Identification of Critical Success Factors and Primary Objectives

In this report the success factors of ANZ bank which is one of the leading banking companies in Australia has been discussed along with identification of their objectives and information sources that can be useful for evaluation of these objectives. Also organisational chart of ANZ has been provided along with analysis of their existing systems and their weakness. Further a new information system is proposed and its features are discussed to improve effectiveness of bank.  

Discussion

1. 1. ANZ banks critical success factors are its financial performance in 2017 where their statutory profits reached 6.4 billion USD which rose by 12%. Further they also projected a good performance in cash profit generation in ear 2017 that excluded noncore items from statutory profits and these were around 6.9 billion USD, showing a rise of 18%. The financial outcomes of F2017 reflected that ANZ bank was rapidly moving closer to their profit targets which is a factor for their success (ANZ 2017). Other than this in faster economic, technological and social change ANZ bank has been able to hold its position of one of Australia’s major banks and this has been possible due to their strategic clarity that was backed with firm actions to ensure that ANZ bank was fit and prepared for future success.
2. The factors that lead to this success was their good progressive approach to become a better balanced, better capitalised and more proficient bank and this made ANZ bank emerge in a new shape. Their retail and commercial segment of business within Australia and New Zealand accounted for nearly 53% of their capital for 2017 which rose by 44% as compared to year 2015. Also ANZ bank’s Common Equity Tier One capital ratio marked at 10.6% at end of FY2017 and their cost base lowered in absolute terms with annual cost being dropped for first time ever since 1999. This was a critical success highlight factor for ANZ bank which made them more efficient bank that paid out 4.6 billion USD as dividends in 2017 (ANZ 2017).

In 2015 it was evident that ANZ needed to reshape for future though being a robust and successful business in Australia region because of the reality that current external environment was rapidly changing as against ANZ’s slow pace of change. So they needed to speed up their strategy as their customers, community and shareholders had huge set of expectations from ANZ bank. As such to ensure that ANZ adapted more rapidly to changes and expectations they simplified their strategic approach focusing on being the most suitable bank for people who desired to purchase and own homes and also focused on customers who looked to start up their own business. Hence the success factor for ANZ in 2017 was their strategic change towards Institutional banking where their goal was to become best fitted bank for people who wanted to move money and goods across the Asia-Pacific region.

This made ANZ focus their resources on areas where they had competitive edge and which led them win (ANZ  2017 a).  Apart from this ANZ also made some hard strategic decisions for success by focusing their strategy on what they were not good enough. So ANZ chose to sell investments where they were not developing their brand or where they mounted unnecessary complexity. For instance, these decisions included divestment of ANZ’s pension and investment business in Australia, retail and wealth business in 6 Asian nations.

Strategic options for success included considerable reshaping of ANZ’s Institutional Banking business as approach to improve the capital allocation and build returns. This strategic factor made ANZ bank further reduce their Credit Risk Weighted Assets by 18 billion USD in 2017 thus leading the overall reduction since 2015 to 46 billion USD or by 27% (ANZ  2017 a).  This was a vital factor for success in 2017 business of ANZ bank. Moreover they also focused on small customers who valued capacities and network of ANZ including their presence in Asia. 

The primary objective of ANZ bank is being fair and balanced in their approach towards issues and for initiating actions to fulfil expectations of their customers, employees and community.  For instance for customers the primary objective of ANZ bank is making banking equitable and simple assisted with enhanced focus on innovation. Like ANZ bank created mobile payments facilities for their customers with help of Apple Pay and Android Pay with introduction of Samsung Pay and FitBit Pay. Also the primary objective of ANZ bank is to make payment process simplified for their corporate customers too with help of mobile payments that are significant for small business and thus launched BladePay to reinforce their growth opportunities (ANZ Profile 2018).  

Organizational Chart and Analysis of Existing System and its Weaknesses

Another primary objective of ANZ bank is to provide value proposition in customer services for which they introduced voice activated transaction platform named MyVoice to recognise and provide security to payment transaction solutions within Australia and New Zealand. Some other objectives of ANZ bank is to strengthen profit generation and hold their position in ranking as major bank in Australia with focus on cash returns to equity and building more investment channels. Also sustainable growth and bringing social and economic participation is other objectives of ANZ bank which would make them a responsible bank (ANZ Profile 2018).  

