Analysis of the Issues Associated with Management of Data the Organization - Case Study Example

Information Management Strategy and Section # of This report is aimed at identifying the information resources and the need of information in organizations today, leading to the hunger for information, its utilization, in turn moving towards the identification of a real scenario prevailing in the organization, its critical analysis and then providing a solution for the same. The underlying objective herewith of this report is to comprehend and analyze the issues associated with management of data in my organization, the level of criticality associated with these issues, and finally proposing a solution for resolving the issues that are identified and discussed. 1. Introduction 1.1 Background Hicks (1986) states that as the world moves from the days of disparate societies to the days of integration and awareness, the need for having reliable, authentic, and verifiable means of information increases. This results from the fact that managers need processed information for taking better decisions on a routine basis, and this processed information is the output of various processes that are conducted on the initially presented and collected raw data. This raw data constitutes the information collected from various sources within the organization or from external sources, and thus the sources of information gain ultimate importance, no matter which organization it is. Subsequently, the importance of not just information but the information sources as well cannot be denied. The information sources may include, but are not restricted to, employees, stakeholders, shareholders, newspapers, industry analysis, independent news sources, media, competitor publications, etc. Data management is a critical subject of concern today for management, because the reliance on availability of accurate, verifiable and timely data cannot be denied by any means. 1.2 About the Organization The organization under consideration in this assignment is my own organization i.e. where I work. The major operation in my organization is based on customer communication, where our source of revenue is the printing of statements, cheques, mailing, customer response, and we are also indulged in develop IT solutions for various customers that we have. The aim of our organization is to provide this wide variety of services to our wide clientele. 1.3 Information Needs of the Organization - what information is needed The focus of this assignment is mainly towards the human resource department that is facing loads of troubles as far as data gathering through various sources is concerned. Seemingly, it looks like human resource department would not require loads of data or the data resource would be fairly restricted, but neither is the case. This section details the need for data in the human resource department, while the next section sheds light on the various data resources. It is noticeable here that the term data and information would be used interchangeably, though in reality, data is the raw form of information, and information is processed data. Human resources are defined as the truest source for attaining competitive edge for an organization. Therefore, there has been tons of weightage given to subjects like management and organizational behavior, similar to the weigh given to finance and marketing, if not more or less. A major part of keeping the human resource satisfied and contented is giving them appropriate compensation, with the right and justifiable deductions. For this fact to stand true, i.e. the right compensation with proper deductions, there is need for information pertinent to attendance, ins and outs, movement of employees, late comings, proper utilization of time, presence in the right area, avoiding irrelevant movements across the firm's building, and so on. All this information needs to be gathered at the end that generates pay-slips and payments i.e. the payroll department. 1.4 Information Resources After having described the need of information for the organization, it is essential to identify the resources that contribute with these chunks of information. The major information resource is the attendance register, no matter physical or e-form of it or the biometrics system. Other than the attendance registers, the database containing the biometric or the access card information i.e. when and where any employee was found, how relevant the trip was, the timings of the visit, and other pieces of information. Various departmental logs can be another important source of information. In my organization, the staff clock-in, access cards, time-and-attendance system, and some other sources are primarily the places from where data is gathered. The clock in mechanism is used by the managers for time-keeping, and keeping track of the holidays taken for any purpose. Access cards are used to time the ins and outs, and also for restricting access. Time and attendance systems are for ensuring that the early leaves and over times and accounted for and recorded appropriately. In an overall scenario, my organization has embedded a lot of technological equipment and other resources to ensure that data gathered is accurate and verifiable. 2. Analysis & Discussion Analyzing my organization, I see that there is a big issue associated with data management and information management, mainly coming from the information system and technologies issue. In my organization, there are some issues with the structuring of how information is gathered, and stored. The major issue, that will be elaborated below is associated with the compilation of the gathered data. The major issue that has been identified in the organization is that the systems, as identified previously are operating disparately in isolation and, as the administration/management calls it, they cannot 'talk' to each other. Talk here implies the lacking integration amongst the system, whereby, the systems cannot interact with each other in terms of data and information sharing. This leads to a number of issues: Firstly, there is no central data bank from where anyone in need of data can extract data as per their needs and requirements. Subsequently, there are no grounds for entertaining ad hoc queries. Every time when data is needed, there is a need to compile all data and draw required analyses from the same. Each time data compilation is needed, there has to be replication of data on various data centers or a single data center that re-enters all data at one system, and then performs the required analysis and procedural functions. Replication of data requires loads of data entry efforts, and thus time and costs associated with them also increase. Apart from the cost in terms of time and effort, it is also noticeable that in the times of information technology, technology should reduce the replication of workings rather than increasing it. Additionally, wherever human efforts are involved, there are chances of human error getting involved, which is a huge cost to an organization because faulty data can lead to erroneous databank, and ultimately the outcome of the processes applied is not reliable. Even if replication is ensured to be error-free, data gathering and compilation is a hassle within itself, because there is a lot of manual workings involved in gathering data from various centers, and of course this data may not necessarily be in the same shape and format. Other than data formats, the time taken along with the dependency on the data centers is another point of concern for the organization. Analyzing these and other issues that are associated with the usage of information management systems in my organization, I truly feel that the organization, though has deployed technologically advance set up to assist human resource efforts for recording data about the employees, yet not an optimal benefit has been attained out of them, and as visible, the presence of the technological set up is actually becoming a nuisance for the organization. It seems moreover like technology has just been deployed for the sake of it, rather than for taking