Reliable Paper Ltd provides cardboard, paper and plastic packaging materials to a large number of manufacturers and distributors in all states. The cardboard and paper division is a well-established business, but Reliable Paper Ltd has been providing plastic products only since its takeover of Plastic Products Ltd 18 months ago. The takeover doubled Reliable Paper’s revenue and caused changes in its management structure — adding another two divisional managers. These new divisional managers are in charge of plastic product sales to different areas of the country — Plastic Eastern and Plastic Western — and they join the Paper Eastern and Paper Western division managers in reporting directly to the CEO.

All internal operating reports are now structured along the four divisional reporting lines, although external financial reports continue to be produced for the whole business. All purchasing and billing systems are fully integrated, although it is possible to extract data along divisional lines, and by state (as before). Reliable Paper purchases bulk supplies of raw plastic and paper and makes boxes, rolls and sheets of these materials to fill customer orders. Production processes in the paper divisions have not changed, and Reliable Paper has made minimal changes to the production processes used by Plastic Products Ltd.

Required

List and discuss the factors that would increase or decrease the reliability of data used in analytical procedures at Reliable Paper Ltd.