Business Process Description

Question: Give a brief description of Business Process. Answer: Description of Business Process:- A baker can be described as the person, who uses to bake and sell breads and cakes by using oven or other concerted heat source. The workplace, where the baker uses to make the products, is called bakery. Key Business Activities:- The key business activities of the bakery firm, mentioned in the case study are described below:- Production of Bakery Products:- The firm, mainly, concentrates on manufacturing bread and other confectionary products. It also focuses on the health factors of the products. Distribution of Products:- The firm, apart from manufacturing, also sells its products through various distribution channels, which include many supermarkets and pub-chains. Manual Accounting of Operation:- The firm maintains the accounts of its business activities manually. It has employed an accountant to record the accounts and also to prepare the financial statements annually. Staff Employment:- The firm has employed nearly 70 employees for conducting the business operation. It also maintains their salary accounts through manual process (Warren et al. 2013). Business Process Development:- Implementation of Crucial Business Processes:- The turnover of the firm in the last year was quite impressive and it can be stated that now it can be categorized under medium scale business. It has been described in the case study that the firm has been enjoying a steady growth over the few years due to some of its products (Turk et al. 2014). The main matter of concern is the lack of proper accounting and data recording system. The company should implement the following business processes to make its business activities more effective:- Determination of Cost of Sales:- The basic activity of the firm is manufacturing. Moreover, it use to manufacture various products, which include different materials and different processes. Therefore, the firm should implement a proper accounting system, which can determine the manufacturing cost of the products properly. Cost Effective Production Process:- The production system should be accounted in such a method, which can control the cost of the products and helps to develop more cost effective production system. Periodical Analysis:- As being a FMCG manufacturer, the firm should implement such procedure, which can analyze the financial performance of the firm over short periods. Proper Payroll Structure:- There must be a proper payroll structure and payroll accounting system for the payment of salary and other contributions, paid to the employees (Turk et al. 2014). Information Analysis:- There are various business related information, which should be preserved and analyzed properly through suitable techniques. Financial Statement Preparation:- Though the firm use to prepare financial statements every year, there should be a proper system by which firm can be able to prepare the basic structure of the financial statements at any part of the year with the financial information of that particular period. Tax Payment:- Tax is an important liability of any organization. Therefore, the firms should maintain such techniques or methods, which can make the tax return process easier (Leon 2015). Outcomes from the Proposed Processes:- The above mentioned processes can deliver the following outcomes, which can be proved to be very beneficial for the firm:- Better Pricing Strategy:- The cost of sales is the base of the selling price of any product or service. Therefore, by implementing proper costing system, the firm will be able to determine the accurate cost of sales. It will help the firm to determine the selling prices properly and change the pricing strategy, whenever required very easily. Cost Effective Production System:- It has been observed that in the manufacturing units, there are many indirect costs, which use to arise due to inefficient utilization of material or labor. Cost control system will be able to determine that factors, responsible for the inefficient usage and helps to eliminate or reduce such factors. Better control over the Financial Performances:- By the periodical analysis of the financial information, the firm will be analyze the financial performances of short accounting periods. Therefore, it will be very easy for the management to take necessary preventive measures, if the results of the analysis would come negative and also determine the positive traits for the success over a very short period and can utilize the factor for long term also. Increase the Profitability :- Hence, by eliminating or reducing the excessive cost factors and improving the efficiency level of production and other business activities, the firm can increase its profitability. Moreover, the firm can also analyze the information of the related market and the competitors to set their market strategies accordingly. Requirements in the Accounting Software:- Bakery requires such an accounting software, which use to have the following features:- Cost Analysis:- The accounting software should have some features that can effectively record the production cost and also can produce the reports whenever required. It will be better if it can show the comparison of the various cost items over the various periods (Robey et al. 2013). Record Documentation:- A medium scale business house use to have thousands of accounting transactions in a year. From the accounting perspectives, all the transactions are equally important and relevant for the financial statements. Even, financial statements of previous years are also required sometime for evaluating the business and its performance. Therefore, the software should have the system to record the data periodically so that whenever necessary, those information can be extracted from the system easily (Weygandt et al. 2015). Basic Financial Structure:- The accounting software should have the feature to facilitate the basic financial structures of a firm. There should be proper systems for accounting the debtors, creditors and inventories. It should also have the payroll accounting system to record the salary payments and other financial benefits of the employees. There must be some features to record the daily cash transactions and can also provide the brief summary of the financial statements in short intervals. Moreover, the accounting software can be operated through internal network of the firm and there should be some necessary security procedures so that only the selected persons can access the important features and information (Stice and Stice 2013). Software Selection:- Accounting Software Package Vendors:- As per the above mentioned requirements, three accounting package vendors are selected and the details of their individual accounting software packages are gone through from their respective websites (Kirchmer 2012). The vendors are SAP, MYOB and DacEasy. Selection of Accounting Software System:- There are various accounting software available in the market. The firm has to select the proper accounting software according its accounting system and business structure. The accounting software are classified into three different segments low, medium and high- end software. The features of these three types are explained below:- Low End Accounting Software:- Low end software is applicable for very small business houses and individual professionals, like advocates, doctors. It