Paper given at the European Accounting Information Systems Conference 2002,

Copenhagen Business School, 23-24th April – http://accountingeducation.com/ecais.

Please do not cite without permission of the author.

Accounting Information Systems (AIS) Development/

Acquisition Approaches by Greek SME

Constantinos J. Stefanou
Associate Professor
Department of Accounting
Technological Educational Institution (T.E.I.) of Thessaloniki
P.O. BOX 14561
54101 Sindos, Greece
kstef@acc.teithe.gr

Abstract
This paper reports some findings from a wider pilot research study that addresses the
Accounting Information Systems (AIS) development/acquisition practices adopted by a
sample of Greek companies. Organizations, worldwide, realize that existing AIS are not
flexible enough to adapt to rapidly changing conditions induced by globalization and
new business paradigms. Many companies, despite high replacement costs, have
replaced their legacy systems with off-the-shelf systems in order to remain competitive.
In many case these efforts were not entirely successful. This paper, based on a mail
survey addressed to Chief Information Officers involved specifically in AIS
development/acquisition in Greek SME, provides a picture of current trends in Greece.
This study aims at improving practice and alerting researchers and managers of some of
the issues involved in the area of AIS related to flexibility and adaptability of systems to
changing conditions. It will also provide the basis for conducting a national survey
regarding AIS later this year.

Introduction
The emergence of the “virtual enterprise” in the 90’s has questioned the nature of the
traditional business and accounting information systems. Organizations realize that
monolithic and stand-alone business information systems cannot support critical
business processes and effective decision-making. Increasing competitive pressures
induced by globalization, technical advances in IT and communications and internal
pressures arising from business process re-engineering have forced many organizations
to invest heavily in enterprise applications and particularly in integrated ERP systems. In
addition, various development methodologies and techniques have been suggested as a
means to make information systems adapt rapidly to change (Avison and Fitzgerald,
1995). In this new environment, AIS play a significant role. However, traditional AIS
are far from being capable to adapt to change, support critical business processes and
models, and satisfy users’ information requirements, which are constantly changing over
time (Paul, 1994). Therefore, AIS have to be re-defined or “re-engineered” in light of

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 Paper given at the European Accounting Information Systems Conference 2002,
Copenhagen Business School, 23-24th April – http://accountingeducation.com/ecais.
Please do not cite without permission of the author.
these new developments and extend substantially their scope to encompass decision
support functionality (Brecht and Martin, 1996). This means that a significant
investment in AIS should be leveraged, which requires top management support and
belief that spending on AIS is wisely invested. Although an extended range of issues is
involved here, the paper is focused on the practices followed by a sample of Greek SME
in AIS development/ acquisition. The findings will hopefully provide a basis for future
research addressing a range of AIS issues related to AIS flexibility and adaptability in an
increasingly turbulent environment.

AIS Flexibility and Development/Acquisition Approaches - Research

Objectives

In the new area of globalization and continuous change, enterprises have responded by
replacing legacy systems and investing heavily in information technology. During the
last decade, the majority of large organizations worldwide adopted ERP systems as a
means to integrate applications systems and remain competitive. Although a large
number of ERP implementations have not been entirely or at all successful (Appleton,
1997; Themistocleous et al., 2001), ERP is now the prevailing form of computing in
large organizations in the private and public sector (Gable, 2000). However, it is
questionable whether ERP render organizations more flexible and adaptive to change.
One of the objectives of this study is to investigate whether small to medium
organizations have acquired ERP systems and what are ERP’s strengths and weaknesses
in this particular context.

