The impact of accounting information systems on the quality of financial information and decision making in Saudi Arabia

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The impact of accounting information systems on the quality of financial information and decision making in Saudi Arabia

The survey is available in Arabic and English and you can change the language by clicking the top right of the page.

You are invited to participate in a research study examining the “Impact of Accounting Information Systems (AISs) on the Quality of Financial Information and Decision-Making in Saudi Arabia”. This study investigates how companies implement AIS and how the quality of financial information and decision making is benefitted after the AIS implementation. The result of the study will be useful for many organisations in SA to meet the 2030 vision in regard to the digital transformation objective as one of the objectives of the financial sector development program.

Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

Key terms:

Accounting Information System (AIS): a system that collects, records, and processes data to produce financial information to decision-makers.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): it is an information system that integrates all types of business functions in one system under one common database to provide useful information for decision-makers.

Relative analysis of financial statements: is a comparison of a particular metric (available in any of the financial statements) of one company with the corresponding metric of another company within the same industry, or against the industry in which it operates in.

Through this survey, the term AIS is used to refer to the computerised AIS, cloud AIS as well as AIS within the ERP environment that is used in your company.

This survey will take approximately 15 minutes

Participation in this research is voluntary and anonymous. You are free to withdraw at any time, without explanation or penalty. You will not be able to withdraw your data after completing the research as data has been collected anonymously. Data will be non-identifiable and will be stored electronically in the hard drive of the University of Tasmania (UTAS) password protector laptop. No one can access the data except the researcher and the research team. The hard copy of the data will be shredded after 5 years of the publication of the thesis. Also, the digital copy will be deleted from the UTAS server.

Your time is appreciated, thank you.

There are 23 questions in this survey.

This survey is anonymous.

The record of your survey responses does not contain any identifying information about you, unless a specific survey question explicitly asked for it.

If you used an identifying token to access this survey, please rest assured that this token will not be stored together with your responses. It is managed in a separate database and will only be updated to indicate whether you did (or did not) complete this survey. There is no way of matching identification tokens with survey responses.

Part B

The following part seeks to assess the quality of AIS and its impact on the quality of financial information and decision making.

Instructions: Please indicate your level of agreement or disagreement with each of the following statements from your personal point of view by choosing one appropriate box from the range

strongly disagree to strongly agree. Please note that:

1= Strongly disagree. 2= Disagree. 3= Neutral. 4= Agree. 5= Strongly agree.

Statements

	1	2	3	4	5
Timely relevant information can be derived from the Accounting Information System (AIS)	1	2	3	4	5
Segregation of duties has been implemented as part of the AIS	1	2	3	4	5
AIS used in your company is intuitive and easy to use	1	2	3	4	5
Non-financial attributes are embedded in the AIS	1	2	3	4	5
AIS used in your company automatically performs as much validation of data as possible	1	2	3	4	5
Modification to any approved data requires prior approval from the top management	1	2	3	4	5
Financial data stored in the AIS is integrated whole system wide	1	2	3	4	5
Use of paperwork has come to almost zero when using AIS in the company	1	2	3	4	5
Concurrent transactions are automated with proper notification	1	2	3	4	5
AIS used in your company is available when required to use	1	2	3	4	5
AIS used in your company is up-to-date	1	2	3	4	5
AIS used in your company is easy to modify / upgrade	1	2	3	4	5
Implementation of AIS was maintained using workflow charts	1	2	3	4	5
AIS is able to recover data following any failure	1	2	3	4	5
AIS used in your company is compliant with regulations for Companies in this country	1	2	3	4	5
Productivity, efficiency has increased after the implementation of AIS	1	2	3	4	5
Wastage of resources has been decreased after the implementation of AIS	1	2	3	4	5
Profitability and cash management efficiency has been increased after the implementation of AIS	1	2	3	4	5
Forecasting on operational plans are more realistic	1	2	3	4	5
Relevance and reliability of financial information has increased after the implementation of AIS	1	2	3	4	5
Predetermined criterion helps to reduce concurring decision making time	1	2	3	4	5
AIS helps management to make inventory decisions	1	2	3	4	5
AIS helps management to make income statement decisions	1	2	3	4	5
AIS helps management to make investments decisions	1	2	3	4	5
AIS helps management to make production decisions	1	2	3	4	5
AIS helps management to make a financing decision	1	2	3	4	5
AIS helps management to make marketing decisions	1	2	3	4	5
Customised information can be obtained from the AIS very quickly for better decision making	1	2	3	4	5
Time series analysis of financial analysis assists informed decision making	1	2	3	4	5
Evaluation of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) has been accelerated and accurate	1	2	3	4	5
Manipulation of financial information from AIS is very difficult	1	2	3	4	5
Financial data security has increased after the implementation of AIS	1	2	3	4	5
Automated financial reports can lack all the required information	1	2	3	4	5
AIS generated financial reports might be non-compliant with regulatory reporting format according to the corporate regulations	1	2	3	4	5
Updating of reporting format updates all past reports and can distort historical reports generated	1	2	3	4	5
Changes of financial reports require more time to integrate with AIS	1	2	3	4	5
Relative analysis of financial statements is difficult within AIS	1	2	3	4	5
‘What if’ analysis of financial information is limited in AIS with non-financial parameters	1	2	3	4	5
Addition of explanatory notes is not possible with automated financial reports in AIS	1	2	3	4	5
Impact of contingent events are not reflected in the AIS generated financial reports	1	2	3	4	5

What factors from the following do you think were considered in the stage of designing or adoption of the current AIS used in your company? (Check all that apply)

Organisational factors ( the size, the structure ..)
Environmental factors ( competitors, the level of uncertainty .. )
Decision-making styles ( top management)
Other ( Please specify)

What style of decision making do you have?

Choose one of the following answers

Analytic: You spend time and efforts to study the environment, problem, opportunity
Conceptual: You encourage creative thinking and collaboration and consider a broad array of perspectives.
Behavioural: You give the teamwork available options, then the group discuss the pros and cons of each choice, you also consider different opinions in the process
Directive: You work out the pros and cons of a situation based on what you already know. Your decision based on your own experience and knowledge.

In your opinion, how AIS impacts the quality of financial information?

In your opinion, how AIS impacts decision making?

In your opinion, what are other threats to the quality of financial information when using AIS?

In order to expand and improve my data collection, I would like to interview (online) some of AIS users of the organisation. If you are willing to be interviewed or if you want to refer someone to participate, please complete this section

Name:
Position (MAIN ROLE RELATED to AIS):
Contact number:
Contact email address:

Please confirm you want to clear your response?