Assessing Problems Experienced by Chacha Hotel Group - Case Study Example

?Business Information System Table of Contents Introduction 3 Brief Analysis of the Case and Assessing Problems Experienced by Chacha Hotel Group 3 Brief Information about the Organisation 3 Problems Currently Experienced by Chacha 4 Proposal for New System to Address Problems in Chacha Hotel Group 6 Concept and Benefits of the proposed Computer based Information System (MIS) 7 Role and Importance of MIS 7 Marketing and Promotional Problems 9 Conclusion 11 References 12 Introduction The intervention of advanced technological aspects has long been experienced by organisations to increase the organisational performances and to enable the successful obtainment of competitive positioning in the markets. In relation to the business strategies of the modern organisations, the marketers are highly motivated to emphasise the integration of well-built and advanced information system in order to make more efficient use of the organisational process and easily achieve their range of business objectives and goals (Wigand, Mertens, Bodendorf, Picot, Konig & Schumann, 2003). Therefore, emphasising the long-standing role of technology for the marketers, the primary intention of this essay is to critically assess the problems faced by the Chacha Hotel Group (henceforth Chacha) due to the ineffective use of information system. Moreover, the essay also focuses on providing a valid proposal associated with developing Computer-based Information System (CIS), which can enable Chacha to effectively deal with the corresponding issues and ensure the organisation to achieve the expected competitive advantages over its rivals. Brief Analysis of the Case and Assessing Problems Experienced by Chacha Hotel Group Brief Information about the Organisation Established in the year 1962, the Chacha Hotel Group represents a chain of hotels that served across the different growing markets including Cardiff, Berlin and Amsterdam. The competitive strategy of the group has always been focused to ensure utmost satisfaction of the global clients through the compliance of adequate monitoring process of the workforce’s performance. Since the presence of the organisation in the competitive hotel industry, Chacha tends to market and promote its range of services through flyers and offering advertisements on the local newspapers and magazines. Due to the lack of compliance persisting in the technological advancements, the organisation has been identified to face numerous challenges from its numbers of global competitors principally incorporating advanced information and technological aspects. To sum up, the organisation has been facing significant threats from its global competitors to attract a feasible number of clients. With respect to the observation of the case, it has been critically identified that the business operations, such booking services and different marketing and promotional activities are directly performed by Chacha through its travel agencies and other relevant media channels, strategically to involve information and technological features. In relation to its booking service, the organisation tends to perform through the help of travel agencies or through phone. Although the hotels of Chacha incorporate computer system only to perform different administrative works, it has also been witnessed that a lack of interconnection between each computer system across the different business units of the organisation persists, which has been the productive performance of the entire construct. Problems Currently Experienced by Chacha With reference to an in-depth understanding of the case, it has been critically identified that the business functions of Chacha has been facing different challenges due to its inappropriate use of information system and lack of using computer-based information system facilities. Few of the major problems faced by the group can be characterised into various types. Booking and Reservation Problem The fundamental information contained within the computers has been identified to include administrative files, reports, booking information and financial data among others. Therefore, subsequent to the technology system failure in the chain, the administrative functions of the hotels have been identified to be disrupted at various levels of its range of booking and reservation processes due to the improper management and arrangements of the files within the computer systems. Communication Problem Due to the lack of interconnection between the computer-systems located in the other hotels of Chacha, the organisation has also faced a significant issue related to communication. In this concern, it has been witnessed that the administrative services of the organisation also lacked in duly keeping the higher authority informed about various aspects, due to the lack of connectivity among the systems. Therefore, a significant problem has also been observed regarding the collaboration among the workers and improvements in the hospitality services provided by Chacha and its subsidiaries. Additionally, the computer systems deployed within each hotel of Chacha have also been identified to a lack searching facilities, which also consumes greater than the required time to accomplish the goals of the organisation. Moreover, due to the lack of training and development program for the system administrators, the computer system of the organisation have also incorporated the issue associated with ineffective use of computer system. In this regard, the company have been emphasised to effectively maintain its financial information and data, which can also have an impact on Chacha’s performance to increase its business performances within a defined time-frame. Infrastructure Problem Additionally, the issue associated with lack of developing computer system had also reduced the capability of the organisation to increase its operational pace in different administrative and managerial functions. It can be argued in this context that the business performance of Chacha has been facing major challenges due to the lack of its business information system efficiency, which can further lead to negative impacts on the organisation to maintain its sustainable position in the fiercely competitive hospitality industry. Proposal for New System to Address Problems in Chacha Hotel Group With reference to an in-depth analysis of the case, it has widely observed that the business operations of Chacha have been significantly influenced by the major problems caused by the lack of information system. Therefore, it is highly essential for the organisation to incorporate an effective structure of computer based information system in order to mitigate its range of operational, managerial and administrative issues. With regard to the current scenario, concerning the business operations of Chacha, it is recommendable that the intervention of an effective set of Management Information System (MIS) can enable the organisation to proactively deal with each problem. Therefore, the proposal for structuring an effective set of computer based information system would be focused on developing a well-built MIS for the organisation to address its range of problems. Concept and Benefits of the proposed Computer based Information System (MIS) Management Information System (MIS) can be considered as one of the widely used computer based information system, which tends to provide adequate facilities in order to protect organisations from different issues. MIS can be defined as an effective set of computer based information system that tends to collect, store and disseminate internal operations of an organisation. It also facilitates to make organisational decisions more accurate along with strengthening its communication efficiencies as well as controlling and coordinating processes (Laudon & Laudon). Role and Importance of MIS The basic function of MIS is generally focused on collecting raw data, processing and subsequently, disseminating information into different