4 Research results and analysis
Interview
This paper takes the Shanghai Financial Center (SFC) and region businesses in mainland China and Taiwan areas as study objects. The goal of ERP implementation in R company was to help employees improve work performance by using ERP system effectively. Because most of customers of R company chose SAP system, R company decided to implement SAP system after considering the connection, data integration and logistics with their customers.
There were some adjustments in the structure and operations of departments and branches after the establishment of SFC. In this new environment, accountants in region businesses had to perform only certain operations instead of all operations in accounting process and the accounting supervisor in region businesses was responsible for SFC. The accounting supervisor in region businesses took more responsibilities on management than before. Financial supervisors of different sales departments had to take responsibility for the center. SFC focuses on information integration and financial analysis so accounting departments in region businesses concentrate on routine operations.
During the implementation, accountants need to learn the operational processes of ERP module. Because of their understanding of internal processes, they provide suggestions and revisions for the implementation of ERP system. Under ERP environment, information from front-end operation units flows into accounting department. The input on front-end affects output on back end. Therefore, accountants have to communicate with other co-workers across departments and review the front-end data mapping for integration of information and further analysis. Besides, the supervisor of accounting department needs to be responsible for education and training. Accountants are required to provide financial statements so they have to make sure that numbers on financial statements are correct. ERP implementation increases the competitiveness of each department and provides immediate information of each department for the management.
Operations and roles of accountants change significantly after ERP implementation. The workload of traditional data input, data compilation, filing and preparation for financial statements decreases because of ERP implementation. However, the importance of certain operations increases such as understanding internal processes, verifying the accuracy of a new system to make sure when to operate it instead of the old one and providing up-to-date information for decision making.
We summarize 14 operations of accountants from past research and literature. Based on advice of interviewers and results of the case study, there are four more operations of accountants on the questionnaire including review of front-end data mapping, provision of financial statements, management of cash flow, taxation planning (Table I).