In general, packaged applications acquisition is still a matter of controversy among both

IS academics and practitioners. It has been suggested that no IS scholar or anyone else
really knows how new software applications are being introduced into the firms (Zmud,
1997). It is also questionable whether findings from previous research are currently
valid. For example, a range of influence factors, such as systems ease of use suggested
in previous studies (see, e.g., Montazemi, 1996) is questionable whether and to what
degree influence decisions concerning the acquisition of modern complex systems, such
as ERP systems (Stefanou, 2001b). Nevertheless, a lot of work has been done recently in
this area. For example, it has been argued that the reasons for adopting ERP can be
technical, such as the desire to reduce mainframe system operating costs and/or
business, such as the necessity to acquire software, which can support a certain
production mode (Markus and Tannis, 2000). As it has been pointed out a decade ago
(Rosenthal and Salzman, 1990) the acquisition of software is not just a technical issue
but also an important strategic one. The acquisition of applications software and
especially ERP software could have profound implications on a number of vital business
issues such as customer service quality. It can also tie up a large amount of company
resources, which could prevent the company of disposing them to other profitable
business activities. Considering the above, another aim of the paper is to identify
managers’ intentions about acquiring packaged software and the reasons supporting
these intentions.

New business models based on collaboration require compatibility of accounting

systems and accounting information sharing to minimize costs in supply chains

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 Paper given at the European Accounting Information Systems Conference 2002,
Copenhagen Business School, 23-24th April – http://accountingeducation.com/ecais.
Please do not cite without permission of the author.
(Drucker, 1995). This paper investigates whether AIS operating in the surveyed
organizations share information with business partners or distribute information inside
organizations.

Finally, as it has been reported in a 1998 paper studying IS investment priorities in the
US (Grover et al., 1998), there is evidence to suggest that Decision Support Systems
(DSS) and transaction processing/information reporting systems are not ranking high in
management investment priorities and are not considered critical to organizational
performance. Yet, they absorb a large portion of IS/IT budgets for development and
enhancement/maintenance purposes. The cost for enhancement maintenance of
information systems in general, due to changes in user information requirements, is not
negligible and can be an extremely high percentage in total maintenance costs
(Fitzgerald, 1990). This paper investigates the extent of top management support given
to AIS projects and the maintenance effort exercised by the IT departments of the
surveyed organizations.

Research Methodology
Survey Methods

The study is based on a survey of 44 CIOs of 256 companies in the industrial area of
Thessaloniki, Greece. These are all the companies in the Thessaloniki area with
revenues exceeding 8 million Euro. By applying the criterion of the number of people
employed, these enterprises are considered small to medium by international standards.
The survey is a part of a wider pilot research including a questionnaire addressed to
chief accountants of the same organizations, which is not reported here. The survey was
constructed by following standard guidelines for the design of research surveys
proposed by Dillman (1978).

A total of 256 questionnaires, accompanied with a pre-paid self addressed envelope and
a cover letter explaining the purpose of the research, the voluntary nature of the
participation and assuring participants of confidentiality, were mailed to chief
information officer of each company. The list of organizations was compiled by using
the ICAP (Index of Companies and Products) directory, a widely accepted database
containing information about Greek companies. A second letter, including a
questionnaire form, was sent 3 weeks later, thanking those who answered the
questionnaire and reminding those who did not to return it by a specified date. From the
256 questionnaires mailed to CIOs, 44 usable received, 13 of them after the follow-up.
The rate of response was an expected 17.2% considering the return rate of similar mail
surveys. Although the sample is rather small, the findings are indicative of the current
trends concerning AIS development and acquisition in Greek SME.

Measures

AIS is pre-eminently a user-oriented system, which collects and records information

regarding events that have an economic impact upon organizations and maintains,
processes and communicates information to internal and external stakeholders (Meigs

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 Paper given at the European Accounting Information Systems Conference 2002,
Copenhagen Business School, 23-24th April – http://accountingeducation.com/ecais.
Please do not cite without permission of the author.
and Meigs, 1993). Practically, in this study, AIS was defined to include either
enterprise-wide packages with any of the financial/cost accounting and control modules
installed or any of the following integrated or stand-alone accounting subsystems and
applications: financial accounting, cost accounting, management accounting, inventory-
sales-purchases management and payroll applications. This was made clear in the cover
letter accompanying the questionnaire.

