Strategic Information System for Business: Amcor Limited Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Amcor Limited's strategic information system, focusing on its accounting software usage and operational challenges. The study begins with an introduction to Amcor Limited, a multinational packaging company, and its reliance on accounting software packages for both large and small-scale operations. Part 1 delves into the company's current organizational structure, identifying operational issues stemming from its structure and detailing the method of system acquisition, including the selection of Reval for risk and treasury management. A system flowchart of sales procedures is presented, followed by an examination of potential problems within the system. Part 2 explores the adoption and development of software packages in Australia, including market size, leadership, and competitive advantages of key players like Intuit, XERO, and MYOB. The report also addresses challenges faced by accounting software customers and concludes with recommendations for Amcor Limited. The report highlights the increasing importance of packaging optimization software and the competitive landscape of the Australian software market, emphasizing the need for continuous innovation and strategic decision-making in the face of evolving market dynamics.

Running head: STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR BUSINESS AND ENTERPRISE
Strategic Information System for business and enterprise
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

2STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................3
Part 1:...............................................................................................................................................3
Current structure of organization:....................................................................................................3
Operational issues faced by organization due to its structure:........................................................3
Method of system acquisition:.........................................................................................................3
System flowchart of sales procedures of Amcor limited:................................................................3
Identification and controlling of problems in the system:...............................................................3
Part 2:...............................................................................................................................................3
Adoption and development of software packages in Australia:......................................................3
Current market size of software:......................................................................................................3
Leadership in software market and their competitive advantage:...................................................3
Challenges or gaps encountered by accounting software packages customers:..............................4
Recommendations:..........................................................................................................................4
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................4

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4STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
Introduction:
This particular study intends to conduct literature review on organization that is using an
accounting software package. Current study on accounting software is presented in the form of
report that incorporates the discussion of evaluation of different software packages in terms of its
benefits and costs. Organizations’ operating in Australia relies on using accounting software
packages whether they are enterprise operating in large or small scale. Usage of accounting
software and control problems faced in light of using the software is evaluated by choosing one
of the listed organizations on Australian stock exchange. In present study, Amcor Limited has
been selected that is a multinational packaging company operating in Australia and more than 40
countries. They are involved in producing and developing rigid and flexible plastic packaging
with around 95% of sales made to healthcare, defensive food, beverage, tobacco packaging and
markets. The packaging products of company are produced by converting raw materials such as
aluminum foils, polymers and fibers. There are two reporting segments of business that is rigid
plastics and flexible packaging. The computer software of Amcor limited is either acquired
externally or it is developed internally (Amcor.com, 2018). The discussion also demonstrates the
operational issues faced by company and development of accounting software packages in the
country.

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Part 1:
Current structure of organization:
In the industry, Amcor is a global leader having a reportable segments and operational
structures. The group is structured into five business divisions and other investments.
The segment of Amcor rigid plastics deals with manufacturing of rigid plastic containers
for a broad range of predominantly food and beverage products. Such products involve water,
juices, carbonated soft drinks, milk based beverages, sport drinks, juices, personal care items,
spreads, dressing, sauces and plastic caps for wide range of applications. Segment of Amcor
flexible is the aggregation of four operating segments and each segment manufacturing film and
flexible packaging materials for respective industries. All such operating segments have common
characteristics as they are engaged in packaging and printing of fast moving consumer products.
Moreover, the investment group of organization deals with the corporate functions of group and

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hold the equity of the group that is accounted for investment. The disclosure of segmentation is
consistent with the information that is reviewed by chief operating decision maker of Amcor
(Amcor.com, 2018).
Operational issues faced by organization due to its structure:
Amcor limited is a global packaging company that is involved in production of variety of
packaging. With the growth of company by way of acquisition, it faced challenge in maintaining
cost, support, interface and harmonization of process and reporting.
Amcor limited intends to produce packaging that is appealing, functional and cost
effective along with serving environment in a sustainable way. Volume of packaging requires
using the right amount of appropriate materials. Sometimes, it becomes difficult to determine the
right amount of packaging materials. The operations of business of Amcor limited are threatened
and have made it increasingly difficult to conduct to compete with business. Business
environment in which Amcor limited operates is toughest and has become more challenging in
the world. Furthermore, the consumer goods company faces increasing and new challenges that
drives complexity into the business. Some of the issues they face in associated with the partners
of the packaging company that would support a profitable and continued growth. Organization
requires localization aspects and multi language capability for dealing with the problems of case
community (Popovič et al., 2015).

