商务英语毕业论文范文

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　　2.2 The practical application of ERP systems – capital budgeting.

　　As previously outlined, a field study conducted by Cook et al. (2000), described the operation of activity-based capital budgeting as a division of a US telecommunications company. In their study Cook et al. found that the activity information was linked to the financial accounting system, thus behaving like an ERP system for the purpose of capital budgeting. This approach went beyond the traditional capital budgeting by linking the traditional incremental monetary revenues and costs with underlying activities. The authors concluded that by separately identifying the level of revenues and costs associated with process activities, the uncertainty with such activities and related revenues and costs can be closely examined. They added that this activity-level capital budgeting gives managers far more information and understanding than possible from the traditional financial simulation of aggregated income-statement approach. Their arguments were convincing but could not be verified.

　　Hope and Fraser (2001; 2003) disclosed that some companies have ceased traditional budgeting processes. Four reasons have been put forward by Hope and Fraser (2001) as to why existing budgeting processes are failing:

　　- few companies are satisfied with their budgeting processes

　　- far too much time is spent on budgeting and too little time is spent on strategy

　　- Financial capital is now a small part of market value

　　- Budgeting is expensive and adds little value either to the company or its users (Hope and Fraser, 2001, pp. 7-8).

　　They claimed that hierarchical companies have devolved to networks, where the planning capacity and control inherent in budgeting can be accomplished by other means (Hope and Fraser, 2003, p. 108). ERP systems, which they label enterprise-wide information systems, are important for eliminating budgeting, particularly when accompanied by the balanced scorecard, shareholder value models such as EVA, activity-based costing and management, rolling forecasts, and benchmarking (Hope and Fraser, 2001, pp. 5-6).