The questionnaire consisted of 3 parts. The first part, devoted to AIS Development and
Maintenance Environment, included questions regarding the development method of the
particular AIS used (module of ERP package, non-ERP package, bespoke in-house or
outsourced development) and the percentages of the developers’ efforts, according to
CIOs estimates, devoted to various type of AIS maintenance.

The second part of the questionnaire incorporated Likert-type questions measuring top
management support and user participation in AIS projects, two of the most cited
variables in IS implementation literature. These questions, presented below, were
compiled by the author after a search of the IS development and implementation
literature and discussions with colleagues

The third part sought to investigate strengths and weaknesses of ERP implementations,
as ERP is now the prevailing form of business and accounting computing worldwide. A
section with questions concerning managers’ beliefs towards ERP acquisition was
included as well a section regarding AIS information sharing.

In addition, demographic variables, such as the age and education of the respondents and
organizational variables such as the type of industry and size of the IT department were
included.

Sample Characteristics

A variety of industries is represented in the sample (Table I). Fifty per cent of the
respondents was between 27-34 years old and 34.1 per cent was between 35-44 years
old. 9.1 per cent of them were female. As far as the educational level is concerned, it is
worth noting that 40.9 per cent held a postgraduate degree and only 6.8 per cent held a
college degree and received further education at technical schools. The size of the IT
departments is rather small as 72.7 per cent of the IT departments employed 1-4 people
and only 2.3 per cent employed more than 20 people. 18.2 per cent employed between 5-
8 people. The majority (45.5%) of the respondents were Chief Information Officers, to
whom the questionnaire was personally mailed. 13.6% of the respondents classified
themselves as “IS project managers” and 4.5 per cent as programmers.

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 Paper given at the European Accounting Information Systems Conference 2002,
Copenhagen Business School, 23-24th April – http://accountingeducation.com/ecais.
Please do not cite without permission of the author.
Table I Sample characteristics

Main activity of organization (%)

Finance/Banking/Insurance 15.9
Retail 9.1
Food processing 18.2
Chemical processing 6.8
Textiles 13.6
Manufacturing 20.5
Hotels/Catering 6.8
Other 9.1

Education of respondents (%)

University degree 52.3
Postgraduate degree 40.9
Technical School (after college) 6.8

Role of respondents (%)

CIO 45.5
Analyst / Programmer 29.5
IS project manager 13.6
Systems Analyst 6.8
Programmer 4.5

Data Analysis and Discussion

AIS Development and Maintenance Environment

Table II depicts the type of AIS development environment in the surveyed

organizations. It was found that 24.3 per cent of the organizations have implemented
ERP systems. The average operation period of the majority of ERP systems, after the
implementation period, is 30 months. It should be noted that off-the-shelf packages
account for 49.0 per cent of the development/acquisition approaches and only 8.6 per
cent of AIS has been developed in-house. The category “other” in Table II refers to
various combinations of approaches. This is contrasted with a 1998 U.K. survey, where
it was found that despite the trend towards packages and outsourcing, in-house
development of information systems in general was close to 50% (Fitzgerald et al.,
1998). The different trends can be attributed to the different size and technology
architecture of companies in Greece and UK. It is logical to assume, that larger
companies, which have invested heavily in IT/IS in the past, find difficult to change
their IS while smaller companies which they couldn’t afford large IT departments
adopted packaged solutions. It is also probable that smaller companies are more flexible
in acquiring modern technology if they can afford it.

The trend towards acquiring off-the-shelf AIS was also identified by the responses to the
following question: “With regard to your next AIS or accounting application (e.g.
financial accounting) when your organization change it, which of the following

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 Paper given at the European Accounting Information Systems Conference 2002,
Copenhagen Business School, 23-24th April – http://accountingeducation.com/ecais.
Please do not cite without permission of the author.
development/acquisition approaches do you consider to be the most appropriate?”.
“Packaged software” was by far the first choice by 73.2 per cent. “Outsourcing to a
software house” and “in-house development” followed by 24.4 and only 2.4 per cent
respectively.

