Detailed Analysis of Accounting Software for B Bakery's Needs

This report analyzes the business activities of B Bakery, a family-owned company facing challenges in accounts and finance. The report investigates the need for accounting software to improve financial management, customer service, and operational efficiency. It compares three software packages: SAP, MYOB, and Xero, with a focus on business processes, software features, and vendor selection. The report emphasizes the benefits of Xero, highlighting its potential to enhance productivity, manage inventory, and provide cloud computing services. The analysis covers business requirements, system requirements, and the advantages of high-end accounting software, concluding with a detailed comparison between Xero and MYOB Essentials, and providing insights into the advantages of Xero for B Bakery.

Running head: INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
Information Management Systems
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s note

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Executive Summary
B Bakery is a family-owned business. The company is near about fifty years old and
currently, seventy employees work over there. The report explains the business activities of B
bakery in details. B Bakery faces certain issues related to accounts and finance, so they
appoint an accountant to manage all the financial activities of the company. However, they
feel that they need to adapt accounting software to enhance their business activities. They
believe the accounting software will help to manage the accounts. The software will help
them to serve their customers well. The report compares three accounting software packages
SAP, MYOB and Xero. Xero is the best among the three software chosen. B bakery can
enhance their productivity with the aid of the Xero. All the beneficial aspects that Xero can
offer has been detailed in the report.

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Table of Contents
1. Business Processes.................................................................................................................3
a. Business activities of Bakery B..........................................................................................3
2. Developing business requirements.........................................................................................4
b. Business processes that are indispensable to be performed...............................................4
c. Outcomes required for these processes to achieve business objectives.............................5
3. Determining all the systems requirements.............................................................................6
a. Software features Bakery B should consider achieving their IT investment objective......6
4. Software selection..................................................................................................................6
a. Overview of the accounting software packages.................................................................6
b. High-end accounting software and the benefits they offer to Bakery B and their
customers..............................................................................................................................11
5. Vendor selection...................................................................................................................12
a. Comparison between two accounting software packages, Xero and MYOB Essentials. 12
c. Xero accounting software and solution and the benefits they can offer to the B Bakery 16
6. References............................................................................................................................19

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1. Business Processes
a. Business activities of Bakery B
A baker is an individual who bakes and sells bread, cakes and pastries. The place
where the baker conducts his business activities is known as a bakery.
B Bakery has been chosen as the case study in this report. It is basically a family
business. The organisation is nearly fifty years old. Bakery B is known to bake bread,
confectionary items and sells them in the pub-chains and the supermarkets. The organisation
has seen many ups and downs since last fifty years (Lam, 2015). However, in recent years, B
Bakery has experienced a growth because of the new business initiatives. They have currently
seventy employees working in the company. The sales revenue of the company gets enhanced
to $ 13.5 million.
However, they are concerned about the issues that creep out. They lose some key
accounts as they fail to deliver the best service to the customers. They lose the customer trust
and the customer base. B Bakery faces heavy losses and falls behind other bakery companies.
Bakery B is struggling to take orders effectively. Bakery B cannot be able to track the
inventory well. They are struggling as they do not have the latest update of the stock. They
cannot monitor the employees well. Thus they are completely unaware of all the business
activities (Kowalewski & Niedzielska, 2015). Besides they are not getting the customers’
purchasing list. Bakery B enter financial and accounting data into the system all by manually
thus it takes a longer period of time. For this reason, they are suffering to manage the
customer data, the sales and inventory. They may have multiple IT software installed within
the system; those applications are not properly integrated and thus giving complex and mixed
results.