The kinds of information that will be helpful in evaluation of the objectives and their current fulfilment of business goals are many such as ANZ banks Corporate Sustainability Report will be useful in examining their current and actual performance in meeting objective of sustainable growth.  In 2017 ANZ offered nearly 131 million USD towards community investments and more than 496,900 people were connected through ANZ’s financial education program called MoneyMinded. After ANZ signed a public statement of support for Sustainable Development Goals of UN in 2016 they made significant improvement to deliver sustainability targets. Like in 2017 ANZ partnered with Impact Investment Exchange to create Women Livelihood Bonds (WLB).

Sales of WLB are used to offer loans to microfinance companies across Southeast Asia which supports women in some of their most susceptible communities. By supporting borrowers ANZ has achieved success in lending support through WLB to assist over 385,000 women across Cambodia, Vietnam and Philippines (ANZ 2017 b).   Also to attain social and economic participation objective the reports of Sustainability and Diversity Framework of ANZ can be used for evaluation which reflects that they have employed around 250 staffs in 2017 from under privileged group and to encourage diversity they have nearly 41.5% women engaged in managerial positions (ANZ 2017 b).

Also ANZ’s environment sustainability report reflects that they have attained responsive business lending with support to agreement of climate change that focuses to limit their actions to climate change statement of setting no more than 2 degree pre-industrial level to average global temperature. ANZ in 2017 has reduced around 20% of their greenhouse gas emissions and funded about 6.9 billion USD to promote low carbon and sustainable solutions. (ANZ 2017 c). Further Code of Banking Practices Report of ANZ will help to evaluate their fairness and ethical conduct towards customers and other shareholders. .

According to this report ANZ has set fair standards of good banking practices by maintaining codes of practice in areas of commitment and general obligation to customers and guarantors, providing information on banking services and resolving disputes by monitoring and sanctioned practices. Also Annual Business report of ANZ reflects their financial performance in context to profit and revenue generation, operations performance, governance and delivering of information to shareholders and approach to risk management to add value as responsible business.

ANZ bank’s mission is create a balance and sustainable economy where all people and communities can live and participate to build better life through unravelled possibilities to facilitate trade and commerce that can support families, business and society. ANZ mission statement believes that banking is more than just finance and is more about strengthening relationships that adds value by connecting to people and business to build a strong, inclusive and dynamic financially capable community. 

1. The organisational chart of ANZ bank is:

Proposed New System Features and Options

Source: The Official Board ANZ bank (2018)

1. Different business units, processes, and managerial skills are integrated by the current CRM system of ANZ for maintaining a competitive position in the market in particular the rising trend of net banking services, which has emerged as the one of core strengths of the banks and has significantly contributed in expanding the market share. ANZ’s CRM system also connects its business partners further standardizing the operations amid front office staffs and supporting teams. Besides, accounting systems inside bank and e-customer service is facilitated by the sharing of information and knowledge amidst all business units. For developing marketing opportunities a customer database is maintained by ANZ (Chuang and Hu, 2015). For sustaining its competitive position ANZ has streamlined the accounting processing system online empowering customers to apply for personal loan applications without physically visiting their nearby branches.
2. ANZ’s CRM system is also associated with knowledge management contributing in resolving problems and decision-makings in an effective way besides allowing the loan officers easily identifying the potential defaulting and high risk customers and doing customer profiling. To implement a CRM system successfully, it is important that people, processes, culture, and working environment are effectively collaborated and managed. E-transformation vision of ANZ gives direction to the banks towards a significant path by utilizing its technological competencies for increasing the scope of creating and sharing information in a better way for both employees and other end users done through intranet server. However, the IT system of ANZ has certain weakness (Head, 2016). The internal complexities within the technology infrastructure of the bank have raised difficulties in its accounting services that is far from digital serenity further making the job hard for its employees besides making change and driving customer experiences tough.
3. Despite of its competitors embarking on the up gradation of wide-scale core systems, ANZ has chose not to do so. The biggest barrier in its path to innovation in the bank is pressure mounted from internal stakeholders and not regulatory. Moving the internal stakeholders along is become the biggest challenge for ANZ as they believe that when they are invested in something it is very successful.
4. . The new Information System which can be proposed to ANZ bank is Accounting Information System whose main purpose is to gather, store and undertake various financial and accounting data and to provide various information and useful reports by analysing the data which can used by the managers or other decision makers of an organization to make business decisions which are effective and productive in nature and which helps the organization to gain competitive advantage in the market. As stated by Caraiman Adrian-Cosmin (2015) there are various parts of the Accounting Information System which helps the system to provide useful and informational data to the decision makers of an organization to make effective decisions which consists of the inputs that goes within system software which are generally computer programs that are used for processing data to operate information system and internal controls.

