Information Systems for Management - Essay Example

Information Systems for Management Answer The survey questions set a standard to evaluate the resources of the universities so that right allocation of assistance falls into place at the right time for growth and development. The maximum exposure required for fetching the right facilities in place to make the place a great home to develop and nurture itself for outward benefit and goodwill. The various identified stakeholders are fully or partially responsible for making the right decision and capitalizing on the survey question and answers for future development and goodwill. They help in the process to set up a green environment to take care of the various fallbacks so that they are able to fetch the right momentum for setting up the institution which would create benchmark for others to follow. The following are the various stakeholders identified for the survey data: University officials: The data serves them as a raw data to know the student and the various caterings they have been entitled to. The various faculty and the amenities that are provided is up to a dimension or not. The level up gradation of the faculty members and the research objectives of the students and the university in particular is highlighted well and taken care for their benefit. The library resources and the various library amenities inspection and feedback must be sound and this survey is also aimed at that. Further promotion of the university in the national and global arena can be only possible if they know ins and outs of the university and its alignments. The various alignments like the faculty, students, courses, amenities are quite a decisive factor towards the various beginning of things. Enough and depth knowledge about the various variables involved in creating the entire place the best for learning and nurturing itself for better profit and goodwill. As a great institution is formed with great faculties and great students who make sure that they have enough discipline in fetching the right momentum in the future growth of the place and its self being. HEFCE: It is quite bothered with the student feedback form to utilize all its resources like management support, teaching, library resources, academic support, resources for learning and other amenities for the benefit of the students. All the survey feedback forms are analyzed by them to upgrade the standard of the UK universities and to bring a change in the process for fetching best of talents, utilizing the talents for future of their academic support and research and spreading knowledge for their upbringing and widespread delivery. To take decisive actions towards the very movement of resources and funding decisions for better alignment of the education in their country as a whole. The various funding decisions that make sure that enough allocation and decisive allocations are possible for making the right kind of attention and growth would make sure that all the various decisions are of good. If the survey requires upgrading the quality of teaching and resources connected with that, it must be done at the latest. The setting up of priorities is quite essential for saving on time, effort and money. In accordance to the priority one is decided over the various factors fostering growth and development of the university and making it a better place to live. Government: To acknowledge the education and attract best minds towards the various universities for future development and research for general interest and goodwill. To foster international trade and education relations among the various countries at the government level and to contribute to the businesses in a productive manner is the sole aim for the government with the result of such surveys. These surveys provide enough understanding for taking a further step to match the universities and their requirements and are performance at a large scale. The concern is to match the universities with the best in the world in research and development so that one is able to cater to the best available and is attracted by the resources. The education oriented economy is to collaborate the various findings of the various resources which requires to be capitalized upon. The answers to the survey questions (NSS questionnaire, 2008) serve as a decisive factor for fetching the right decision for the above officials to take corrective and preventive actions towards the various pitfalls taking place and to bridge the gap and reduce the deviation for making the right amount of things done for mutual benefit. Setting primary and secondary targets make sure that all the various decisions parameters are set accordingly for identifying the roadblocks towards performance and goal oriented metrics. The various survey questions and answers would also bring enough strength among the students in the sense that their views and presence have been given recognition and made good for the benefit of the prospective students. The importance of the survey would be better bestowed on the various students who in turn create magic and make sure to revise the happenings for the future. The various answers would serve better impetus for framing better questions and answers in future for collecting