Virgin Group Organisational Structure
Numerous expect the Virgin Group to be a multinational. However, such isn’t the situation. Every one of the three hundred odd organisations of the Virgin Group works independently, and Branson fills in an investor, executive, and advertising supremo. The majority of them are collaborating organisations that possess resources, utilise individuals, and offer products and ventures. These working organisations are owned and controlled by around twenty holding organisations. The Virgin Group has an exceptionally complicated structure. It has been named both as a brand diversifying activity and additionally a keiretsu. Be that as it may, given its construction, the Virgin Group can be securely named as an association with a keiretsu structure. A keiretsu is a gathering of associations, every one of which possesses shares in other associations in the group, and all of which cooperate to encourage the gathering’s advantages. Besides, such a long association with an intricate structure should be natural keeping in mind the end goal to have the capacity to adjust to changes in its condition. A physical structure advances adaptability, so individuals start to change and can adapt rapidly to evolving circumstances.
Considering every one of the individual organisations as an office giving an unusual item or administration, it is clear that they display detail departmentalisation. Item departmentalisation is the division of the bureaus of an association given the kind of thing or administration advertised. For instance, Virgin Mobile offers cell administrations while Virgin Records is a music name. In any case, the structure of the Virgin Group is complicated to the point that it is essential for it not merely to have one kind of departmentalisation. For example, Virgin Mobile has activities in a wide range of nations like the UK, India and Australia. Accordingly, the type of administration shifts in every one of these nations. This demonstrates Virgin Mobile additionally shows geographic departmentalisation. Geographic departmentalisation is the division of an association given the geographic area. Likewise, sort of administration and items moreover shifts relying upon the client base subsequently displaying client departmentalisation. Client departmentalisation is the division of an association in light of some clients it serves. Since the Virgin Group of organisations display such vast numbers of sorts of departmentalisations, the association, in general, is said to have a half-breed structure, which is a blend of at least two kinds of departmentalisations. This multi-divisional approach causes the Virgin Group to efficiently adjust to the social, mechanical and different powers in the locale it grows to.
The division of work and the pecking order is additionally a critical part of an association’s structure. The number of levels of expert, the control, and the measure of openness are vital factors in the best possible working of an association. As specified, the Virgin Group’s organisations work as partitioned associations. The organisations are a piece of a family as opposed to a pecking order. They are engaged to run their particular undertakings, yet the organisations help each other, and answers to issues regularly originate from inside the Group someplace. It could be said, Virgin is a region, with shared thoughts, qualities, interests and objectives. Branson himself has furnished every one of his representatives with the expert to settle on unsupervised choices in light of their instinct as opposed to following a hierarchy of leadership. This prompts the representatives having more trust in them and the administration. Since association among every one of the levels of the chain of command is advanced, it increments viable correspondence.
This is clear from the way that Branson by and by cooperates with representatives all the time to examine thoughts and accepting criticism. The Virgin Group conveys what needs be adequacy and viable correspondence. Virgin has a flat various levelled structure, and this empowers speedy and effective essential leadership. The level structure is one reason that the Virgin Group has possessed the capacity to venture into new pursuits. Also, a level structure permits a more extensive traverse of control and decentralisation. Traverse of a lever is the number of subordinates a director oversees straightforwardly. The decentralised structure of the Virgin Group gives more power in the hands of its representatives with regards to necessary leadership. Decentralization is the assignment of the expert to all levels of the chain of command. Branson trusts that the workers are the foundation of the organisation and consequently it is essential that they have enough association and specialist in central leadership.
Operational Problems
The Virgin Group involves such a large number of organisations, alongside a decentralised structure, it should hint at some authoritative administration. Be that as it may, Branson has guaranteed since the start to limit administration however much as could be expected since he endeavours to straighten the pecking order. An organisation is a structure in which individuals are considered responsible for their activities since they are required to act as per principles and standard working strategies.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Implementation in a Virgin airline
The carrier’s business is under immense weight from expanded rivalry, rising fuel costs and operational, monetary and security challenges. To conquer these difficulties, aircraft are searching out chances to diminish values and enhance business forms by creatively applying innovation. The following are a few illustrations how planes are gaining through the open doors being guaranteed or anticipated by Enterprise Resource Planning:
Virgin Atlantic intends to actualise certain modules of its framework, e.g. Financials, Human Resources, Payroll, and iLearning with Oracle over its workplaces.
