Accounting Information System Data Mining System

Question: Describe about the Accounting Information System for Data Mining System. Answer: Introduction With the due passage, there has been a strong reliance on the availability of data and this has become possible with the advent of various softwares. Technology has improved the performances of the organization. This has led to the emergence of Business Intelligence that is composed of various activities like reporting, processing, data mining, etc. The enterprise system is vastly benefited by it and in this report; the main stress will be on the Business intelligence, data mining, and how these are put to implementation (Peter et. al, 2013). Business Intelligence BI or Business Intelligence is basically an umbrella term which implies a variety of different software applications that are used to evaluate raw data of an organization. As a discipline, Business Intelligence is made up of various associated activities that include reporting, querying, online analytical processing, complex event processing, benchmarking, and data mining etc. BI is a technology-driven process that is primarily used by various companies, business managers and corporate executives so that they can enhance their decision-making, minimize expenditures and recognize new and effective opportunities for business (Peter et. al, 2013). It is more than just corporate reporting and a set of tools that is used to persuade data out of the enterprise systems. The CIO (Chief Information Officer) of companies to recognize several business processes that are ineffective and have become ready for re-engineering processes also uses it. The main objective of BI is to permit simple and easy interpretation of high volumes of data so that an effective strategy can be implemented based on insights that can provide companies with a long-term stability and competitive market advantage (Rodriguez et. al, 2010). In the current scenario where developed BI tools prevails, business management can jump in and start evaluating data themselves instead of waiting for IT to process several complex reports. This transformation to a more democratic political regime of easy accessible information can assist users to back up various business decisions that would otherwise be based only on anecdotes and gut feelings (Golfarelli Golfarelli, 2009). Even though Business Intelligence holds huge promises, implementations can be unshakeable by cultural and technical challenges. Management of companies are bound to ensure that the data feeding applications of BI is not hampered, that means it is consistent and clean enough to be trusted and relied upon by users (MacIntyre, 2004). Business intelligence provide a competitive advantage Industries and businesses from all around the world have observed various innovative or technological variations provided by the forces of globalization. One of such relevant variations is the prevalence of advanced IT (Information Technology) in the contemporary organizations. Regular enhancement of such globalization and IT proves to be the biggest factors that provides global aspect to competition. The business managers or corporate executives of contemporary organizations have been encouraged by such factors to introduce the Business Intelligence concept in their business environment (Watson et.al, 2007). They constantly concentrate on attaining an enhanced stage of competitive advantage in the international business markets. There are several ways by which BI can used to attain competitive advantage. Firstly, BI facilitates in the measurement of marketing efficiency. One of the key drivers for departure of advertising expenditure to the internet has been the potential to measure results. This can be attained through direct ways like impressions and click-through or indirect ways like evaluation of consumer emotions on blogs, social networks etc. BI can be used here as a major component in managing the huge volume of data involved in such work (Chugh Grandghi, 2013). The outcomes of this evaluation can assist contemporary organizations in targeting marketing budgets and understanding how to segment their markets. Secondly, contemporary organizations in fact, are weaker in enhancement of Human Resources. Therefore, they must focus on such improvement and BI can be adopted to develop and transform the relevance of their human capital. Markets that are highly competitive require HR strategies and examining of its performance. BI can support such processes by permitting organizations to gain better perceptions into the realization of their HRM strategies (Blumberg Atre, 2003). Thirdly, managers and executives of contemporary organizations can adopt BI to tran sform collected information into precious knowledge within their business architectures so that they can make better economic decisions in the global environment (Rud, 2009). This will provide them a competitive advantage in modern businesses. It has been observed that contemporary organizations that have adopted BI as a strategy in decision-making have attained competitive advantage over other competitors as BI could encompass business applications, technologies, and peoples skills into such decisions. Loyalty card process Data is the vital requirement of every sector, provides great functioning in the global economy, and is considered as an important factor of production like human capital, hard assets, etc. It is difficult to perform the economic activity without it (McKnight, 2003). In the retail, industry data mining helps in making crucial decisions and the apt example is the utilization of a tier system to enhance purchases. It is a big challenge to the companies to strike a balance between attainment and desirable rewards using a loyalty program. The main way through which it can be implemented is to utilize data mining. Rewards are used as a base for offering so that people draw towards the scheme. To get an upper hand, loyalty programs are being used and the consumers are engaged (Kimball, 2008). Data that i gathered through a loyalty program can provide great insight into the segment of customer and help to provide strategic dollar to every group. Sainsbury loyalty reward card is an apt examp le that was launched in the year 1996. It considered the monetary model that helps segmenting the customer that is based on certain data. Now the identification of the customer can be done based on the data that is collected. This leads to identification based on recency, frequency, as well as monetary. Using the above-mentioned technique it can be ascertained that which customers are most valuable and scoring can be