Question

Form groups of three or four people, and appoint one member as the spokesperson who will communicate your findings to the whole class when called upon by the instructor. Then discuss the following scenario.

You are a team of managing partners of a large firm of accountants. You are responsible for auditing your firm’s information systems to determine whether they are appropriate and up-to-date. To your surprise, you find that although your organization does have an email system in place and accountants are connected into a powerful network, most of the accountants (including partners) are not using this technology. You also find that the organizational hierarchy is still the preferred information system of the managing partners. Given this situation, you are concerned that your organization is not exploiting the opportunities offered by new information systems to obtain a competitive advantage. You have discussed this issue and are meeting to develop an action plan to get accountants to appreciate the need to learn, and to take advantage of, the potential of the new information technology. 1. What advantages can you tell accountants they will obtain when they use the new information technology? 2. What problems do you think you may encounter in convincing accountants to use the new information technology? 3. Discuss how you might make it easy for accountants to learn to use the new technology

Answer 1

Answer 1= The following advantages can be communicated to the accountants for using the new information technology=

The advent n the information system can help the accountant to have different types of business information instantaneously. The different types of technologies such as cloud computing are the main source of facilitating the relevant information to the relevant individuals.

There has been a number of accounting software that can be used by the accountants that can help in easing out their burden and many of the activities and tasks can be performed immediately

With the help of IS, the accountants can access to different information from anywhere and anytime this indicates that the IS are quite helpful in improving the mobility and accessibility

ID will also result in improved flexibility, productivity, improved processing and lesser time required to perform the tasks

Answer 2= Some of the problems can be as below=

As these accountants were not using the IS, so they can have a psychological barrier in learning the new methods and processes

They can be more comfortable with the current practice and thus want to avoid the new methods and systems

They can have the fear that their jobs may be replaced by the IS or these sorts of technologies.

They do not want to go through the training process again

They do not want to lose control over the information as with IS the information will be accessed from anywhere anytime by authorized individuals.

Answer 3- The following options can be utilized=

First of all, I would explain to them the benefits and the advantages these accountants are going to have from the new technology

I would exhibit them how to use the technology for the faster processing of the tasks

I would provide them the training on these technologies and if they have any sort of apprehension, I would try to resolve that

I would introduce them with the other accounts of other firms that are using the technology so that they can understand from them how the technology has helped in their job