INTRODUCTION

Documenting and evaluating business processes are among the central themes of Accounting Information Systems courses offered at the college level. Understanding business processes and the ability to document and analyze them are among the key skills for auditors entering the profession (Whitehouse, 2013). These skills become even more important with the introduction of the new CPA exam with its emphasis on the application of skills, rather than memorization of rules (AICPA, 2016). Traditional college students, however, seem to struggle with the concept of business processes and identifying data sources within the business processes for a variety of reasons:

First, for many Accounting majors, both the content and the format of an AIS class differ significantly from their expectation of an accounting class (Schiff, 2000). Tying the concept of business processes and internal control to the broader accounting perspective is critically important for keeping the students engaged. A hands-on activity in a real world environment at the beginning of the course contributes greatly to students' interest and engagement.

Second, grasping the concept of business process is challenging for many students due to their lack of relevant business experience. For most of the students, “the idea of a business process is generally using a cash register” (DeVries and Lee, 2013). AIS classes traditionally utilize narratives with step-by-step descriptions of business processes in fictional companies for the teaching of business process documentation, and in particular, flowcharting. Well written narratives provide all the necessary details about the process and allow focusing on flowcharts and mastering them in a relatively short time. However, in a real work setting, flowcharting skills on their own are of little use if not accompanied by the ability to gather information about the business processes from field data such as documents and interviews. Working with field data means dealing with ambiguities, evaluating the quality, reliability and importance of information, and making inferences. None of these can be developed with straightforward cases, rather they require practice with situations bearing ambiguity and conflict (Borthick et al., 2012).

Finally, the technical background of students pursuing business education is varied. While some of the students have strong technical skills and may even double major in Information Systems, many others struggle with anything related to technology. During class discussions of business processes and flowchart documentation it has been observed that students have difficulty with identifying the data sources and related data flows.

Though millennials are active users of the Internet, few are aware how the information is actually stored and handled. When asked to write a business process step-by-step and to identify data sources and data flows, students tend to focus on the steps performed by people (talking to customers, preparing food, packing goods). They often skip most of the steps that include data manipulations, such as searches and recording business events. It is not uncommon for students to include “updating the database” as a step in a business process but to fail to explain which data are actually updated. A good first step is to introduce students to the concept of business processes and identifying data sources.

The following is a partial list of challenges related to understanding the concept of business processes and identifying the data sources and data flows:

• Establishing a step-by-step flow of the business process and interactions with data

• Separating important steps in the process from minor steps (e.g., recording a customer's order vs. asking customer follow-up questions about the order)

• Identifying source documents and data flows

• Identifying the use of information and relevant data sources (such as searching a catalog or finding a customer's record in a database)

• Differentiating between recording new data (e.g., new customer order) and updating existing data

• Understanding relational principles of data design

Using the website “www.amazon.com” for a transitional exercise before introducing system flowcharts helps address the above-mentioned reasons for many students' struggles.

First, students are familiar with Amazon – many are Amazon's regular customers and have placed orders in the past.

Second, order entry at Amazon is a real process in a real business. While it is complex, it can be simplified for analysis. It requires identification of important and less important steps, external entities and processes, and data sources.

Third, the Amazon order entry process can be observed online, and repeated as many times as necessary, helping students understand every step and reducing their anxiety. The online nature of the process also helps focus more on data sources supporting every step, and less on physical and documentation flows.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

The learning objectives (LO) of this exercise are to introduce the students to the concept of business processes in the context of a real business, to develop their ability to identify data sources and to prepare them to document real business processes. Specifically, upon completion of this exercise, the students should:

• LO 1: be able to define the scope of an order entry process, screening out irrelevant information

• LO 2: be able to identify the major steps of an order entry process

  View Fullscreen

  Note that shipping is a related but separate process. Payment collection is also a related but separate process.

• LO 3: be able to identify the data sources involved in an order entry process and the interactions with them (reading data from a data source, writing new data, updating existing data)

THE EXERCISE

In this assignment you are asked to identify steps and data sources and analyze data flows in the Amazon order entry process. You will create a table with process steps and visually show interactions with data sources and external entities.