data and capitalizing on it for getting the thoughts and behavior into place. Likewise practices would be encouraged all over the globe for setting metrics for better practices for development. The metrics serves as the variety of decision parameters for judging the level of satisfaction required and would incorporate future development and strength among the masses. Answer 2: The three aspects are as follows: 1. IT and Business alignment: Studies proved that there is a "statistically significant correlation between the intensity of IT used in a company (IT capital per worker) and that company's overall productivity. (Brynjolfssor, E., 2003). And "however IT contribution could be indirect to the overall performance of a company or economy. But IT is a promising source of productivity when it's combined with complementary investments in work practices, human capital, and organizational restructuring". (Brynjolfssor, E., 2003) Brynjolfsson, E. & Hitt, L. M. (2000) found evidence on the link between investments in IT and higher productivity and organizational transformation and other measures of economic performance (p.4). Mitra, S. (2005) also provided empirical evidence of the role of information technology (IT) as an enabler of growth in firms. Bardhan, I. & Krishnan, V. & Lin, S. (2004) found that "IT enabled dynamic capabilities have a significant impact on improvement in four project-level outcomes (cycle time, cost, quality, and on-time completion rate)" (p.2). Results indicated that "quality of firms outputs (effectiveness) may be even more important in terms of its impact compared to the quantity of outputs (efficiency) (p.25). Zhu, K. (2004) showed a "strong positive interaction effect between IT infrastructure and e-commerce capability suggesting that their complementarity contributes to firm performance in terms of sale per employee, inventory turnover, and cost reduction. With this combination between front-end e-commerce capability and back-end IT infrastructure could be more effective in producing business value" (p.167). After all these evidences Brynjolfssor (2003) opinion really worth to be mentioned. According to him, "IT managers today shouldn't ask "Does IT pay off'" but rather, "How can we best use IT/computers'"." A closer examination revealed that "the biggest benefit accrue to companies that adopt an identifiable cluster of business practices." (Brynjolfssor, 2003). These practices found to be related to the implementation of technology itself, or involving change in the organization of information work (decision making rights, incentive systems, hiring, and training). (Brynjolfssor, 2003) First step to start with, all organizations "must first understand who their customers are, what they value, how the organization plans to create profits by providing this value and how to deliver that value in a way that the competition cannot mimic". (Burg, W. D. & Singleton, T. W., 2005, p.5), After being ready to choose from methodologies to measure the business value of IT, organizations should take in their minds that financial methodologies are not enough to measure the special nature of IT value which could be hidden, intangible or hard to be measure. Many measurement methodologies were developed in the past few years for measuring the business value of IT such as: business value index (BVI), total economic impact (TEI), Val IT, and Applied information economics (AEI) (Symons, C., 2006, p.4). Implementing a value methodology is a vital component of a portfolio management process. (Symons, 2006, p.16) However, according to Burg, W. D. & Singleton, T. W. (2005), "the best methodology for measuring IT value "should start with defining the value chain in order to identify the intangible benefits of IT project" (p.5). 2. Security and privacy issues: Network Security attacks are divided into two attacks - passive and active. Passive attacks happen when an unauthorized party gains full access to the network but do not modify its contents while active attacks occur when an unauthorized party modifies a message, data or a file. This type of attack may come be masquerading, replay, message modification and denial of service (DoS). Any of these attacks may lead to loss of information, legal and recovery costs, tarnished image and loss of network service (Karygiannis & Owens, 2002, p24). Wireless networks are consisting of multiple stations which communicate through radios and are based on IEEE 802.11 standards. Aside from the transmission techniques provided by 802.11, wireless networks have a variety of security mechanisms. The simple protocol defined by 802.11 is the Wired Equivalent Policy (WEP) which uses a fixed pre-shared key and RC4 cryptographic cipher to encode data transmitted on a network. All stations connected must agree on the identity of the fixed key to allow exchange of data or information. Another security protocol used is Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) which specifies a subset of the requirements found in 802.11i and defines Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) that is derived form the original WEP protocol (Leffler, 2002) Wireless Equivalent Policy (WEP) is specified in the 802.11b Wireless Standard which is designed to provide a high