Accounting Software of Amcor Limited-Free-Samples for Students

Question: Discuss about a Company in Australia that uses accounting software. Answer: Introduction Amcor Limited is a manufacturing company that deals in rigid plastic packaging and producing flexible. It is an Australian based company that deals in packaging. The products of Amcor are responsible for protecting beverages, food, medicines and personal care products. Its headquarters is in Victoria, Australia. In the year of 1860, this company was founded. That time it was known as Australian Paper Manufacturers. Later on it was named as Amcor in the year 1986. It is known to be the largest PET bottles producer in the world. The main focus of this report is to discuss about the implementation of accounting software in the Amcor Limited. It also describes the structure of the organization along with the competitive advantages of Amcor Limited. It also talks about the accounting software that this company uses for its operations and in order to improve its efficiency. There are several benefits and limitations present in the current structure and software of the organization. Accounting software can be used by this organization to carry out their job in an effective and efficient manner Current Organizational Structure Amcor is an Australian based manufacturing company (Amcor.com 2017). It has an organizational structure that is hierarchical in nature. The top level constitute of the managing director. Then the next level consists of the directors of several departments like finance, operations, marketing and human resource management. Then there is the level of managers of the various departments like marketing, personal manager, production team leaders and finance supervisors. The lowest level constitute of production team members, sales team and accounts assistants. The management team is very strong and its main focus is the innovation. Figure 1: Organizational Structure (Source: Lunenburg 2012) This is the general organizational structure of the company (Fan, Wong and Zhang, 2013). The detailed organizational structure is given as below. Figure 2: Organizational Structure (Source: Sapinsider.wispubs.com 2017) This diagram shows the overall hierarchical structure of the company. Its management team is very strong and it can be also shown in terms of hierarchy as given below. This type of structure is organized in nature and helps the organization to maintain a stable state. All the employees are aware of their roles and responsibilities (Sapinsider.wispubs.com 2017). They know whom to report in case of any emergency and important issue. There are fixed rules that are to be followed in the company. The goals of the company are clearly defined and it is very easy for Amcor to achieve its goals by following this structure because the tasks are clear while employees are executing it. Operational problems faced by Amcor due to its Structure There are several loopholes of having this organizational structure. This structure does not allow Amcor to work in a flexible manner (CorporateSite 2017). It also creates problem in planning for any long term goals because future is uncertain and this structure might not be profitable in the future. This structure also acts as a barrier in case of creativity Amcor targets to become the most innovative company in the world but this structure comes in its way. The roles of some department become very active while there are some departments that remain idle. This type of structure does not allow two way communications leading to communication gap (Tran and Tian 2013). This structure leads to a cause of low team spirit. In future this might lead to serious troubles affecting the morale of the employees. The operational problems which they face are the less visibility in the supply chain management of the company (Singh 2013). Another issue is the barrier in case of innovation. There are gap in the skills of the workers. They have to think about the environment too. Their main issue is to balance maintenance along with high productivity. System Acquisition Method of Amcor Limited Amcor Limited uses the Enterprise Resource Planning software. The several software used by this company are SAP ERP 6.0, SAP SCM 5.0 and SAP CRM 7.0. These solutions help the company to perform very well in the industry. The cost of processing sales order is reduced and the time to calculate the selling price is also less. The cash flow is increased. The potential of investment is increasing. The revenue of the company is increased sue to the acquisition of ERP. The number of stock outages is less because of reliable materials. Freight costs are reduced due to this acquisition. There is little functionality in SAP that is not present in other software. SAP uses (Oxygen 2017). This ERP is complimented by the use of Microsoft Office word. System Flowchart of the Sales Procedures The sales model in a manufacturing company is not so well developed and is inadequate in nature. The sales process begins with determining the needs, sales teams and actions to be taken. It starts with the customer (Gunasekaran and Spalanzani 2012). The customer first requests for an order. The manufacturer checks whether the products are available or are feasible for production and then sells or manufactures further products. This process is repetitive in nature and has no such issues. In the flow chart below we get to see that the customer first places the order and then the company approves or disapproves the order request based on certain conditions (Hosgor, 2015). Then if the order gets approved the manufacturer plays its role. After the products are ready it is sold to the customers. Figure 3: System Flowchart of the Sales Procedure (Source: Ingram et al. 2012) The above flow chart gives a clear idea about the sales procedure in Amcor Limited. Control Problems and Different Types of Frauds that are Possible in this System There are several problems associated with the present ERP system in the organization. First and foremost implementation of this type of software is highly expensive for the company. These types of systems are highly complex and are not under the total control of the