Accounting and Management Information Systems

Question: Discuss about the Accounting and Management Information Systems. Answer: Introduction: Australia is one of those countries which have an important research infrastructure, highly skilled workforce, experienced employees and technology loving customers(Pan Perera, 2012). The large size of the market, modern outlook, and various customers makes the country an ideal place to develop and examine new IT product. Accounting software is one of the important parts of the IT software industry. Accounting software is more often the solution of the cash flow problems (Britton et al., 2013). It is a very surprising thing these days that a successful business is not using accounting software. This is one of those major things that keeps an eye on the companys money, helps in taxation, and helps in managing the business the whole year. In the past ten years, the software market in Australia has changed significantly, especially in accounting software (Pan Perera, 2012). The distributorship has changed the whole picture. Mind Your Own Business is one of the most successful accounti ng software of the country. History of the company MYOB, Mind Your Own Business is the leading business management provider in Australia (Curtis, 2015). The company offers a range of products and services. It covers all the sectors related to accounting, CRM, job management, payroll, websites, and retail point of sale, professional tax solutions and more. Christopher Lee and a few Teleware developers together found this company in 1980. In 1999, it changed its name to MYOB Inc. after it entered into a contract with Data-Tech software. In 2004, the MYOB limited compound with Solution 6 holdings. In 2008, MYOB limited of Australia acquired Mac development team from the United States. Bain Capital bought MYOB in 2011 for an undisclosed amount. The merger helped Bain Capital a mainstream stake with MYBOB beside management that will be the shareholder in the company. The company offers a variety of products, which can be taken on subscription and it also supports the cloud based technology. Market size MYOB has more than 1.2 million happy customers across Australia and New Zealand. The company has more than forty thousand accountants, bookkeepers and other professional partners. In Australia every two of three businesses uses the MYOB accounting software (Curtis, 2015). According to the latest segment revenue performance of MYOB, the Small Medium Enterprise revenue of the company has gone up by fourteen percent ($205 million), and online users have also increased by forty six percent (Curtis, 2012). That is more than one and a half million. The company has also seen a growth in the practice solutions, which is twenty-five percent of the total revenue. MYOB Advanced and MYOB Exo, the newly launched licensed desktop software, which comes under the enterprise solutions has grown thirteen percent (Curtis, 2015). MYOB mainly helps to automate all the financial aspects of the business. The software built with GST and Vat ready and the latest version can also run on windows eight. The accounting software is broadly used in GST countries namely Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand and many more (Curtis, 2012). As a result, it is tested globally for the processing of GST. The enquiries raised by the users of MYBOB have been handled by a large group of technical team, which is always available. Competitive advantage over other softwares In the recent years, MYOB has become one of the biggest SME accounting software in Australia (Curtis, 2012). The newly launched MYOB Accounting essential is one of the best features that the software offers. It gives the company a competitive edge over other companies. This is probably the biggest threat to Xero in the country; as Xero has been in the market for quite some time. MYOB is popular for selling Account Right variety of mixed desktop software. Account Right has the capability to save the data to its online servers or in the desktop itself. The most amazing thing that the software offers is the complex inventory solutions, which most of the accounting software lacks or they have not yet added it to their software (Curtis, 2012). Growth of the software industry: Digital economy: The digital economy of Australia is growing day by day. It has contributed more than eighty billion of the GDP (Lignier Evans, 2012). The growth has stimulated the revolution of the business and economy. The industry believes that the growth of the cell phone access, analysis of data, could technology, mechanism to machine technologies in the companies has helped the software market to grow this much. Cloud: The Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) encourages little firms to take benefit of the aggressive market and adopt the cloud technology (Ionescu et al., 2013). The accounting software market has become widely competitive. The prices of the software have also become very affordable which has also made the market more competitive. The cloud technology offers the clients to access their information from any place and anytime. The software also provides the opportunity to connect to their clients and offer them to deliver the best product on time. Outsourcing: Software industry is becoming more and more competitive nowadays. Outsourcing has become one of the smartest and latest trends to grow the company by planning to expand and offer services around the world. It has become difficult for the accounting professionals to keep up with the expertise required by the clients. Strengths of the accounting software Easy to use: Online accounting software is designed in such a way that it can be used by everyone. Most of the software in the industry uses a dashboard as their opening screen, which displays all the significant information in an individual page. Automation: The accounting software has eliminated all the manual procedures to import the important bank statements from various online portals (Pan Perera, 2012). Instead, the bank feeds communicate directly to the accounting software and saves all the necessary data automatically. Chances of errors have been reduced with the introduction of automation. Real time management: Online accounting software can be submissive daily. It has the ability to capture and store all the important documents and transactions right on the time it is happening. It avoids cost infesting and offers a more profitable business. Real time advice: Most of the accounting software offer real time advice regarding taxation and more. It helps the business owners in decision making by advising important suggestions. Security: Accounting software uses a large database operated by the worldwide technology companies. It also uses secured servers, monitored 24*7 by the latest technologies. It is more reliable than the traditional desktop softwares. The software uses a server which can store a large number of data. Even if the software crashes the data remains unaffected. Accounting software creates data branches in different countries and over the cloud. This helps the company to keep the data safe anytime. References Britton, T., Jeng, L., Carver, G., Cheak, P., Katzenellenbogen, T. (2013). Reversible debugging software.Judge Bus. School, Univ. Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, Tech. Rep. Curtis, V., (2012). Making the Most of MYOB AccountRight. Woodslane Press. Curtis, V., (2015). MYOB Software for Dummies-Australia. John Wiley Sons. Ionescu, B., Ionescu, I., Tudoran, L., Bendovschi, A. (2013, June). Traditional accounting vs. Cloud accounting. InProceedings of the 8th International Conference Accounting And Management Information Systems, AMIS(pp. 106-125). Jones, D. Jones, M., (2016). 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