level of security for Local Area Networks. A wired LAN is protected by physical security mechanisms but this is not effective wireless network because radio waves are not necessarily bound by walls containing the network. WEP seeks to establish a similar protection for wireless network through data encryption over the network. It is very important for users to secure their networks against all the attacks mentioned in this paper. An important security measure is the usage of a firewall. This means that a few different things offer different security levels. Using passwords that could be easily remembered is also advisable and it is best to change the password at most every 30 days. In addition, using the username "Administrator" is discouraged since this is automatically created by the system and can be easily tracked by hackers. In the aspect of Wide Area Network, wireless communication is gaining its advantage. Wires are no longer needed; telephone jacks are no longer in use and cell phone services are no longer involved. This is advantageous to professionals who work even outside their offices (Oz, 1998 p152). An organization must lay out plans based on the organizational requirements on how to solve network security issues. The plans should include the needs of the company the needs of the company, policies to support these needs and the amount of physical and logical security needed. A network log should also be in place which describes the actions taken in setting up and supporting network. 3. Rapid Business solutions: Rapid business solutions (RBS) came into existence in the early 90's to respond to the ever increasing speed of change in a business. The key catalyst for RBS methods is the availability of many tools that could generate software quickly, which is ideal in prototyping situations. RBS is ideally suited for projects in which the requirements are largely volatile and not stable. It is ideal for largely GUI (Graphical User Interface) based components, and is suited for small or time constrained projects. RBS works well with Spiral, Spiral Design and Incremental lifecycle models and is excellent for user driven development. RBS should not be thought of as a single methodology, as it is more of a general strategy for the quick development of software. RBS does not gather the entire requirements straightaway, as RBS prioritises the requirements and functionality. By mutual agreement, in some cases, the lower priority requirements can be eliminated if the developer feels that the deadline cannot be met. The involvement of the user is an added advantage, as the final user is kept aware with the development of the system. DSDM was created in 1994 by a consortium of companies to promote and identify best practice in RBS. DSDM is not like other methodologies where specific techniques and products are specified, it rather provides a framework to manage and control the development of high level products. In order for DSDM to be used for a wide range of products and environments, DSDM does not specify how products should be created or what contents they should have. It follows a basic philosophy that nothing is developed perfectly at the beginning and it uses software development as an explanatory undertaking. DSDM has a set of nine guiding principles which are as follows: Active user involvement is imperative Team must be empowered to make decisions. Focus is on frequent delivery of products. Fitness for business purpose is the essential criterion for acceptance of deliverables. Iterative and incremental development in necessary to converge on an accurate business solution. All changes during development are reversible. Requirements are base lined at a high level. Testing is integrated throughout the lifecycle. Collaboration and co-operation between all stakeholders. DSDM has its own lifecycle model to go with it, and is like a hybrid methodology, in that all of DSDM can be used some of the time, or some of DSDM all of the time. It allows certain RAD techniques to be used in structured or object-oriented methods. Answer 3: This is a case of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) where the entire business operation of Millington Associates. The primary basis is to set up an information system to manage its data and promote accessibility. The system would make sure that all the database requirements are fulfilled to its fullest extent and is taken care for making the right judgment for the storage of information. In favor to this position it can be noted that the business is a group of several entities with diverse objectives focused towards the goal of the organization. The thought of putting up an information system for their requirements can be best decided by the firm alone and not a third party vendor dedicated to handling outsourcing business. As the business involves people working at the ground level, they are best to understand the exact scenario of the business processes which finally yield results after passing through a series of processing. Adding an information system at any stage of the transformation process, if required, would further enhance and make sure that output is successfully brought out. Systems thinking by the business entities would make sure that there