done considering this. Such a customized approach has helped Sainsbury in filtering and tracing the customers based on various parameters. This has helped the company is implementation of various strategies. Hence, loyalty card program has not only won and retained the customers but has also helped in knowing the trend (Clark, 2006). Thereby, it can be said that the process of loyalty card program is not only to reward the customers but the information gathered from it is used to protect, grow, and acquire new customers. Reactivating the customers is an important consid eration and this is possible when sufficient data is available in this regard. It helps in proper analysis and leads to a better scope of activity (Clark, 2006). Overall, the system is based on providing strong support to the system and the same can be witnessed in the case of Sainsbury. This has provided a strong support to the functioning and hence, data mining and analytic can affect the performance of the organization in a strong fashion. Conclusion BI can contribute towards talent management in contemporary organizations to provide competitive advantage. It can evaluate the qualifications and skills of employees, analyze the efficiency of recruitment methods, measure efficiency of various learning programs and oversee the achievements of combining the objectives of employees with the corporate objectives. The use of data mining can help to provide a strong back up because huge pool of data can be assembled and evaluated to discern the pattern and lead to better decision making. This becomes the way for competition and growth for firms that are individual in nature that enhances the productivity and creates value by reduction of the waste (Coker, 2014). Data mining helps in sorting relationship and trace patterns that are useful in making chief decisions. Therefore, the application of BI in contemporary organizations has been very effective in promoting competitive advantage. Queensland Health systems implementation Introduction Systems Development Life Cycle refers to the series of steps that are to be employed in the development of any application that might be either hardware or software or a combination of both. It is used in information systems, software engineering and systems engineering. The steps included planning, coding, testing, and deploying as a part of implementation of any new application. The aim here is to complete the transition to new application and discard the old system. Old systems are obsolete and needs a change. Change needs to be done when there is a dearth of it. Therefore, a change can produce desired result and it has to be completed within a proper period to achieve the desired results. Factors contributing to failed Payroll System The Healthcare industry involves people, processes, and services provided by hospitals, pharmacies, diagnosis agencies, etc. For this reason, it is fundamentally different from the other industries irrespective of the fact whether it is public sector or private sector. This difference is in not only the nature but also the focus and size of the industry. Healthcare industry involves a lot of procedures and different acts. Therefore, it can be easily differentiated from the other industry. The Queensland Health Implementation project failure was estimated to be the most costly one in the southern hemisphere involving $1.25 billion AUD. The factors that contributed to this failure are not one but many. The three primary stakeholder teams were identified as Queensland Health, CorpTech, and IBM. The first and foremost issue was with IBMs selection as the prime contractor. While the protocol was that all the bidders for the project should be given the same information, for some unknown reasons, the Project Director was believed to have passed on some extra knowledge to IBM thus helping it gain a competitive advantage over the others and getting the project allotted. Since, the extra knowledge and information was provided it proved to be unethical. This proves that this was unethical in nature and providing extra knowledge goes against the policies framed by the government (Alwan, 2016). As in the implementation of any project the roles and responsibilities of each team has to be made clear for effective functioning, it was believed that as the implementation commenced, throughout the project the responsibilities were not clear. The Healthcare industry has its special requirements in the way that the focus is on the safety, well-being of the patients, person-to-person interaction is primary, and the number of clients catered to usually runs into millions when compared to other industries where it could be just thousands. The main aim is to provide hospitality and look after the people. These requirements have not been adhered to by the system development implementation. There are many complexities involved in the project that can be classified as complexity of the industry, complexity of the system itself and the complexity of the client consultant relationships. The complexities arise because there are different systems and each has its own peculiarity. Having diffe rent system leads to a variety of acts. The configuration used by the Department of Justice for SAP HR was adopted by Queensland and the milestones were decided keeping this as the basis. When IBM took up, additional planning was done in October 2008 that revealed an underestimation of the complexities and resulted in cost overruns and substantial increase in time. From the initial stage, the business requirements were poorly defined which had a negative impact. The risk when the Payroll Software was implemented in Queensland was massive as it was not first tried and tested in smaller government agencies where the complexities were less. Since, it was tested on a very small basis it led to problem. It needs to be noted that the pilot program needs to be done on a grand scale so that the effectiveness is high. However, it was not seen in the case of Queensland and it proved to be of bigger risk. The first test resulted in a discrepancy of $1.2 million AUD and the second test led to a discrepancy of $30,000 AUD. Despite these discrepancies, Queensland opted to Go Live without completing the testing of a few modules. Upon Go Live, a significant proportion of employees were either not paid or paid incorrectly. As the number of employees and types of wage structures were varied, the use of WorkBrain could have simplified the interface between SAP and the new Payroll System, but the same was not used or adopted. This was just the part of technical deficiencies. However, the series of difficulties did