The features of the accounting information system are as follows:

• The Accounting Information System mainly manages transactions which are financial in character
• The Accounting Information System fulfils need for information of both the internal users of company which includes customers, shareholders, investors etc. and also of the external users of the company such as the top level management of an organization.
• As stated by FarhadHanifi and AsgarTaleei (2015) the Accounting Information System is simple and well-structured in nature and the procedures used in the processing of the financial data are defined by various professional bodies.
• The Accounting Information System mainly utilizes historical data for data processing and analysis but also uses future data.
• The source of data of Accounting Information System is internal to an organization and are therefore well controlled, well defined and integrated in nature.

As opined by Peña-Miguel and De La Peña (2018) the Accounting Information System is the best information system solution for ANZ bank as it will help in increasing the effectiveness of the decision making of the company by providing valuable informational reports to the top management of the ANZ bank by analysing historical data and also future data in the form of budget which will enable the bank and its other stakeholders to take important decisions based on analysis of information and not just simply by forecasting and estimating which will in turn help in increasing the effectiveness of the ANZ bank in the banking industry and also help the bank to earn a competitive advantage in the market.

As opined by Demyanenko and Rozhelyuk (2016) the Accounting Information System is the best information system solution for ANZ bank as it also helps the bank to focus on cost effectiveness by reducing various operational expenses of the company. The implementation of The Accounting Information System in ANZ bank will help in the automation of the financial transaction and record keeping of the company which otherwise requires large involvement of human resources and therefore it will help in cost savings of the company.

There are different types of Information System which are currently being used in the market which has the capability to offer flexibility and profitability to the business operations of an organization considering their characteristics and the benefits which they offer to the companies. The various relevant Information System and their characteristics are as follows.

Materials Requirement Planning or MRP is described as archetype which utilizes bills of materials data, inventory data and the master production schedule in order to compute the requisites of materials for an organization. MRP helps in making recommendation to an organization to produce restock orders for materials. As MRP is time-phased in nature and recommends organization to reschedule open orders when due dates and need dates are not in sync. According to Díaz-Madroñero, Mula and Jiménez (2014) the time-phased MRP starts with items which are listed on Materials Planning System (MPS) and helps in determining quantity of components and the materials needed to assemble and also helps in determining the date that the component and the materials are required by the company.

Manufacturing Resource Planning or MRPII is defined as archetype for efficacious planning of resources required. MRPII helps in addressing operational planning in units, financial planning in dollars and also possesses a simulation capacity to answer various what if questions. MRPII is constituted of different processes such as business planning, sales and operation planning, production planning, materials requirements, master production scheduling, execution support system for materials and capacity and capacity requirements planning which are each linked together. The output from the above mentioned systems is combined with financial reports like shipping budget of the company, business plan of the company, inventory projections in dollar and purchase commitment report.

Technology Platform, Financial and Nonfinancial Data Attributes, and User Views

EDI or Electronic Data Interchange is described as computer to computer exchange of business documents amid organizations which restores the concept of faxing and mailing of paper documents. According to BuitenGert  et al. (2018) EDI documents uses particular computer record formats which are formed on various largely accepted norms but however it is observed that different companies uses the flexibility allowed by the standards in an innovating and unique way which satisfies their business needs and requirements. The Electronic Data Interchange system provides different benefits to a company in the form of less labour time, fewer errors and faster processing of business transactions which ultimately helps in achievement of the goals and objectives of the companies.

The above mentioned information systems possesses the capability of assisting a business organizations to make informed business decisions after collecting, storing and analysing the various data of the company which helps in creating a competitive advantage for the business organizations in the market.

