【正文】 l waste as well as labour costs Also the new process could reduce the time for set ups for different product runs and thus enable the capture of special orders where quick response is necessary　　As IRRNPV analysis is incremental the spreadsheet would show the incremental cash flows for capital outlays reduced material costs reduced labour costs and the contribution from the additional sales However the data items on the spreadsheet of preERP capital budgeting are not explicitly linked with what activities happened what activities are happening or what activities will happen in the future This separateness can be resolved by ERP systems integrating capital budgeting with panies accounting and other systems 　　32 Benefits of ERP for capital budgeting decisions　　Potentially capital budgeting can be done significantly differently with a functioning ERP system because of the integration of accounting and other systems The mon unified data warehouse is able to integrate for example financial transactions activities in activitybased costing ABC and activitybased management ABM subsystems budgets and plans and performance measures such as customer satisfaction or an entire balanced scorecard Of course for these expectations to be realized panies would need to have a full range of ERP modules which may be presently unmonConsider how ERP systems impact capital budgeting in its three stages 1 preparation and approval 2 operational and 3 post audit During the first stage the ERP system will allow the revenue and cost items to be linked to actual activities For example with new equipment if some of the costs are labour the actual model for labour use in manufacturing will be assessed and improvements in labour productivity due to the new asset will be modelled Modelling allows alternative approaches or variants to be tested and understood Similarly if there is a change in material usage this will be modelled and the impact considered in the capital project evaluation In effect ERP systems allow capital projects to be modelled as mini independent businesses or investment centres　　For the second operational stage the models used in the first stage preparation and approval can be pared to the actual model in use regarding labour material and asset input and the actual outputs In effect the modelled assumptions can be explicitly validated with experience Similarly for the third stage at or near the end of the project the models can be assessed to do a post audit to determine the lifetime success of the project and to provide feedback on the capital budgeting process　　As with capital budgeting the impact of ERP systems could be deductively specified or more precisely conjectured for other management accounting practices such as budgeting operational statements forecasting performance measurement and costing　　The above capital budgeting example indicates that ERP systems have the potential to lead to greater integration accuracy speed and effectiveness As management accounting techniques involve pany information it would be reasonable to expect from the implementation of ERP systems improvements at least in integration accuracy speed and effectiveness if not a major change such as the elimination of budgeting 32 Research Design　　Most of the earlier research on the impact of ERP systems on management accounting have been field studies Additionally given the lack of conclusive findings in the literature about the impact of ERP this research will employ a survey of large corporations incorporating openended questions about changes in capital budgeting and other management accounting practices However it is proposed that this will be an exploratory study given that there is uncertainty as to whether there have been any significant changes to management accounting with greater use of ERP systems　　331 The sample　　This exploratory study of the impact of ERP on management accounting was tested with Australian panies of sufficient size to have acquired ERP systems in the past 10 years The sample consisted of 105 panies among the ASXlisted panies with sales of more than 400 million according to DatAnalysis The panies represented classified industry groups including automobiles and ponents capital goods chemicals mercial services and supplies construction materials consumer durables and apparel container and packaging energy food beverage and tobacco food and staples hotels restaurants and leisure media metals and mining paper and forest products retailing software and services telemunication services transportation and utilities　　Larger firms tend to implement ERP systems for two reasons their size indicates they can afford the required monetary outlays and they require the systems to look after their extensive and routinized transactions Capital budgeting was deemed important for the above industries which tend to be capital intensive The Chief Financial Officers CFOs of the panies were identified through DatAnalysis in order to telephone them to verify the incumbent CFO exact name and title address and telephone number New Zealand and foreign headquartered panies were eliminated because of the expected difficulty in gaining responses In addition panies were dropped from the sample where the CFO could not be identified or verified This process resulted in a reduction of the sample size from 105 to 90 panies ranging in size from 400 million to 34 billion in sales332 The Survey Instrument and its Administration　　As there has been a lack of conclusive findings in the literature it was decided that openended questions about the changes that are occurring with capital budgeting and other management accounting practices would be a feature of the survey sent to participating panies This approach recognizes Scapens and Jazayeris 2003 p 226 concern that the changes occurring with management accounting may be caused by nonERP factors The survey asked various demographic quest