It is also worth mentioning, that probably, the percentage of ERP systems (Table II)
includes systems developed by local vendors and advertised as ERP, as it is known from
statistics that the penetration of the big multinational ERP vendors is not so big in
Greece, considering also the size of the organizations. It should be noted, however, that
the findings of a national survey of the largest Greek companies (Stefanou et al., 2001)
are quite similar, except from the fact that 12.4 and 13.0 per cent of the companies have
installed bolt-on CRM and SCM applications respectively. The average operation period
of these applications is 14.5 months, which shows that this is a new market for Greece.
The penetration of specialized CRM and SCM packages is rather small considering the
fact that the national survey was addressed to the largest Greek companies. These
findings suggest that there is probably a large market for vendors of both core ERP and
SCM/CRM systems to enter.

Table II AIS development environment

(%)
ERP systems 26.2
Packaged accounting applications (commercial non-ERP packages) 26.1
Bespoke development outsourced (to software houses) 22.7
In-house development and outsourced to software houses 13.6
Bespoke in-house development 6.8
Other 4.5

Table III presents the percentages of the efforts devoted by AIS developers, as estimated
by CIOs, to the development, maintenance and research or other activities related to
AIS. A large percentage, 65.7 of their total effort is devoted to maintenance, which
indicates that this area consumes a great portion of the IS/IT budget, probably at the
expense of other activities. Findings, nevertheless, are consistent with previous research
in the IS field (Fitzgerald et al., 1998). However, it is not known whether the figures
reported here refer to legacy AIS environments or to environments with newly
implemented AIS.

Table III AIS developers’ activities

(%)
AIS maintenance 65.7
AIS development 30.3
Other activities (e.g. AIS research, user support, etc.) 3.9

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 Paper given at the European Accounting Information Systems Conference 2002,
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Please do not cite without permission of the author.
The above finding suggests that there is enough room to increase performance in case
there was an improvement in this particular aspect. It is also worth mentioning that all
common types of maintenance receive AIS developers’ attention as depicted in Table
IV. However, the percentage of perfective maintenance, which can be mainly attributed
to efforts devoted for the satisfaction of new information needs, is the largest of the
three, indicating that flexibility and adaptability of the accounting software are still
important requests. The follow up survey will seek to identify more specific causes of
AIS change.

Table IV AIS maintenance

(%)
Corrective maintenance (error correction) 22.1
Adaptive maintenance (e.g. new software releases updating) 37.6
Perfective maintenance (e.g. new user information needs) 40.3

AIS Development Methods and Tools

The survey investigated the extent to which a typical methodology is used for AIS
development/acquisition. The findings suggest that much improvement is required in
this particular area. More specifically, only 11.4 per cent use “always” or “most of the
time” a standard, formal method to develop or select and purchase an AIS or an
accounting application. 68.2 per cent of the respondents “never” or “rarely” adopt a
formal method for AIS development/acquisition. In addition, only 4.6 and 11.1 per cent
of the respondents use CASE tools and 4GLs, respectively, as far as AIS development /
selection is concerned.

AIS Implementation Factors

The survey sought to investigate two significant factors for successful IS

development/implementation according to IS theory, that is, top management support
and user participation in system development process. Two questions with a reliability
factor of Cronbach’s a=.92 measured top management support:

a. Top management feels that resource spending for AIS is useful for the company
b. Top management is actively involved in projects related to AIS

It should be noted that the questionnaire included two more questions on that issue, both
of which, however, were eliminated from further analysis by using the corrected–item
total correlation criterion.

Four questions with a reliability factor of a=.87 measured accountants’ participation in

the design /development /implementation process of AIS:

a. Accountants influence decisions regarding AIS design or package selection

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 Paper given at the European Accounting Information Systems Conference 2002,
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Please do not cite without permission of the author.
b. Accountants play a significant role in the requirements analysis phase of AIS
c. Participation of accountants in the development phase of AIS is adequate
d. Participation of accountants in the implementation phase of AIS is adequate

Using the above composite measures, the findings suggest that participation of
accountants in AIS project development /implementation is not very strong (Table V).
Although it is possible that bias is present in these questions as most of respondents
chose to tick the middle answer, this seems to be an area that needs major improvement.
In contrast, most respondents believe that AIS projects have strong top management
support.