maximum advantage out of it. Abramowicz (2001) states that data integration is one of the prime concerns for an information management system as these systems aim to reduce or eliminate disparity amongst various existing systems. Even if the information system is unable to create a single platform to cater to the requirements of various departments and work-groups, it should be able to formulate an integration module that can really assist various systems operating individually to combine together, share data and information, provide access to the knowledge base, allow cross functional integration, develop consistency amongst data, and so on. In accordance with Bocij (2006), information systems are meant to ease the lives of individuals, reduce redundancy, eliminating re-entering of data in the system, spreading consistency, allowing data access where need be, restricting views where confidentiality is needed, giving access and authorization to individuals who are concerned to the given set of data or have a stake at it, and so on. Management of data is an important aspect under consideration in organizations today, as they aim to manage data with efficacy so that data is preserved, verifiable, and timely available. In the similar context, another important phenomenon is data integration. According to Curtis (1998), data integration is an essential aspect of information systems, whereby, though data can be collected from various terminals and can be consistent or otherwise, but an information system aims at developing either a single data bank where all data compiles and sits together in an extractable manner or sharing of data where need be. The examples of various terminals collecting data on a similar platform can be counters within a supermarket or a chain of supermarket, whereby, most commonly, data entry mechanism shall be the same like bar code readers or manual entries or even if there is varied practice of data collection, the ultimate data warehouse would only contain data in a particular format, because no matter what the input mechanism is, the requirement of data being recorded would be the same for example product code. An example of various points of data collection with varying platforms can be a human resource department, for instance, where the attendance module works on a separate platform compared to a recruitment module or a clock-in module, but ultimately, the information system should be defined as such that though varying data requirements and various terminals for data collection with different formats, they should ultimately be linked together by a certain variable like a primary key, generally is the employee id in this case. In any of the above-mentioned cases i.e. supermarket or chain of it or the human resource department, for an effective information system, the system should be able to read and compile data in a meaningful format, linking all ends to one another. For example, as mentioned, employee id shall link the various modules containing employee information, and an ad hoc query giving in the employee id will yield the employee data from various files. Similarly, this employee id shall link various modules in human resource management to the payroll module, and then on to the accounts department to settle any existing debt on the employee prior to generating the pay slip, and then it would be linked to the MIS (Management Information Systems) department or the IT (Information Technology) department to print the pay slips. This discussion clearly depicts the fact that an information system is meant to facilitate human beings by mainly reducing time and effort burden, reducing the cost and time associated to duplicate entries and avoiding similar issues likewise. However, applying this true meaning of an information system to the scenario prevailing in my organization, it can be observed that the firm has failed to retrieve the maximum potential that an information system has to, or can offer to its users. Therefore, the firm needs to change its approach and thought process towards the information system being used, and the following section presents the conclusive remarks, along with the proposed recommendations in this regard and context. 3. Conclusion Wigand (2003) states that generally, classical cases are assumed to be an extreme; for example, for an information management report, majority would agree that a classical example would be where an organization has manual systems deployed, and there is tons of redundancy of data, along with the costly errors associated with data entry. Not many would genuinely agree to the fact that having an information system deployed can act as a classical case, but this is a genuine case of information system failure, and not truly the case of failure but failure in the sense that the organization has not optimally utilized the worth of an information system. The way an information system should assist is in a positive manner by supporting the functions and assisting in reducing the over load that can be done mechanically rather than involving humans in such processes. For the issue that my organization faces, I believe there are some technically sound solutions that can be well deployed here. Firstly, some IT consultant can be hired for formulating a software patch that can compile all the systems working on various machines, and interlink them. This would largely assist in compilation of data as and when need be, and data can be extracted in a meaningful format, also allowing the entertainment of ad hoc queries. Secondly, the firm can also opt for moving towards a completely integrated system that allows an atmosphere where disparate systems seize to exist, and all systems are cross connected and interlinked to each other. Another solution for this can be that the firm can formulate a data warehouse or a data bank that picks data as and when it is entered on any standalone system. The major benefit of this system would be that it can have a single and simple platform and consistent tables for data formats. Therefore, it would be easier for analyst and job-doers to extract data coming in from various sources. To be in precise terms of the case, the human resource department, while running the payroll module can easily extract data from the single source without wasting much time and efforts and link to a single data bank that can resolve all the requirements issues, eliminating the problems as discussed in the previous sections of this report. Deploying either of the three systems, as mentioned, can assist the firm in making most out of the information technology infrastructure that would mean cost efficiency, avoiding wastage of services rendered by the staff, avoiding wastage of time associated with duplication of data, wastage of replicated efforts, and other benefits. There can be tons of similar solutions that can be derived from these, but would fundamentally be these that can be further sub-divided or refined. However, by any means, as stated by Kroenke (1993), for driving advantage out of the investment made on the information technology set up, or to gain the return on investment with regards to this huge investment, the firm has to deploy a certain course of action, else loss is inevitable in this regard. Texts about information system deployments are filled with cases of failure of information technology; lessons are to be learnt not just from the success stories but also from the failure lessons, because success stories define the path to follow and failures define the path not to follow References Abramowicz W., Zurada J. (2001) Knowledge Discovery for Business Information Systems. Springer Bocij P. et al. (2006) Business information systems: technology, development and management for the e-business. Financial Times/Prentice Hall Curtis G. (1998) Business information systems: analysis, design and practice Addison-Wesley Hicks J. (1986) Information Systems in Business: An Introduction. West Pub. Kroenke D., Hatch R. (1993) Business Information Systems: An Introduction. Mitchell McGraw-Hill Wigand R. (2003) Introduction to Business Information Systems Springer Read More