Virgin Atlantic settled on the decision of Oracle on account of the cost and the benefit of having a coordinated framework for all the distinctive modules.
The carrier transports around four million travellers every year, and the presentation of the new Enterprise Resource Planning framework in the association will be staggeringly beneficial to the representatives working at Virgin Atlantic. Administration at the Company was overpowered by Oracle’s industry information and the closeness of the attack of its usefulness to their business necessities. The organisation is induced that the advantages of this venture will allow incredible returns for both regarding cost reserve funds and in business process improvement.
System Flowchart of the sales procedure 
Control Problems in ERP
Enterprise Resource Planning frameworks convey certain natural dangers and, without a very much planned control foundation, these dangers can offer ascent to both money related and operational issues in the Virgin. The usage, design and upkeep of an ideal blend of internal controls for dealing with these frameworks and their information are like this indispensable.
The dangers related with the general accomplishment of a frameworks venture were multifaceted application nature, absence of client experience, and lack of part clearness of part meanings of people on the undertaking. An absence of client bolster was critical for the hierarchical effect, while innovative freshness influenced framework quality fulfilment. Frameworks advancement was affected by the group’s general mastery, application intricacy and client experience, and frameworks utilise changed by part clearness and client encounter.
The primary hazard is the absence of control over the task group. This absence of power comes about because of the decentralisation of essential leadership and consequent inadequate confirmation of choices. Inside the setting of an Enterprise Resource Planning venture, to guarantee the collocation of learning with choice rights, it is regular for an association to frame an Enterprise Resource Planning framework execution venture group that includes people who have some particular critical information related with the usage of an Enterprise Resource Planning framework.
The second hazard is that an operational Enterprise Resource Planning framework most dependably brings about the devolution of duty and strengthening of lower-level representatives. Absence of sufficient controls over this expanded duty, either inside the Enterprise Resource Planning framework itself or in the procedures took after by the virgin gathering, is a potential business hazard.
In the majority of the Enterprise Resource Planning business’ discussion about the security of cloud ERP versus on-preface, the danger of information misfortune or trade-off, and the disturbance to business activities caused by hacking assaults, there stays confounding little say of the peril of an association’s representatives profiting by their managers’ shortcomings to line their own pockets or how ERP frameworks can keep this kind of circumstance.
While an ERP framework alone can’t and won’t shield organisations from this sort of wrongdoing, forms that guarantee an ERP framework is appropriately introduced, used and observed can give the governing rules essential to find unseemly action rapidly.
Part 2
Introduction
There are number of accounting software used across Australia. The country has number of small and large organizations that uses accounting software. Sonar argued that the use of accounting software depends on number of factors. The need of the accounting software for large organizations may not be the same as the need of the accounting software for small or mid-size organizations. By definition, accounting software defines a type of software that accounts and practices accounting communications inside practical units such as accounts receivable, accounts payable, trial balance and payroll. It purposes as an accounting data system. The objective of this paper is to discuss the literature review on the accounting software packages that are being used in Australia.
Development and adoption of the accounting software packages,
The market of accounting software is a matured market. The history of accounting software goes back to 1990s. Before 1990s, there were a number of players in the market. After 1990s, the market observed a consolidation phase. In the current market conditions, the market is divided into organized segment and unorganized segment. The large and third party players like Microsoft, Xero, Kashoo Accounting Software, Working Point Accounting software, etc. rules the market. The large companies would typically use the high end accounting software that could be integrated with the ERP (Employee Resource Planning) products. Generally the ERP systems like Microsoft Dynamics would have an integrated module of accounting.
The research suggests that the organizations can have various ways to use accounting software. The firms can use the ‘on premise’ installations of accounting software or the firms can use the cloud version of the accounting software. In recent times, there has been a trend in the industry of using the cloud based accounting software. In fact, the Australian market has witnessed a transformation from on-premise installation to cloud based accounting software.
