Almost a third of organisations feel that their financial
systems have failed to meet all their original business objectives,
according to research commissioned by theNational Computing Centre's
Evaluation Centre.
In the survey of 100 businesses, 43% blamed the lack of success
on a failure to change internal business processes, 38% said the
system does not work in the way the company would like to operate,
and 29% believed the system was too complex.
Users expressed concerns over the cost of implementing the
software and the cost of maintenance and software upgrades. Steve
Fox, managing director at Evaluation Centre, said, "While companies
are generally happy with the quality and functionality of their
systems, they would like to see their ongoing costs reduced,
especially in the current climate."
The NCC research identified two technologies that stood out as
having the most impact on the development of financial and
accounting systems. The first, mentioned by 69% of respondents, was
workflow and business process management, which the NCC said was
being used by organisations to make their internal operations as
efficient and effective as possible. The second was financial
reporting tools (59%), which were becoming increasingly important
for organisations to analyse their data more effectively.