organizations. Several numbers of experts are required in order to maintain the ERP system. Severe training is required for the purpose of handling this system. If the software is outdated then it can crash the entire system leading to loss of sensitive data. There is a chance of insufficient capability of reporting that can lead the company to an external reporting as well as loss of data control (Christauskas and Miseviciene 2012). Any kind of delay in update can lead to vulnerabilities in the software. In case of lack of security and compliance standards, this can lead to severe issue. There are also several kinds of frauds that can take place along with this system. There can be fictitious vendor that are created in the system. For these kinds of fictitious vendors there can be fictitious bank accounts too. The signatures in the invoice can also be false misguiding the company. The invoice distribution can be coded to a wrong account. There can be a lot of false or fake supplier master and bank accounts without any documentation. Development and Adoption of the Accounting Software Packages There are several accounting software that can be adopted like Xero, Myob and Quickbooks. There are several issues in using traditional software like the system is not always up to date. Data needs to be moved from one place to another and using software keeps the data only in one place. Access is only there in the hand of one person. It is expensive and slow at the same time. On the other hand these cloud accounting software are very useful for the business in terms of cost and effectiveness. It increases the efficiency of the system. The accounting software that is used by the Amcor Limited is called Reval (Reval 2017). This is Software as a service platform for the organization for the purpose of management of treasury and management of risk. This software helps to manage cash and liquidity and also understand the financial risk of a company. These are used by more than 650 companies around the world. It provides a superior customer experience increasing the return on investment o f the company. It provides a scalable solution. It also provides global support. Current Market Size The graph provided below give the current market size of Amcor Limited. It shows the share price for the last 1 year. It can be seen the performance has improved. The performance has been fluctuating but there was a tremendous improvement around July 2017 (Amcor.com 2017). Although the share price at present is less but the performance of the company is high. Figure 4: Market Size of Amcor Ltd. (Source: Amcor.com 2017) Leaders in the Market and Competitive Advantage The top leaders in this industry are Georgia Pacific, Silgan Holdings Inc. along with Amcor Limited. Silgan Holdings is one of the leading suppliers of rigid packaging of goods products. Its annual sales and revenue in the year 2016 was reported to be 3.6 billion dollars (Silganholdings.com 2017). This company is one of the main competitors of Amcor Limited. Georgia pacific on the other hand is an American company that is considered to be worlds largest manufacturer of paper. Amcor can be considered to be leader in this field with annual revenue of 9.5 billion dollars. The competitive advantage of this company is its innovation. Its main focus is always on customer satisfaction that has led to the tremendous growth of the company. Among the accounting software Reval is considered to be the market leader along with Xero, Myob and Quickbooks. Existing Challenges Encountered by Users of Accounting Software There are several challenges that are involved in using the accounting software. The most challenging issue is the lack of security because the data is present in the cloud and if it gets hacked then it will become accessible to anyone affecting many users. The reporting service facility of the system is very low. It also affects the efficiency of the system. Some of the accounting software systems are not up to date that affects the productivity of the organization. The software may not user friendly and is very difficult for all the employees of the company to use. It can also affect the accuracy of the system. Some of the systems have inefficient and insufficient features but are extremely expensive. These types of software do not have any bank reconciliation features (Christauskas and Miseviciene 2012). The customer relationship management feature is extremely poor. Sometimes the accounting software is not compatible with their system. Technical supports are not present for the e ntire time. The technical support that can be provided over the phone is very inconvenient. The access speed is also less sometimes. This affects the productivity of the system. The organization using such software suffers because their work has to come to a stop because of the problem of speed in the system. These are the disadvantages associated with using the accounting software. Recommendations Installation of proper security policy can resolve most of the issues mentioned above. A strong firewall can help the system to overcome most of the risks related to the security issue of the system. This will allow only authorized users to access the system while it will disallow unauthorized users. Network security software will help to protect the software from any type of misuse of the data. Financial models used by the Amcor Limited must use a flexible model for the proper efficiency of the system. A driver based solution will allow the use of software for any other purpose too. The adaptability of the system must be good in order to get accustomed to any type of work. Conclusion This report concludes that the accounting packages used by the Amcor Limited are based on cloud computing technology, rather Software as a Service. There are several challenges and benefits associated by the software used by the company. These challenges can be rectified by proper procedures and methods. This report also discusses about the factors behind the success of the company and its competitive advantages. This report also gives a brief outline about the organizational structure and its loopholes. 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