Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) sued Macquarie with compensation of 160,000 clients inclusive of old and new ones. The company is charged with misconduct and incorrect financial suggestions provided by its financial advisers that had caused great financial loss to the clients (Mossa and Silvapulle 2012). The accused utilised a cheat file known as the Penske File that provides answers to questions required in professional development exams. The personnel of Macquarie are also accused of marking people as sophisticated-wholesale investors deliberately for their money can be invested in risky products avoiding the security provided to retail investors (Li, Allan and Evans 2015). The non-hierarchical framework of the organisation makes the top management of the company dependent on the reports provided by the service departments whose feasibility is never checked. The organisational framework has prohibited the company from acquiring data about the activities of the financial advisors, which has led to such operational blunders (Li, Allan and Evans 2015).
Three software vendors provide service to Macquarie.
Macquarie has subscribed the services of Intralinks, which facilitates the organisation with collaboration and project management solutions (Www2.intralinks.com 2017).
The organisation has implemented Manage Engine for providing solutions to the IT department of the same (Manageengine.com 2017).
Synopsys is another optimal software-providing service recruited by Macquarie that takes care of the tools used by IT department of the same (Synopsys.com 2017).
Besides subscribing the services of three software vendors, Macquarie have also developed software on premises that will help the organisation in improving relationships with its customer. The bank has integrated a new data layer with the pre-implemented conventional legacy system of the company. Big data, machine learning interface and open source database are utilised to develop the data layer (ComputerWeekly 2017). The finance-providing firm is a completely digitised organisation besides its headquarters. The secret behind the success of a completely digitised bank is the enhanced customer experience that is achieved by providing all the facilities that the bank has to offer at the fingertips of the customer. So that a client while browsing the website of the bank can find the desired option just a click away. Thus, it is mandatory for the organisation to provide stress on improving the websites or web application that are used by its clients, so that they can provide an effective customer experience, which in turn will boost its business growth as well as reputation in the global market (ComputerWeekly 2017).
Figure 2 provided below shows the system flowchart for the sales procedure of Macquarie Group. The operation in the flowchart starts with the customer of the bank placing an order request; say for getting a credit card, at the dedicated website of Macquarie. The sales department views the order and forwards it to the contracts department for validation. The contracts department sends the order request to the legal department for approval. The legal personnel of the organisation check the order request for validity. In case the order request meets the requirements of the standard terms set by Macquarie, the legal department approves the order else it is disapproved. In case the legal department approves the order, the contracts department forwards the order to the supply department for processing. The supply facility makes necessary arrangements for the delivery of the order to the customer. In the other instance where the order fails to meet the standard terms of the organisation and the legal department disapproves the order, the contract department notifies the sales department and the order is not processed further. Necessary updates are provided to the customer regarding the failure of the order request. (Macquarie.com 2017).
Figure 2: Sales Procedure System Flowchart of Macquarie
(Source: Macquarie.com 2017)
The organisation has a non-hierarchical structure, which is the basis of creation of a barrier among various stages of the hierarchy of the organisation. Due to this framework of the organisation, the top management is unable to conduct an effective supervision on the various service departments of the same and hence the emergence of control problem is seen within the institution. The personnel within the organisation who are tasked with providing finance related advice to their customers are adopting unfair means to achieve their goal (Ting 2014). Their illegal activities within the organisation premises includes doing fraud with clients and using a certain file known as the Penske file for obtaining solutions of questions asked in developmental tests. Such fraud actions of the employees of Macquarie have cost the organisation 160,000 dollars for compensating their affected clients as per the order of ASIC (Ting 2014).
Xero is a third-party service provider of accounting software package that is based in Australia. Macquarie Group has incorporated the services of Xero in its organisation for availing the account and finance related help that the service can provide (Xero Accounting Software 2017). It acts as an intermediary agent in between the bank and its client and provides financial help to the clients on behalf of the organisation. The Xero app launched by Xero enables the clients of Macquarie to perform transactions with the bank as well as view past transaction reports from the same (Dimitriu and Matei 2014). Xero is responsible for providing real-time reports and online mini statements to the customers regarding the current-status of their accounts in the bank. Apart from providing automated financial advice to the clients of Macquarie, Xero is also entitled to perform certain in-house operations for the organisation. The operations include providing electronically generated reports of all the financial transactions that takes place within the organisation. Those stored reports are utilised by the employees of Macquarie for future reference. The system also helps the employees of the bank with various possible solutions related to finance and accounts (Mageto 2017).
The graph below depicts the latest market size of Macquarie Group in comparison to other three large Australian banks. The lines with grey colour are the graph of Macquarie, which proves that the bank is presently dominating the market in respect to its share price that is recorded within the period of March 2017 to August 2017. (Macquarie.com 2017).