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Bakery B appoints an accountant to manage the entire inventory and the financial data
of the company. However, they have realised that they need accounting software to manage
the inventory and the employees so that they can conduct the business activities efficiently.
Bakery B is suffering from the due to the lack of quality accounting software (Sampaio &
Bernardino, 2016). They are suffering from the lack of security, the malware attack and
insider threats can lead to data loss and security breach. The employees enter data once face
immense difficulties to get them back. The software and the technology they use are outdated
and lack efficiency. The applications they use are not at all efficient and fast. Again, the
applications they use do not integrate with the rest of the applications. The prevalent system
is also restricting the employees to communicate with the customers. They cannot provide
24x7 services to the customers (Lee, 2017). That is why they are not able to provide quality
customer service. The prevalent system of the company is not at all fast and effective. Speed
is an issue for this project. Since Bakery B is looking to configure best accounting software
for their premises they must choose the best software that can provide them with the best
solutions.
2. Developing business requirements
b. Business processes that are indispensable to be performed
Bakery B must install and configure accounting software for their business. The
accounting software is an absolute necessity for them. The software must provide access to
financial and accounting information properly. The accounting software also provides cloud
computing services. The cloud computing offers facilities- the employees of the company can
access the financial data anywhere (Aduamoah et al., 2017). The data of the company can be
accessed by the employees from the desktop machine and from the mobile device. The
accounting software provides data backup and security. The financial data can be shared with

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all the stakeholders all the time. The cost-effective solutions are provided by the accounting
software. Bakery B can save lots of money and can earn more and more revenues and so
accounting software adaptation is necessary. Bakery’s business efficiency can get enhanced
due to the business. The accounting software efficiency can help Bakery B to conduct the
business operations in an agile and effective manner so accounting software adaptation is an
utmost necessity. The prevalent system of Bakery B contains multiple flaws and because of
the software failure Bakery B is suffering loss (Rahman, 2016). Thus it is important for
Bakery B to install the latest and best accounting software that can help the stakeholders of
the company to carry out the business activities flawlessly. Bakery B needs to prevent data
loss. The company needs to prevent unauthorised access. The accounting software is capable
to provide security to Bakery B.
c. Outcomes required for these processes to achieve business objectives
There are certain advantages which are associated with the adaptation of accounting
software in the system. Manual bookkeeping is time-consuming. The accounting software
will save a lot of time of Bakery B. Accounting software facilitates automatic bookkeeping
and financial monitoring. Error-free and efficient financial data can be evaluated by the
assistance of the accounting software (Lyons, 2015). Bakery B can manage the cash by
implementing the accounting software in the system. The latest accounting software is
relatively easy and simple to use. Less training is required for the software. The accounting
software is also helpful in minimising the mistakes. The accounting software is capable to
generate correct results automatically. The accounting software offers cloud-based scalable
solutions and all these data can be accessed anywhere anytime and from any devices. The
accounting software also aids computerised invoicing. Bakery B can record the customers’
payment data with the help of the software. The company can acknowledge what customers
will have to pay with the help of the accounting software (Flaherty, 2018). The accounting

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software is helpful to track the inventory. Accurate inventory can be measured by the usage
of the software. The business process details can be known by the accounting software as
well.
3. Determining all the systems requirements
a. Software features Bakery B should consider achieving their IT investment
objective
The accounting software provides facilities to conduct business activities online over
the website and mobile app. They need to adopt cloud computing services offered by
Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure to conduct business securely and effectively (Dimitriu &
Matei, 2015). They need to have Windows or Mac devices to carry out the online activities
over the website and IOS and Android mobile platform to carry out the business activities
over the mobile phone. The management staffs and the employees of B Bakery must be well
acquainted with the software and cloud computing services (Flaherty, 2018). The
management team must train their employees so that they can use the accounting software
and cloud services effectively for the betterment of the company.
4. Software selection
a. Overview of the accounting software package
The three websites SAP, MYOB, Xero have been visited and a detailed comparison
among the three sites has been done in this report.

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Figure 1: Business Size and Industry
(Source: Lewis, 2014)

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Figure 2: Core Accounting Features and Billing and Invoicing Features
(Source: Amirul et al., 2017)

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Figure 3: Tax Features and Reporting Features
(Source: Lewis, 2014)

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Figure 4: Fixed Asset Features and Support
(Source: Zare, 2015)

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Figure 5: Functional Scores
(Source: Charron & Raschke, 2014)
It can be concluded from the functional scores that Xero accounting software is the
best. Bakery B must make full use of Xero to furnish their business.
b. High-end accounting software and the benefits they offer to Bakery B and
their customers
Bakery B can get maximum benefits by implementing the high-end accounting
software. The software implementation lowers IT related expenses. It can improve the
efficiency of the business activities. The management staff can get an overall view of all the