CASE STUDY ABOUT THE FINANCIAL LOSS REPORTED BY ARACRUZ SA WITH FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS OF DERIVATIVES IN 2008: THE ROLE OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN THE DETECTION OF RISK AND ERRORS IN THE ACCOUNTING OF DERIVATIVE FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS

Abstract

This article uses the case study method to analyze the company Aracruz SA (Aracruz) described in Yin (2001) and the method of applying the systems approach (Churchman, 1972) in the planning of information systems company. The objective was to investigate the causes of failures in the company information systems in the detection of risks and supporting the sophisticated accounting for derivatives, which led the company to have a loss of $ 2.3 billion in 2008. Aracruz uses as enterprise information system (ERP) the software produced by SAP and does not use any of its modules of Business Inteligence, using spreadsheets to produce management reports. The conclusion of this case study is that the company's information systems have failed due to three main reasons: - Did not use a systemic approach (Churchman, 1972) in the design of companys flow of information and their respective controls, preventing the SAP implementation of development of controls, content and programming of spreadsheets used as decision making reports - Due to the characteristics of the configured SAP implemented and due to lack of electronic interaction with the worksheets prepared by the external user: the area of financial planning, data entry was done manually, leading to human errors; - Professionals in the area of information technology did not have theoretical support due to lack of recent scientific articles within this area and there was no effective communication with the financial planning on the procurement of software products for financial derivatives in order to provide sufficient information to the design of an effective effective information system for the company. The conclusion of this paper is supported by the bibliometric analysis, which shows that scholarly articles on business information systems fail to provide risk analysis and accounting practices for derivative instruments. The 1066 articles found about the subject, only four articles showed to analyse this subject.