[推荐]商务英语论文-The Impact of Enterprise Resource Planning

accounting knowledge in line managers, the production of more forward looking information, and a wider role for management accountants.  More specifically, Scapens and Jazayeri (2003, p. 224) state that the move from record-keeper to internal consultant requires management accountants to acquire new skills. Rather than information reporters, management accountants need to be sales persons and change agents. In their view management accountants need to sell ideas for accomplishing strategy with information. Scapens and Jazayeri (2003, p. 226) were not convinced that ERP systems drive the change in management accounting. Overall their findings were unclear in suggesting causes of the changes to management accounting.     Dechow and Mouritsen (2005) studied two Danish organizations to understand the impact of ERP systems on integration and control. They found that ERP systems “are highly involved in transforming and establishing management control agendas through concerns for integration.” (pp. 724-725).  In particular, Dechow and Mouritsen concluded that integration is not a solution but rather a means by which to problematize through the process. They noted that this represented a way of transporting information across localities in such a way that suited the needs and requirements of different parties and different times. 2.4 Summary of findings from prior literature    Overall the findings from prior literature on the impact of ERP systems on management accountants do not completely agree that ERP systems will change the work of management accountants in particular ways. Nevertheless the prior literature suggests that management accountants will be less likely to do routine tasks and more likely to be involved with analysis. Similarly, the prior studies suggest that the output of managementaccountants will likely be more precise, more accurate and produced more frequently. However, there is no conclusive evidence to support these expectations from the research on how ERP systems impact capital budgeting, budgeting, and other components of a management accounting process. In summary, there is confusion in the literature as to the potential for ERP systems to change management accounting and a lack of clear identification of the changes that have actually occurred. Burns and Scapens, (2000) suggest that perhaps, management accounting will take longer to reflect changes because of institutional forces.  3. Research Method   3.1 Background to the research approach   This preliminary study will be guided by the literature, which contains substantial ambiguity about the impact of ERP systems on management accounting. Although the focus of this study relates to the process of management accounting, special attention is devoted to the impact of ERP systems on capital budgeting as a specific and important management accounting technique.   In committing to investments with returns that come later, capital budgeting has the inherent challenge of dealing with uncertain future events. In addition, the economic effects of capital projects are difficult to track to future revenues, expenses and costs because the spreadsheets that have been used for analysis are not typically connected to the company’s accounting and operating systems, past, present, or future.  This has resulted in the sometime approval of the wrong projects, and more importantly the inability to ascertain what the implemented projects will accomplish in terms of revenues, costs, expenses, and resulting profits. According to Cook et al. (2000), these shortcomings in capital budgeting techniques can potentially be reduced or eliminated with the increasingly prevalent ERP systems.   3.1.1 Traditional approaches to capital budgeting Capital budgeting can be changed by ERP systems. As noted, it has been done separately from the firm’s accounting and operating systems, past, present, or future. In a traditional non-ERP setting capital budgeting may be completed separately with a spreadsheet. For example, given a project for outlays for replacement equipment where the time frame for the internal rate of return or net present value calculation could be 10 years. The project could include an improved production process to reduce material waste as well as labour costs. Also, the new process could reduce the time for set ups for different product runs, and thus enable the capture of special orders where quick response is necessary.  As IRR/NPV analysis is incremental, the spreadsheet would show the incremental cash flows for capital outlays, reduced material costs, reduced labour costs, and the contribution from the additional sales. However, the data items on the spreadsheet of pre-ERP capital budgeting are not explicitly linked with what activities happened, what activities are happening, or what activities will happen in the future. This separateness can be resolved by ERP systems integrating capital budgeting with companies’ accounting and other systems. 3.2 Benefits of ERP for capital budgeting decisions Potentially, capital budgeting can be done significantly differently with a functioning ERP system because of the integration of accounting and other systems. The common unified data warehouse is able to integrate, for example, financial transactions, activities in activity-based costing (ABC) and activity-based management (ABM) sub-systems, budgets and plans, and performance measures such as customer satisfaction or an entire balanced scorecard. Of course for these expectations to be realized, companies would need to have a full range of ERP modules, which may be presently uncommon. Consider how ERP systems impact capital budgeting in its three stages, (1) preparation and approval, (2) operational, and (3) post audit. During the first stage, the ERP system will allow the revenue and cost items to be linked to actual activities. For example with new equipment, if some of the costs are labour, the actual model for labour use in manufacturing will be assessed and improvements in labour productivity due to the new asset will be modelled. Modelling allows alternative approaches or variants to be tested and understood. Similarly, if there is a change in material usage, this will be modelled and the impact considered in the capital project evaluation. In effect, ERP systems allow capital projects to be modelled as mini independent businesses or investment centres.    For the second operational stage, the models used in the first stage, preparation and approval can be compared to the actual model in use regarding labour, material, and asset input and the actual outputs. In effect, the modelled assumptions can be explicitly validated with experience. Similarly, for the third stage at or near the end of the project the models can be assessed to do a post audit to determine the life-time success of the project and to provide feedback on the capital budgeting process.    As with capital budgeting, the impact of ERP systems could be deductively specified, or more precisely conjectured for other management accounting practices such as budgeting, operational statements, forecasting, performance measurement, and costing. The above capital budgeting example indicates that ERP systems have the potential to lead to greater integration, accuracy, speed, and effectiveness. As management accounting techniques involve company information, it would be reasonable to expect, from the implementation of ERP systems, improvements at least in integration, accuracy, speed, and effectiveness, if not a major change such as the elimination of budgeting. 3.2 Research Design Most of the earlier research on the impact of ERP systems on management accounting have been field studies. Additionally, given the lack of conclusive findings in the literature about the impact of ERP this research will employ a survey of large corporations incorporating open-ended questions about changes in capital budgeting and other management accounting practices. However, it is proposed that this will be an exploratory study given that there is uncertainty as to whether there have been any significant changes to management accounting with greater use of ERP systems.