is mainly based on the single accounting system. Medium End Accounting Software:- Medium end software is based on the double entry system and cover the basic accounting features of any business entity. It can fulfill the primary requirements of profit-earning organizations. High End Accounting Software:- High end softwares are highly ptrogressive software, which can be very effective for advanced accounting system. The network system of the organization should be highly advanced for better application of such software (Christie 2012). Bakery should select medium end accounting software for its business operation. It can serve their purpose quite satisfactorily. Implementation of high-end accounting software is very costly and, moreover, it requires longer period to implement the system. Vendor Selection:- Comparison between the Accounting Software Packages:- The two accounting software packages meant for small and medium enterprises are DacEasy and MYOB. Both the softwares comprised of four sections and this include stock, pay structure, debtors and creditors. The financial reports of the enterprises can be constructed in a wide variety of ways. The analysis of the software has been done on the basis of several grounds and this include ease in using the software, options of reporting , helping in documentation , its scalability and costs and all the factors are discussed below (Dimaggio 2013). Assisting in documentation : Online and printed documents can be made available using both the software. Correct location in the index can be found by the DacEasy software. Variety of options is available by searching the help button on the screen whereas MOB has button attached to every screen and the information can be accessed quickly. Pay structure : The DacEasy helps in setting up direct deposits and it categorize the tax deposits, employees, month, quarter, yearend in order to administer the pay structure. The pay structure in MYOB can be administered by using several options but the employees status cannot be specified. Scalability and costs : The difference between the pricing of the two software is not significant . the single user version of both the software are sold but the multiple user version of the software are networked. Ease in using the software : Daceasy can be operated easily and the user has a option of navigating through the screen from section to section. The design of tool bars is not convenient for the user as it is not designed properly . on the other hand, the structure of MYOB is easy nad convenient to use . every accounting tasks is mapped by the systematic instruction which is of a great help for the beginners in the financial management. The process of installing the software is also easy. Any section of a particular program can be accessed quickly with the help of navigation bar. Time billing : The time billing option is not provided by the DacEasy software but the pay roll section which is provided can be filled with time billing data, so that the billing report at a time could be obtained. in case of MYOB , billing time with reference to the respective credit terms can be set. Options of reporting : The versatility of DacEasy in generating the report is less and can only produce fifty types of reports whereas MYOB is capable of producing over one hundred ninety types of reports and this would be quite helpful in capturing and presenting the information about vendor, employee details, about company and its customer (Leon 2015). Payable accounts or creditors : The vendor section in DacEasy provides with the options of tools of several accounts payable . printing cheques, managing vendors, and quotes and purchase order can be processed easily but the customization of the same cannot be done. MYOB supports electronic payment and the tax forms , purchase orders and quotes can be easily printed. The credit memos for the vendor cannot be created using this software (Hall 2012). Debtors or receivable of accounts : The details regarding the customers such as invoicing, sales , banking, forms, are sub categorized by this software. The items to be shipped cannot be estimated and invoices by email cannot be send using this software. On the other hand, the accounts receivable under MYOB can be managed easily . the calculation regarding the customer charges and incomes and also various charge relating to finance can be done easily. The costs of shipping and the cannot be estimated and the shipments cannot be tracked as the software does not provide any shipment tools (Kim and Feamster 2013.). Selection of the Suitable Accounting Software Package:- MYOB is more capable accounting software for the bakery business because it helps in producing a wide variety of financial reports and is quite user friendly. Though the coat of both the software packages are almost same and there is no significant difference between the costs. The installation process of MYOB is easy in comparison to DecEasy and its structure is quite easy. MYOB facilitates the transfer or say export and import of information and data to and from other software packages and this two way transfer facility is not available in DecEasy software program.. the types of reports produce by the MYOB is much more than the DecEasy, so it can be concluded that MYOB is more versatile than he DecEAsy. MYOB comes with the option of setting the billing time and no such option to set bill time is available in DecEasy. The cost of inventory items can be done by using both the methods of LIFO and FIFO and method of using average and standard costs as well, so it is far more versatile than the software of DecEasy. The beginners in financial management can use the MYOB software with ease as it has a systematic instruction of carrying every accounting tasks. Though some additional facilities should be provided so that the small and medium enterprises can carry out their activities with ease. The program of the software should support multiple users at security levels which are different and also they should provide for the transmitting the data over the internet or the company. MYOB provides the users with the printing facility and all the financial charges relating to the customers such as invoice, purchase orders, forms of tax can be printed easily. All the above points discussed above put the software MYOB in a better position to be used by the enterprises than the DecEasy. And it would be appropriate for the baking industry to install MYOB as their software program. Reference List:- Christie, A.M., 2012.Software process automation: the technology and its adoption. Springer Science Business Media Dimaggio, C., 2013.Introduction(pp. 1-5). Springer New York. Hall, J., 2012.Accounting information systems. Cengage Learning Kim, H. and Feamster, N., 2013. Improving network management with software defined networking.Communications Magazine, IEEE,51(2), pp.114-119. 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Assumptions underlying agile software development processes.arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.6610. Varastegani, B. and Yang, T.A., 2013. Tropical fruits: a new frontier in the bakery industry.International Journal of Medical Sciences and Biotechnology,1, pp.51-60. Warren, C., Reeve, J. and Duchac, J., 2013.Corporate financial accounting. Cengage Learning. Weygandt, J.J., Kimmel, P.D. and Kieso, D.E., 2015.Financial Managerial Accounting. John Wiley Sons