1. The technology platform which will be used for the new proposed Accounting Information System of ANZ bank is computing platform which enables interactions between platform users and third party developers. In this type of technology platform the users are owned by the platform. The computing platform allows the developer to extend the platform with various types of new use cases which makes the platform more valuable to the users of the platform.
2. b. The different entities which will be available in the ER diagram of the Accounting Management System of ANZ bank are company, region, branch, department and customers. The various financial attributes which will be used for the various entities in the ER diagram of the Accounting Information System of ANZ bank are accounts payable, accounts receivable, bad debts, loan received, loan sanctioned, interest earned, capital requirements, common equity, earnings per share and capitalization ratios. The various non-financial attributes which will be used in the various entities in the ER diagram of the Accounting Information System of ANZ Bank are customer name, customer address, customer location, customer contact details, average transaction of customer, branch code, department ID, customer statusand income of customers.
3. The four different types of user views which can be designed in the Accounting Information System of ANZ bank are balance sheet of customer transactions, profit and loss statement of the bank, customer transaction details and fund transfer details of the customers through mobile banking and internet banking.
4. The threats to the Accounting Information System of ANZ bank can arise from various sources and if these threats are not taken into account, it has the capability of destroying the relevance and reliability of the financial information present in the Accounting Information System of the bank which can lead to incorrect decision making for the stakeholders of the company. The point from where data are collected in the Accounting Information System of the bank it is very significant to set top quality security measures which ensures that the transaction or event data are valid, complete and free from various types of material errors. The actions of the hacker which can occur at the data collection level of the Accounting Information System include pretending to be an accounting user or tapping the telecommunication network of the system and company.
5. An Accounting Information System also experiences threat during data processing phase of the system which includes actions such as creation of illegal programs, accessing and deleting information or files, destroying or corrupting the logic of a program through viruses and modifying the logic of a program to process data in a wrong manner. The Accounting Information System also experiences various threats in the form of un-authorized access to the system which allows altering, deleting, destroying, stealing and corruption of information and files. The failure of a company to use back-up of data and information using Accounting Information System represents a potential loss of data.

According to Serb, Baron, Iacob and Defta (2014) in order to prevent risks of security threats and data breaches the first and foremost action that ANZ bank should ensure is that the management, accountants, auditors and the other stakeholders of the Accounting Information System of the company acquires complete knowledge about the design, operation and control of the Accounting Information System of the company. The other actions which can be taken by  ANZ Bank in order to avoid risks off security threats and data breaches includes arranging for physical security of the computer systems of the bank in addition to providing high quality cyber security solutions to the Accounting information System of the company.

The other actions which must be adopted by ANZ bank in order to avoid risks off security threats and data breaches includes multiple step authentication of the users using the system in order to validate their identity, providing protection against any type of computer viruses, having back-ups of the essential data of the system, restricting user access to various confidential information of the system, avoiding the use of certain types of secondary storage devices and repairing the system in case of various faults and disruptions from various certified professionals or certified company.

Conclusion

Thus it can be concluded that ANZ’s objective can be attained in better manner to maintain dominance in Australian banking services through wide application of strategies in channels like investments that can promote trade and convenience with better customer information and internal and external accounting service platforms to meet customer expectations and ensure financial performances in future.   ANZ can build their information systems by merging through advanced accounting systems that will facilitate quick processing of transactions, information’s and application for financial products and services with effectiveness and knowledge management information available at these systems that will enable instant services for customers reducing turnaround time.   

References

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Chuang, CC & Hu, FL 2015, T’echnology strategy-innovating for growth of ANZ Bank. International Review of Management and Business Research, [Online] vol 4, no.3, p.682.

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Díaz-Madroñero, M., Mula, J., and Jiménez, M. (2014).Fuzzy goal programming for material requirements planning under uncertainty and integrity conditions. International Journal of Production Research, [Online] 52(23), 1–18. doi:10.1080/00207543.2014.920115 [Accessed on 23 Sep. 2018]

FarhadHanifi, and AsgarTaleei. (2015). Accounting information system and management’s decision making process. Management Science Letters, [Online] 5(7), 685–694. doi:10.5267/j.msl.2015.5.004 [Accessed on 23 Sep. 2018]

Head, B 2016, ‘ANZ Bank rules out upgrading core IT systems

Peña-Miguel, N., and De La Peña, J. (2018). New accounting information system: An application for a basic social benefit in Spain. Revista de Contabilidad, 

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