eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

OBJECTIVE

The Objective of the study is as per the research question to examine, how modern ERP implementation is expected to impact on management accounting reporting practices. The research gap of the study has been identified based on two factors. First of all, based on existing academic literature, only little evidence of the connection between traditional ERP implementations and management accounting reporting practices exists. Secondly, recent technological development indicates that modern ERP implementations can be expected to impact on management accounting reporting practices.

DATA AND METHODOLOGY

A single case study was chosen as the research method of the study. The case study was conducted in Neste Corporation, which is a large Finnish company operating in oil industry. The company has started a program to implement modern SAP S/4 HANA ERP system during next four years in several phases, which justifies the selection of it as the target of the empirical part. The empirical data gathered in the study consists of semi-structured theme interviews with Neste's own personnel and consultants from IBM and SAP. In addition, internal material and daily observations in the case company have been utilized.

MAIN FINDINGS

In conclusion, modern ERP systems can be expected to impact on management accounting reporting practices firstly by enabling new possibilities for direct operational reporting and by making sophisticated analytics faster and more efficient. Yet, the integration, which is also provided by traditional ERP systems, was regarded as the most important driver for expected changes in management accounting reporting practices by improving quality of data and access to it. In addition, the real business benefit of modern ERP systems remained somewhat unclear and indicates a need for further studies. Industry- and company specific factors, like the level of system- and data fragmentation in the case-company before the implementation, were regarded as most relevant limitations for generalizability of the results.