The evolution of conputer hardware and proliferation of business and managerial applications of computing has led to change in the chatacteristics, uses and evaluations of software. With the acceptance of microcomputers and the emergence of end-user computing, more and more software packages. For many reasons, users frequently must rely on expert evaluations of the technical functions and quality of packages.
This study evaluates the quality of accounting packages and importance of quality characteristics. The evaluation procedures are (1) identification of general quality characteristics ; (2) Identificantion of accounting characteristics ; (3) Design and development of experimental model ; (4) Survey by means of questionnaire for accounting S/W packages user and expert(developer) and (5) Evaluation of the five accounting packages and the importance of quality characteristics according to three industial types (manufacturing, distribution/service, and construction) using the weighting-average method and analytic hierarchy process (AHP).
The major findings of our analysis are three. First, the result of user's survey suggests that the industrial difference of importance among attributes should not be significant. Second, the important atributes of users are accounting characteristics and applicability, while the most important atribute of experts is maintanability to support the customer. Finally, the relationship between the weighting average method and AHP is sufficiently high when those are applied to major five accounting packages. The spearman correlation coefficient, on of the statistical measure, of two method is 0.95.