not ended here and apart from this, the industrial strike resulted in the resignation of a number of employees that was the accelerated human impact of all the chaos that had occurred. The layoff of a huge number of employees led to issue and the industrial strike led to difficulties that further aggravated the situation. The total cost of implementation, stabilization and maintenance resulted was estimated to be $1.25 Billion AUD. Classification of factors As there are very many problems from the inception stage itself, the classification is also done as below: The issue over IBMs selection would fall into the Preliminary analysis phase where the requirements of the organization are defined and the proposed alternative solutions are analyzed and classified by doing a cost benefit analysis. The bias in the tendering process is also a major hit back. The Requirements definition should be in such a way that details of the functional areas, problems and opportunities of the adopting organization are essential not only to ensure that the system performs but also to detail the scope of implementation. There has to be a proper documentation of the requirements that was also not done by Queensland. Proper documentation leads to greater compliance however, the absence proved to be a big failure for the organization (Siraj et. al, 2011). Every project is unique and has to be studied from specific perspectives. Each perspective has own pros and cons. Moreover, it needs to have proper logical functioning. Using the configuration of one project over another is a lapse in phase two that is Systems Analysis and Requirements Definition. The series of logical steps to be followed in this phase are collection of facts, scrutiny of the existing systems and analysis of the proposed system. The project over budget and over schedule is also an example of the gross failure of proper planning. The approach followed by Department of Public Housing is less complex since the pay structures are simpler when compared to those of Queensland. Thus, there is no proper definition of the requirements. A Queensland, there are 24,000 types of combinations of pay awards. This underestimation of the complexities in the wages structure has led to disastrous results. The presence of innumerable awards led to many complexities and hence it is diff icult to ascertain. The Integration and Testing Phase is not completed as the Casuals and overtime claims had not been tested due to lack of proper definition of the requirements. The possibility for existence of errors, bugs, and interoperability cannot be ruled out (Sheilds, 2005). WorkBrain was a major configuration that led to IBM being allotted this project at Queensland but this was not actually implemented during the project that was a major failure. WorkBrain was used to transfer and process the timesheets from SAP into the format accepted by the financial institutions. As WorkBrain was not used the difficulties with system testing, maintenance, up gradation, conservation of data quality increased. The unavailability of the system led to innumerable problem and hence there were many difficulties were observed. Even after the mistakes in the payments upon Go Live, the systems were not completely abandoned. The issues were attempted to be resolved by the prolonged attention of all the three stakeholder groups. This shows that the acceptance, installation and deployment stage was also a total failure and in a very messy situation. The pressure to Go Live ruled out the possibility of a parallel testing mechanism. Though the defects were initially categorized into four, there was a reclassification of the same due to the changing requirements and not all these defects were fixed before the Go Live decision that created all the havoc. In short it can be said that from the commencement there was poor management, poor handling and lack of proper understanding of the complexities in the IS environment. Recommendations Though time and cost overruns are typical in healthcare type of industry and framework, processing complexities and orientation, still the failure of Queensland Payroll System is arguably the worst example for the same. A specific project methodology is required to be followed. Adequate Governance Structures were not established until June 2009 that led to the vague description of the roles and responsibilities. The proper following of the systems development life cycle will lead practical and fruitful results. The organization needs to clearly articulate its requirements, utilize an appropriate implementation strategy, perform a substantial amount of testing before the decision to Go Live is reached, utilize an appropriate project management methodology and effectively communicate with all the stakeholder groups involved. Communication is a vital area in such cases as the communication between the client, consultant, and vendor is required for project governance (Mehdi, 2006). Lack of proper documentation led to user acceptance issues and functionality issues during the testing phase. The configuration of WorkBrain was not performed at Queensland that led to further complexities (Olsen, 2012). In healthcare industry every patient is unique and unpredictable and for this reason almost 50% of the healthcare organizations have found the installation of IS systems a failure but a majority of such failures can be attributed o the lack of proper management support, poor project management, inefficient communication among the stakeholder groups and technical issues which are poor system testing and lack of proper definition of business requirements (Weistroffer et. al, 2010). At Queensland, not surprisingly all of these factors are found to co-exist. WorkBrain should have been used in Queensland as IBM used it in other agencies and clients. Conclusion Many lessons can be learnt not just with respect to the implementation, testing and Go Live phase of the project but also the importance of communication, planning and parallel testing requirements. A succession planning of the legacy system needs to be in place and the perspective project methodologies have to be followed. Due to the requirements of multiple hierarchy and multiple subprojects, Queensland has had a disastrous payroll implementation project failure (Sheilds, 2005). The key reform areas have been identified and multiple layers to the governance process have been added. Thus apart from the technical and financial defects, this project failure has also has industry and nationwide implications. References Alwan, M. (2016). What is System Development Life Cycle? 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