is enough philosophy from the business counterparts; however capitalizing on the thinking of every individual is not a good and healthy business decision as there cannot be a system for everyone and not every requirement must be mapped. Therefore correct analysis and feasibility study for every cropping up requirements must be performed perfectly so that enough reason is brought out for the very development of the business decision to cut costs and save time. The current system for handling the business processes must be analyzed well so that adding an information system would be able to perform and integrate requirements in appropriate manner. Inability to add the system in the correct place, for data transformation and integration for enhancing the business processes in place, would make the system quite a waste in terms of effort, time and money invested for it. The utility of the system in getting the exact job done would make sure that the system would be of good. The correct methodology identified for fitting the system in the right placeholder must be taken up prior to the development of the system and not after the system development is done. The firm strongly requires an information system for managing its business. Problems with the present system: The present system does not envelope the entire business operations, meaning no Enterprise Resource Planning Systems; it simply caters to the needful purposes. There is no mechanism to capture enough personal data about customer's, namely feedback, preferences and tastes, to retain them or get new ones. Their Customer Relationship Management is quite poor. Analysis of customer base is not done at all. Present system neither possesses automatic links for replenishment of their stock nor any integrated suite of office software programmes. Data is not managed well. Management Information Systems are absent and thereby it gets impossible to make long term decisions. Proposed new E-Commerce system: The new system would be smart enough to market its presence and business over the internet The awareness of the company stands very important so that people get a chance to compare it with the competitors. The large case files would be stored efficiently The customer information can be stored and managed well so that they are focused when catering repeat orders and services. The data will also serve as rich information to the degree of importance which a customer must receive. Diversifications into other businesses are very important for business continuity and should be taken care really well to fetch more customers and provide them better and allied services for retention and indirect marketing. The feedback system can also be added so that future caterings can be handled better. Direct interface with the clients would ensure correct and right tapping of feedbacks online. The total sales and profit can be easily captured and produced to management with ease reducing a lot of manual operations. Thus an information system from scratch is essential for making the right decision for the firm. References Bardhan, I. & Krishnan, V. & Lin, S. (2004). A Model to Measure the Business Value of Information Technology: The case of project and information work. Retrieved April 27, 2008 from http://rady.ucsd.edu/faculty/directory/krishnan/docs/valueIT.pdf Brynjolfssor, E. (2003). The IT Productivity GAP. MIT. Retrieved April 27, 2008 from http://digital.mit.edu/erik/Optimize/pr_roi.html Brynjolfssor, E. (2003). The IT Productivity GAP. MIT. Retrieved April 27, 2008 from http://digital.mit.edu/erik/Optimize/pr_roi.html Burg, W. D. & Singleton, T. W. (2005). Assessing the Value of IT: Understanding and measuring the link between IT and strategy. Information Systems Control Journal, Information Systems Audit and Control Association., vol.3, 2004. Retrieved April 27, 2008 from http://www.isaca.org/Template.cfm'Section=Home&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=25092 De Haes, S & Grembergen, W. V. (2004), IT Governance and Its Mechanisms, Information Systems Control Journal, Information Systems Audit and Control Association., vol.1, 2004. Retrieved April 27, 2008 from http://www.isaca.org/Template.cfm'Section=Home&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=16771 Leffler, Sam. (2002). Wireless Network. Retrieved from http://www.freebsdmall.com/'loader/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/wireless/article.html on April 14, 2008. Karygiannis, Tom and Owens, Les. (2002). Wireless Network Security 802.11, Bluetooth and Handheld Devices. Mitra, S. (2005). Information Technology as an Enabler of Growth in Firms: An empirical assessment. Journal of Management Information Systems, 22(2). Retrieved April 28, 2008 from http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm'id=1277994.1278007&coll=Portal&dl=GUIDE&CFID=61943483&CFTOKEN=43295729 NSS Questionnaire (2008). Retrieved 29 April 2008 from http://www.thestudentsurvey.com/ O, Effy. (1998). Management Information System. Cambridge: Course Technology. Symons, C. (2006). Measuring the Business Value of IT. Forrester. 25 September 2006. Retrieved April 27, 2008 from http://viewer.media.bitpipe.com/1070398394_846/1201804423_89/SAP_AMerica_47_MeasuringtheBusinessValueofIT.pdf Read More