Leader in the Market and its Competitive Advantage
In the field of organized accounting business, Microsoft is one of a market leader. Microsoft offers various types of accounting software installation options like on premise, on cloud, software as a service, platform as a service, etc. In recent times, the market share of Microsoft and other companies have seen an increase in the share of cloud based accounting software implementation. There are various advantages of cloud based accounting software. It helps the organizations to minimize the cost. With the on-cloud implementation, the organizations are not required to make any initial investment towards hardware. One of the difficult tasks for administration is to manage operational and capital expenses. The revenue collected from customers can help to manage operational expenses but the decisions around capital investments are always difficult to make. With ever changing technology and development, organizations operating in different industry have to make capital investment on regular and continuous basis and the use of cloud based accounting system enables the organization to optimize the operational expenses. It is imperative that employees, internal stakeholders and external stakeholders should support administration in these decisions.
Current Market Size
There was a time when the accounting software in Australia was primarily being used by the large organizations only. However, with the use of cloud computing and the use of cloud base accounting software implementation, the small organizations have also started to use the accounting software. The use of accounting systems and software also enables the organizations to emerge as process based organizations. The movement to a process-based organization is easier said than done; however, and Creed, Daly and his fellows warned the transformation into a process-based organization is a challenge despite what the books describe. From a top manager and middle manager perspective the shift toward integration means employee collaboration and centralization of certain functions and patience with the organization’s plans to achieve organizational outcomes. Cultivating cross-functional process teams will shift organizations to a process-based organization and cross-functional teams will help transform value added processes industry best practices.
There are various theories that describe the use of accounting software for firms in Australia and the firms at global level. Taylor’s theory has a huge impact on the contemporary organizational design being that it was one of the first designs to communicate how to effectively run an organization in a systematic manner with the use of integrated accounting software. The way this theory described the organization and people as a running machine puts in perspective how the organizations should be. Also, how Taylor states that the mind can be rebooted and programmed shows that the direction of an organizations can be done many differing ways and it is up to those who run it to determine how it should best run with the of ERP systems and accounting software. From this theory, many other theories can and have been birthed. This theory provides the perfect foundation to build upon in efforts to create many differing ways to establish a more contemporary designed organization.
Current Gaps
There are certain gaps in the current use of accounting software that could be bridged by the organizations. In fact, there are organizations that are working continuously to bridge this gap. One of the gaps is the limited use of accounting software by the large organizations. It is observed that the use of accounting software is at a good level for the large and established organizations. However, the small organizations in Australia are not able to make the extensive use of accounting software. Another observed gap is in the long term planning and use of accounting software. It is observed that organizations would make the decision to invest on the accounting software with a short-term vision. It is important that the organizations should have a long-term vision with the implementation of accounting software. Authors argued that the accounting software should be implemented as a part of the overall ERP or Information System implementation within the organization. The accounting software should not be considered as a stand-alone implementation. The organizations and stakeholders would be able to make the complete benefits of accounting software implementation only when the software is integrated with other IT systems used in the organization.
Another gap is in the limited use of accounting software and packages towards fraud detection. Granlund argued that the frauds and insider trading incidents like Enron could have been avoided with the use of accounting software at workplace. Therefore, it is recommended that the organizations should be able to take complete benefits from the implementation of accounting software. In a business relationship, accounting software can also be used to generate the trust factor. It should be even more important to work on the trust factor and to communicate a lack of action if something is in the way of being able to deliver of the promised item. It is recommended that the organizations should have a 360-degree view of the business operations while implementing the accounting software. The holistic understanding of the business operations would enable the organizations to derive the maximum benefits from the implementation of accounting software. The use of accounting software in Australia has evolved a lot and it is expected that this field would continue to evolve with the emergence of more and more players. The competition is already high among the existing players and it is expected that this competition would continue to increase.
Conclusion and recommendation
It is recommended that the organizations should first analyze the actual need of the accounting software from different perspective. The inputs from various internal and external stakeholders would enable the management to have a better understanding of need. Once the need of accounting software is established, the organization should decide the vendor and the product. There are various products in the market and various vendors. For some organizations, the Microsoft Dynamics is the best solution and for some of the organizations, XERO could be the best option. It is important that the organization should use the product that is best suited for their business. Once the organization has determined the product and vendor, the nest step for organizations would be to determine the platform to implement the accounting software.
There are many means to approach the application of your new accounting structure, and not unexpectedly, some methods work far well than others. The 1st step step in the operation of accounting software practice should begin using a detailed review of the industry necessities and procedures, to recognise what is operational well and that features of the business that might require development and modification. In a nutshell it can be said that the implementation of the accounting software should be the part of the overall business level strategy of the organization.
References
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