operational and strategic departments of the organisation. The function of collecting and processing raw data helps the strategic department to make effective decisions and formulate goals to achieve the corporate objectives of the organisation. Moreover, it also enables the firms to improve communication process and empower coordination of each division to successfully increase their performance (University of Houston, 2000). In relation to the business operations of Chacha, the intervention of MIS would enable the organisation to effectively manage and control its operations through the encryption of raw data and transform them into information and enable it to empower the decision making process of the organisation. The system also plays an essential role for the organisation to satisfy the needs of the diverse groups of the organisation including strategic planning, operational control, management control along with its transaction processing functions (Ismail, 2011). Therefore, the integration of an effective MIS would significantly enable Chacha to properly manage and control its different operational, administrative and management data and transform them to make competitive decisions by the top level management of the organisation. Moreover, the integration of MIS also tends to improve the inconsistency of information collected from different operational and administrative functions and to develop effective control mechanism to control data of the organisation. In relation to the issue associated with the inconsistent presentation of information, the system would enable the organisation to properly arrange and analyse information as required for presentation (Ismail, 2011). It would enable the managers in Chacha Group to obtain valid information about the operational conditions along with performance of each individual department of the organisation. Hence, the decision making process of the top level management would be improved and make them able to take effective measures in accordance with continuously changing market trends. The collaboration among the hotels of Chacha would also be developed in terms of sharing administration information and develop effective strategy to meet the desired goals of the organisation. With respect to the major types of MIS, it can be observed that the system incorporates different functional systems that also play a crucial role for the organisation to achieve a competitive position. In order to implement effective functional system relating to the problems of Chacha, the deployment of an effective Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) within the MIS framework would facilitate the organisation to increase its performance gradually. ERP is regarded as one of the major tools of MIS that tends to support the integrated management process, staff along with various other functional areas of an organization. It is an effective multi-dimensional and transaction based application program of software that enables the modern organizations to manage and control different functional aspects of the business (Fosser, Leister, Moe & Newman, 2008). Therefore, the implementation of ERP would increase the performance of each individual staff in terms of searching organisational information, booking records along with different administrative functions of the organisation. It would also help the managers of the hotels to proactively monitor the performance of each individual staff and improve their performance as well. In order to effectively implement the MIS into the business operations, the organisation is also required to deploy advanced technological features within the computer system, which can further help the organisation to encrypt its range of administrative and operational records (Laudon & Laudon). In relation to the encryption of organisational records, the implementation of MIS would also facilitate Chacha to strategically store and maintain its information in a more proficient manner that can be easily procured by the management. Marketing and Promotional Problems The marketing activities of the chain of hotels in Chacha are generally directed towards promoting products and/or services in accordance with the needs and desires of the customers. In this regard, it is highly essential for an organisation to identify the needs and desires of the target customers and formulate effective marketing decisions that can enable Chacha to satisfy them. In this concern, the implementation of MIS in the business functions of Chacha can also improve the marketing and promotional activities of the organisation. It has been identified in the case study that the hotels under the Chacha group generally incorporate conventional marketing strategy through promoting its service facilities with the aid of the local media. In this context, the implementation of MIS would enable the organisation to identify the appropriate needs and desires and make effective decisions to improve the way to promote the diverse range of hospitality services (Laudon & Laudon). Additionally, in order to empower the marketing and promotional activities of the organisation, the development of a well-build organisational website along with integration of different social media channels would facilitate increase in the performance of Chacha to gain more customers as compared to the other marketers. The development of organisational websites would also facilitate the organisation to communicate the services provided by the organisation to an extensive group of global customers. Moreover, it would also provide the benefit of online booking facilities to the customers from different global destinations. In the similar context, the incorporation of social media would also help the organisation to easily promote its range of quality based hospitality services to a large number of global users (Ismail, 2011). Additionally, the integration of MIS would enable the organisation to promote its range of quality based hospitality services in accordance with the changing trends of the customers, which would quite likely increase the number of its international client base in turn (Ismail, 2011). Therefore, it can be stated that the evolvement of business process through the intervention of MIS would be more effective for Chacha to gain a better competitive position and strengthen its long-term sustainability in the present contemporary business environment. Conclusion In relation to the rapidly growing competition in the global business environment, sound information system can be considered as one of the core elements in order to build strong foundation of an organisation. In relation to the case of Chacha, a range of problems have been witnessed that are faced by the hotel chain, principally due to the lack or ineffective use of information technology. Therefore, the implementation of an effective MIS within the organisational operations would enable Chacha to mitigate these issues, in an efficient manner, emphasising its long-run sustainability. In precise, with regard to the aforesaid proposal of implementing MIS in Chacha, the process would substantially enable the organisation to effectively address different problems in its different administrative and operational activities. References Fosser, E., Leister, O. H., Moe, C. E. & Newman, M. (2008). ERP Systems and Competitive Advantage: Some Initial Results. University of Copenhagen, pp. 1-13. Ismail, S. T. (2011). The Role of Marketing Information System on Decision Making "An Applied study on Royal Jordanian Air Lines (RJA)." International Journal of Business and Social Science, 2(3), pp. 175-185. Laudon, K. & Laudon, J. (2006). Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm. India: Prentice Hall. University of Houston. (2000). History of Information Systems. Information System. Retrieved December 04, 2013, from http://www.uh.edu/~mrana/try.htm Wigand, R. T., Mertens, P., Bodendorf, F., Picot, A., Konig, W. & Schumann, M. (2003). Introduction to Business Information Systems. Germany: Springer. Read More