Table V Top management support and user participation in AIS projects

Agree Disagree
strongly / strongly /
a little a little
(%) (%)
Top management support in AIS projects is adequate 79.5 4.6
User participation in AIS projects is adequate 28.6 11.9

ERP Implementations: Advantages, Disadvantages and IT Managers’ Intentions

Despite the fact that a number of SME have implemented ERP systems, ERP is not
regarded generally suitable for small enterprises. The survey sought information on the
advantages and disadvantages of ERP implementations according to IT managers’
opinions, of those organizations that had implemented ERP systems. These are depicted
in Tables VI and VII respectively.

Table VI ERP advantages / strengths

(%)
1. Common data interfaces / accounting applications integration 81.8
2. Major organizational change 81.8
3. Easier review and maintenance 81.8
4. Easy distribution of information among organizational 72.7
departments/functions
5. Lower maintenance cost 72.7
6. Scalability 66.7
7. Reporting capabilities 63.6
8. Lower acquisition cost compared to other AIS development 63.6
approaches
9. Data security / integrity 54.5
10. Easy distribution of information to customers/suppliers 54.5
11. Internet compatibility 45.5
12. Customizability / adaptability to changing conditions 25.0

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Table VII ERP disadvantages / weaknesses

(%)
1. Implementation cost 72.7
2. Implementation duration 63.6
3. Reliance on external consultants 54.5
4. Migration cost 36.4
5. Software acquisition cost 36.4
6. Extensive user training 27.3
7. Difficult modification of applications 9.1
8. Major organizational change 9.1
9. User resistance 9.1

The survey also investigated the intentions of IT managers concerning the acquisition of
ERP systems, in organizations that had not implemented ERP systems. 40.6 per cent of
the respondents answered they intended to implement an ERP solution (31.8 per cent of
them intended to do so in the next two years) and 59.4 per cent had no such intention.
Without specifying any answers in the questionnaire, the reasons given by managers for
ERP acquisition, in order of significance, are presented in Table VIII.

Table VIII Reasons for ERP implementation

• Common data interfaces

• Applications integration
• Disciplined business processes
• Real time information across the organization
• Sharing of information with customers and suppliers
• GUI
• Euro compliance

It should be noted that IT managers who had implemented ERP systems indicated
exactly the same first two advantages of ERP as managers who intent to acquire the
software. Most common reasons given against ERP, in order of significance, are
presented in Table IX.

Table IX Reasons against ERP implementation

• Software purchase cost

• Size of company
• Implementation cost
• Implementation duration
• Major organizational changes
• Not high enough anticipated ROI
• Company is well served by existing systems

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It should be noted that although some customization of the ERP software, according to
specific business needs, is inevitable major customization of the software aiming at
adapting it to existing business processes is time and resource consuming and certainly
not recommended (e.g., Davenport, 1996). Therefore, most organizations reengineer
their processes in order to make them compatible to software’s requirements and
embedded industry best practices. This is often a source of major organizational change.
In this study, “major organizational change” is seen by the respondents both as an
advantage and as a disadvantage of ERP systems. Probably, those who think that current
business processes are inefficient or ineffective and need substantial improvement tend
to view organizational change as a prerequisite for increasing performance. Others,
perhaps more conservative towards change, classify organizational change as a
disadvantage that comes together with ERP implementation.

Accounting Information Sharing

As explained above, the questionnaire sought also the opinions of CIOs regarding the
extent to which their AIS distributes on-line, updated information to organizational
departments or functions and shares accounting data with external business partners,
customers and suppliers and their opinion whether AIS should do that. Although these
opinions were measured by using single questions, they are presented here as they may
provide an indication of the attitudes of the respondents in some critical areas for
contemporary AIS (see Table X). As has been discussed above, it was suggested that
information sharing with external business partners is essential for achieving cost
minimization and this probably requires compatible accounting systems (Drucker,
1995). Information sharing has been also identified as a key success factor for ERP
implementations in SCM environments (Stefanou, 2001).