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Method of system acquisition:
For the risk and treasury management, Amcor limited has selected accounting software
that would help organization with multiple services. Amcor has chosen a software named Reval
that is a leading global provider of integrated and scalable risk and treasury management
solutions. Reval is software as a service provider that comes with wide variety of functions such
as hedging workflows of accounting related across four regional treasury centers and integration
of global cash and risk management.
The prior multiple treasury system used by Amcor has been replaced by a single Saas
platform that is Reval and thereby enabling organization with a better transparency and control
system. Dashboards and reporting analytics features of Reval would help in driving real value to
the business of Amcor limited. They assist enterprises by providing better management of cash
flows financial and liquidity risks, reporting and accounting on complex hedging activities and
financial instruments. Now, a day all such software’s are moving beyond delivering of data and
providing intelligence for decision making purpose. Amcor focuses on continuous innovation for
finding better and new ways of supplying beverage, food, healthcare, personal and home care
and tobacco end markets.

8
Sales Department
Sales department receives order
from customers
Clerk helps in preparing
three part sales order
Three copies of approval are received
by credit department
Copy of sales order is returned to sales department by credit
department where help in reviewing the order clerk
Sales order are filed and
reviewed
Account
Department
Implementation and kick off
Warehouse receiving the order
Relationship is enhanced and
maintained by sending copies of
sales order to different departments
Warehouse department fill in the
copy of sales order
Customers
Customers create contacts with
company
And agrees to take up sales marketing
service
Customers are provided with the
option and then they evaluate
Customer orders and receives the
copy of sales order
The billing clerk helps in
updating of customer
receivable account when the
shipping notice is received
and the customer department
is filled with the shipping
notice.
STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
System flowchart of sales procedures of Amcor limited:

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Identification and controlling of problems in the system:
The procedures of accounting system are faced with issue that is concerned to
authorization who are responsible for preparing report and making entry in different accounts.
Employees and staffs of company who are responsible for maintain the books of account
balances and deal with the entire process finalization might be involved in conducting data
manipulation and fraud acts. Accounting department can understate or overstate the financial and
accounting figures if the organization does not have proper method for monitoring the costs and
expenses related to procedures of sales. Therefore, after viewing the accounting procedures
involved in the sales system of Amcor limited, it can be said that there are no proper software
packages that are currently used by company for dealing with the sale system. However, they
have employed the suitable accounting software when dealing with the financial risk
management.
Part 2:
Adoption and development of software packages in Australia:
In the packaging industry, the role of packaging optimization software is playing an
increasingly important role due to increasing complexities of logistic chain. The growth drivers
of accounting software packages implementation in the packaging industry are attributable to
growing portfolio of technology. Amcor limited relies on control system and information
technology for supporting the business.
Over the years, market of accounting software’s has undertaken a major change resulting
from advancement in technology. There is increasing competition in the market of software with

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the major players in the market being Intuit, XERO and MYOB. More than 70% of business
enterprises in Australia are using the system of business information and cloud computing
software. Business faces some difficulties while implementing the accounting software as they
are required to take into account several pre requisites such as costs (Arvidsson et al., 2014).
This is so because costing is an important factor while implementing the software and it should
be evaluated by business.
There is a huge variations in the accounting software packaged depending upon their
complexities and cost associated with it. This increased pace of adoption of accounting software
packages are attributable to the factors such as cost, error of omissions and time required. In
addition to this, some other factors that have resulted in increasing adoption of the software are
increased effectiveness and efficiency in the accounting system.
Current market size of software:
The total value of market size of packaging services in Australia stood at $ AUD 10 to
10.5 billion. Major manufacturers of packaging products in Australia are Australian owned as a
substantial proportion of small and medium enterprises. Amcor limited is one of the leading
players in the production of flexible packaging products market. The total worth of assets that is
held by Amcor limited stood at $ USD 9083.3 million. Some of the competitors of Amcor
limited are Bemis, Rexam, Winpac, RPC group and Aptar group.
Over the past five years, Australian software industry has grown phenomenally and have
encouraged of software to capitalize on the operating system and cloud computing platforms.
The major players in the cloud computing market of software’s are MYOB, Saas and XERO. A

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market share of 65% is enjoyed by XERO with MYOB enjoying less that 60% of market shares
in the current scenario.
Leadership in software market and their competitive advantage:
There is increasing implementation of software that helps in optimization of packaging as
a result of development in logistics technology assisting in increasing total pack efficiency.
Amcor limited intends to set itself apart from the competitors by continuing the use of measures
of its global expertise and its reach. The company operates in the market that is highly
competitive having varying degrees of industry structures, barriers to entry, motivational and
competitor’s pattern. Financial performance of company can be adversely impacted by the action
of the potential or established competitors.
There is no particular company that is dominating the market of packaging industry;
however, Amcor limited is one of the significant players in the market. Organization employs
some of the accounting software that helps in gaining competitive advantage by few degrees.
The new entrants in the market are providing tough competition to the major players of
software accounting packages in Australia. Online solutions are actively promoted by the
country by some software such as Sage and Intuit. Due to threats faced by new entrants in the
market and strong market position and brand recognition of XERO, it is required by software
such as MYOB to increase their share of market by increasing their growth. However, MYOB
has accelerated development of cloud based products due to increasing inclination of customers
towards seeking online solutions. There are many accounting features provided by this particular

