KASUS:
SISTEM INFORMASI DAN AKTIVITAS PENGENDALIAN INTERNAL
Des Peres Drug Stores, Inc., a rapidly
growing Los Angeles-based business,
operates 1754 full-service drug stores
throughout the United States. About 50
new drug stores are opened annually. The
company’s annual revenues total $8.5
billion, and it uses a mix of mainframe,
minicomputers, and microcomputers. The
firm plans to reengineer its business
processes and downsize its mission-critical
applications to an enterprise wide
client/server network. These efforts are
expected to be completed in about four
years.
Their external audit firm has just
completed an audit of the information
system (IS) department. Following are
excerpts from the audit firm’s notes.
 The IS manager has not prepared short-
term or long-term plans of how the
company will upgrade hard-ware and
software to meet changing technology
and growth needs.
 Software updates for two critical
accounting applications remain
unimplemented for two years.
 Because of rapid expansion plans and the
critical shortages of qualified IS
personnel, the IS manager has
contracted with 50 outside programmers
who work out of offices in Calcutta and
Bombay, India. The Programmers use
microcomputers linked via modem to
Des Peres mainframe computers to make
changes to live production programs.
They rarely notify the IS manager of such
changes, and there is no formal process
in place for testing the changes. Recent
undocumented program changes have
caused program errors that generated
erroneous data.
 The contract programmer manager
working in Bombay uploads all program
changes made by the staff programmers
to a Web site. Any Programmer can type
in the http address to log-in to the site’s
server. They use Adobe Acrobat to study
the program changes and then e-mail
suggested improvements to all contract
programmers.
 The in-house IS personnel work an
average of 84 hours per week, including
night shifts and weekends. On a number
of occasions, many IS staff members
perform duties that are not listed in their
written job descriptions. In one instance,
the computer operators balanced
accounts and signed checks.
 The firm use an informal process to
determine which reports to print and
what manager are to receive the reports.
 Computer operators frequently
complain about the lack of in-house
manuals. The few manuals in existence
often do not contain clear checklists and
step-by-step operating instructions.
 Computer programmers and system
analysts are organizationally located in
the same department.
 Data-entry personnel are not provided
with written input preparation
procedures to guide them in entering
data over terminals.
 Each data-entry person is responsible for
entering, reviewing, and posting the
transactions.
 Password enable accountants to access
accounting applications software and
enter journal entries, prepare reports,
and perform other functions.
Occasionally, an accountant will perform
duties such as entering general ledger
journal entries as well as balancing the
accounts containing those same entries.
A few accountants make journal entries,
and handle cash and other negotiable
items.
REQUIRED:
1. Given the audit findings, identify
weaknesses in general/and or
application controls. For each
weakness identified, state the
potential impact of the weakness on
the company.
2. Based on number 1 above, you are
asked to give three suggestions for
improvement Des Peres Drug Stores’s
information systems.
3. How will the proposed enterprise wide
client/server network affect general
and application controls?