It is worth mentioning, that according to Forrester Research, half of the first 50 Fortune
1000 companies have been sharing inventory and capacity data with their supply chain
partners and 76 per cent intended to do so in the year 2001. However, financial
information is currently shared by only 4 per cent and it was estimated that in year 2001
this figure would rise to 20 per cent (Henriott, 1999). Although this is understandable,
because of past habits and of the sensitivity and discretion of financial information, it
seems on the other hand that it is necessary to share a great deal of this kind of
information in order to achieve business optimization across the value chain.

Table X Accounting information sharing/distribution

Much/ Not at all/

Very much Very little
To what extent your AIS: (%) (%)
Provides on-line updated information across 65.9 9.1
organizational departments/functions?
Permits on-line access to information to your business 11.6 83.7
partners, customers and suppliers?

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Agree Disagree
strongly / strongly /
a little a little
Do you agree that your AIS should: (%) (%)
Provide on-line updated information across 95.3 0.0
organizational departments/functions?
Permit on-line access to information to your business 57.5 30.0
partners, customers and suppliers?

As it can be seen from Table X, nearly all respondents agree that AIS should provide on-
line information across the organization. However, 30 per cent disagree strongly or little
with the possibility of organization’s customers and suppliers having on-line access to
AIS information. The percentage is in fact higher when accountants are asked about this
issue. Compatibility of information systems between organizations and information
sharing along the supply chain increase customer service and performance but it seems
that IT managers and accountants have not yet realized the importance of this issue. This
conviction was reinforced by the response to the accompanying statement “The most
efficient type of enterprise in the future will be the virtual enterprise” which was
received favorably (agree strongly or agree a little) by 37.1 per cent of the respondents.

Conclusion
This study was primarily concerned with identifying the approaches adopted by a
sample of Greek SME to develop or purchase AIS. It also identified the attitudes of the
IT managers towards ERP systems acquisition and information sharing. The empirical
findings of the study indicate that there are some problematic areas in AIS development.
Firstly, the lack of a development/acquisition methodology in the majority of cases
might result in misspecification of requirements and ineffective, inefficient and
inflexible AIS. This is further supported by the findings regarding inadequate
accountants’ participation in the development/implementation process. Secondly, a large
portion of IS/IT budgets is absorbed by AIS maintenance, which suggests that there is
room for improvement in this particular area. This may be also a factor driving
organizations to outsourced development and packaged software. Outsourcing of AIS to
an Application Server Provider (ASP) might be also an approach to be adopted by many
SME in the near future and this is certainly an area for further research.

The study established that there is a significant trend towards packaged accounting
software. Off-the-shelf accounting systems are now the preferred method of acquiring
AIS. This trend is consistent with findings of other studies that researched specifically
AIS (e.g., Seddon et al., 1992).

Finally, although not investigated in-depth, it seems that the view of AIS by IT
managers is still quite conventional. This suggests that an organizational “openness”,
which will be reflected in the willingness for information sharing, should be developed
by enterprises that base their businesses on partnerships and collaborations.

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 Paper given at the European Accounting Information Systems Conference 2002,
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Please do not cite without permission of the author.
The findings will hopefully stimulate IT managers to consider the significance of AIS
for today’s environment and the importance of applying formal methods for the
development and implementation of AIS in order to deliver the most appropriate system
and create value for the company. It should be noted that the survey was addressed to IT
mangers. Maybe the findings would be different in case the respondents were more
business and not IT-related. It should be also noted that the findings of the survey should
be interpreted with caution, as they may not hold for other samples. The follow up study
that will be conducted later this year will seek to investigate a number of related issues,
such as the specific causes for changing existing AIS, the relationship between types of
AIS and organizational structure, the AIS adoption mechanisms and the relationship
between AIS performance and its adaptability to changing conditions.

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