Assessment of Accounting Information System Integration in Small and Medium Lithuanian Enterprises

Abstract

An accounting information system (AIS) plays a key role in providing the financial information for decision making within an organization. The degree of usability and value of the information provided by an AIS largely depends on its timeliness and quality. Both can be improved by the participation of the non-financial stakeholders in its preparation, and by its reuse across multiple business processes. The goal of the research was to investigate AIS integration models in Lithuanian small and medium enterprises, and to determine the prerequisites and obstacles for their integration with the business processes and external information systems. A number of Lithuanian business companies were visited to investigate their information systems. Interviews with the accounting personnel were conducted and the related documentation was inspected. The object of the research was a set of problems concerned with the use of the information provided by the entity's accounting information system in other functional areas for decision making purposes. Issues involving the preparation and communication of the accounting information for the use of external stakeholders were considered as well. The results of the research showed that the degree of integration of the accounting information systems of small and medium Lithuanian enterprises with their business partners and state institutions remains low, although prerequisites for the integration in some cases are in place.. Obstacles that preclude closer integration with external the systems are the relative inflexibility of the accounting software, the lack of use of the contemporary information and communication technologies, and high investments. To encourage closer integration within the systems, the Service Oriented Architecture should be provided, and be open for Data Integration, easy customization, and extensibility.

Evaluation of the Factors Affecting the Purchasing Decisions of Accounting Package Programs

“… Software Service (Software as a Service -SaaS): By keeping the software that institutions need within the servers of this institution, it enables the users to operate and run these software through these servers even if the software is not installed on their own computer In addition to this, it is preferred due to the advantages that cloud computing brings to the institutions/corporations listed as the following (Höfer and Karagiannis, 2011): Because of all these advantages, accounting is the primary field where cloud computing is used. The main purpose of accounting systems is to collect data and information both for internal and external users in order to carry out management, processing and evaluation , which is very important for the financial information used in the decision making process of the accounting system) (Butkevicius, 2009;Christauskasand Miseviciene, 2012). The corporations, especially those providing accounting package programs, increase their use of cloud computing day by day and take advantage of the facilities it provides.…”

Yeni̇ Bi̇r İş Modeli̇: Muhasebe Alaninda Bulut Bi̇li̇şi̇m

“…Her muhasebe sisteminin temel amacı, yönetim, işleme ve değerlendirme yapabilmek amacıyla veri ve bilgilerin iç ve dış kullanıcılara yönelik toplanması ve bu bilgilerin organizasyon üzerindeki ekonomik etkisini ölçmektir (Christauskas, vd., 2004) (Christauskas & Miseviciene, 2012). Bu nedenle, muhasebe sistemi karar alma sürecinde kullanılan finansal bilgi veren önemli bir role sahiptir (Butkevicius, 2009) (Christauskas & Miseviciene, 2012).…”

Cloud–Computing Based Accounting for Small to Medium Sized Business

“…The main objective of the accounting system is collection and recording of data and information regarding events that have an economic impact upon organizations and the maintenance, processing and communication of information to internal and external stakeholders (Christauskas, et al, 2002;Christauskas, et al, 2004;Jovarauskiene, et al, 2009;Girdzijauskas, et al, 2008;Kundeliene, 2011). The system plays a key role in providing the financial information for decision making within the organization (Butkevicius, 2009;Kalcinskaite, 2009, Kazlauskiene, et al, 2008. Information technologies have changed the nature of business significantly.…”