Figure 3: Present Market Dimension of Macquarie Group
(Source: Macquarie.com 2017)
The dominant co-players of Macquarie Group in the market are the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Scentre Group (SCG) and the Westpac Banking Corporation (WBC). Every organisation has some special strategies that is undertaken to achieve competitive advantage in the market against other competitors. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia strives to provide an excellent customer experience to its clients while the Westpac Banking Corporation provides stress to achieve technical and operational marvel. The Macquarie Group has adopted the strategy to provide its customers with a large diversity of facilities that is offered by none other competitors. This strategy of the bank has provided it the required competitive advantage to stay ahead of its competitors in the market (Bhattacharya, Romani and Stern 2012).
The most challenging issues that are faced by the users of accounting software packages are in terms of outdated and less user-friendly software services that are provided by the service providers (Simkin, Norman and Rose 2014). Some of the accounting software lacks sophisticated security systems that concern its users about the protection of the data that are used while using such accounting software within an organisation (Teittinen, Pellinen and Jarvenpaa 2013). Some accounting software systems have poor quality of reporting service and is unable to help users to recollect their stored business information (Mutongi 2014).
To mitigate the issues in accounting software usage that is mentioned above, it is suggested to subscribe the services of those service providers of accounting software system who have legitimate trust certificate as well as can provide software that are user-friendly. Besides, the use of strong firewalls and sophisticated network security software within the system is also a viable option to consider.
Conclusion
The report concludes with the insight that accounting software is a necessity more than a mere requirement to every organisation at present irrespective of the issues that the organisation may face while and after implementation of the package within the same.
References
Bhattacharya, A., Romani, M. and Stern, N., 2012, May. Infrastructure for development: meeting the challenge. In Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, Londres. www. cccep. ac. uk/Publications/Policy/docs/PP-infrastructure-for-development-meeting-the-challenge. pdf. Consultado el (Vol. 15).
ComputerWeekly. 2017. Customer experience transformation at Macquarie bank brings legacy system retirement as a bonus. [online] Available at: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/450418866/Customer-experience-transformation-at-Macquarie-bank-brings-legacy-system-retirement-as-a-bonus [Accessed 17 Aug. 2017].
Dimitriu, O. and Matei, M., 2014. A new paradigm for accounting through cloud computing. Procedia Economics and Finance, 15, pp.840-846.
Hall, J.A., 2012. Accounting information systems. Cengage Learning.
Li, Y., Allan, N.D. and Evans, J.R., 2015. An analysis of Australian Banks’ Operational Risk Events using evolutionary techniques.
Macquarie.com. 2017. Macquarie Group. [online] Available at: https://www.macquarie.com/in/corporate [Accessed 17 Aug. 2017].
Mageto, J., 2017. Accounting Softwares in Australia. An Overview.
Manageengine.com. 2017. Desktop Management Software | Desktop Administration Software | Mobile Device Management (MDM) Software. [online] Available at: https://www.manageengine.com/products/desktop-central/index.html?gclid=CjwKCAjw_dTMBRBHEiwApIzn_F6__J9DI2QeeBUgBlGxbT1fsvGFhjpJHqTSwaJ7nOJhgC5Jqk5BMhoC83QQAvD_BwE [Accessed 17 Aug. 2017].
Moosa, I. and Silvapulle, P., 2012. An empirical analysis of the operational losses of Australian banks. Accounting & Finance, 52(1), pp.165-185.
Mutongi, B., 2014. An analysis of the effectiveness accounting information systems on decision making: a case of MMCZ.
Simkin, M.G., Norman, C.S. and Rose, J.M., 2014. Core concepts of accounting information systems. John Wiley & Sons.
Synopsys.com. 2017. Synopsys. [online] Available at: https://www.synopsys.com/ [Accessed 17 Aug. 2017].
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.
Ting, A., 2014. Now you see it now you don’t: Who is the taxpayer in the Macquarie Bank case. Austl. Tax F., 29, p.477.
Www2.intralinks.com. 2017. Securing Business Beyond Boundaries. [online] Available at: https://www2.intralinks.com/global/en?531406168&gclid=CjwKCAjw_dTMBRBHEiwApIzn_JQBUKJzOerEURndxw62_89V-Kr1aGf02GVz7MKZ3fgldxufruaKNxoCYsgQAvD_BwE [Accessed 17 Aug. 2017].
Xero Accounting Software. (2017). Online Accounting Software – Free Trial, Free Support | Xero. [online] Available at: https://www.xero.com/ [Accessed 6 Sep. 2017].
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