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software such as features incorporating payroll needs and thereby competing with emerging
software products.
The most popular accounting software that is used by business enterprise in Australia is
XERO that has a customer base of 540000. XERO has contributed to the development of
software industry by carrying out innovation that incorporates trend of advisory and compliance
(Wan & Clegg, 2016). However, one of the biggest drawbacks as viewed by business enterprise
is the higher cost of implementation and purchasing price of the software.
Both the software’s that is MYOB and XERO is placing tougher competition for software
such as Intuit. Intuit has the plan of launching the products that would offer loan service to small
scale enterprise of Australia. Therefore, it can be inferred from the analysis of different
accounting software packages that the software products comes with wide variety of features that
helps organization by providing efficiency in carrying out their operational tasks. Hence, it can
be concluded that the software market of Australia is dominated by some of the leading software
such as MYOB, XERO, Saas and Intuit. Furthermore, it can also be said that the degree of
competition in the accounting software market of Australia faces inflexible competition due to
various similar features provided by leading software operating in the country (Sedera et al,
2016).
One of the clouds accounting software that is prevalent in Australia is Saas which is
currently used by Amcor limited and has an estimated customer base of 20000 businesses. This
particular software is regarded as the only online software company operating in the country that
is profitable. However, Saas could not succeed in increasing the share of their sells despite the
fact that such software is imbibed with so many features. Moreover, compared to software such

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as XERO, customers such as accountants and bookkeepers do not find Saas attractive. Compared
to the rival of Saas, their priorities are considerably different and while one of the retail friendly
characteristics being highly capable module of inventory. On other hand, the competitor of Saas
that is XERO was not successful in realizing the module of inventories until the year 2014
(Tarhini et al., 2015).
Challenges or gaps encountered by accounting software packages customers:
Using accounting software by business enterprise operating in Australia such as Amcor
limited are faced with several drawbacks are listed below:
Customization and scalability- Accounting is a matter that is not its own and little efforts
are taken by developers for enabling the process of digitization that is more engaging than the
usual (Rouhani & Lecic, 2018). Therefore, the system might not be open to configuration and
cannot be thrilling to be suitable to the accounting needs of business.
Lacking integration- Some of the accounting software might not have an open
infrastructure for supporting the integrations of third parties. It is required by organization to take
into considerations all such pre requites so that the software system is properly integrated into
the working process.
The trend of designing accounting system software that is industry specific- Business
enterprises are required to meet the particular needs of industry if they are required to make the
selection between standardized and general accounting solutions (Arnold et al., 2015).
Issues associated with costs- Organizations are required to have minimum system of
standard, random access memory, hard drive memory and for the implementation of the

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accounting software packages. Requirement of back up data and technical support that are sought
by the implementation of such software’s requires organization to incur some additional costs.
Number of user’s forms the basis of subscription of software by the addition of some add on
features. This would lead to increasing of the implementation costs and this is often viewed as
challenge for small and medium enterprises (Dwivedi et al., 2014).
Factors related to timing of using software- It has been ascertained that some of the
sophisticated software consumes less time when performing certain functions compared to some
other depending upon the requirement of business. The time taken by excel sheet and ledger is
less than the time taken by the accounting software in performing functions such as expenses
sheets and creation of invoices (Antero, 2015). In the initial phase, the implementation of the
accounting software can result in temporary shutdown of the operations of business.
Problem in using of the software- The new accounting systems of software are not based
on the conventional method and main problems that is related to the implementation of such
software is their designing system. Using such software is faced by difficulties as employees of
different enterprises are accustomed to work on system of software’s that are conventional
(Jones et al., 2014).
Recommendations and Conclusion:
In this particular study, various accounting software packages of Australia have been
discussed along with explaining the market size and the competitive advantage enjoyed by the
leader in the software market. The usage of accounting software has increased by small scale and
medium scale enterprises. Implementation of accounting software by the business enterprise

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offers organization with several advantages such as banking transactions, integrated pay roll,
inventory management and invoicing. Organizations are required to perform analysis in depth so
that they are able to identify the costs and benefits associated with implementation of software.
However, in order for organizations to receive benefits offered by the software implementation,
some of the measures that should be taken by business involve necessary sessions of training and
arranging for some antivirus software. Therefore, it is recommended to Amcor limited that to
employ such package of accounting software that would assist in resolving the existing issues of
their business system. From the analysis, it can be concluded that Amcor can seek the
employment of software such as MYOB as it comes with the additional features such as solving
of grievances of customer and existing online problems.

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