Information System in Business: Etisalat - Case Study Example

Etisalat (information System in Business) Executive Summary This case is mainly into the study of Management Information system and Information system in business. Taking into consideration of the Saudi Arabia’s biggest telecomm service provider Etisalat which is also one of the global leader in telecomm industry the importance, role and functions of the IT department in an organization is been studied. Different aspects of the IT department as the major roles that the department has in a company, the major functional supports that it provides to other departments and also the way it helps in making important decisions for the management at different times for the continuous growth of the company is been studied. Apart from the importance of the IT department this case also covers the organizational study and structure of Etisalat, which has created a big image in the global market of telecomm industry providing a lot of services to the all the customers across the world. Introduction The Overall organization description Etisalat is been one of the telecommunications service providers since 1976 in the UAE, and down the years has built up a modern infrastructure of telecom and has developed itself as a reliable and innovative service provider in the country. Since then is has been one of the forefront for technological revolution in the country. Over the last 40 years Etisalat has grown up to become one of the world’s leading telecom service providers. In 1989 it became the first service providing company in the country to build its Outside Plant Network using GIS technology. With the increasing network convergence in today’s market, Etisalat uses GIS technology to simplify the network operations and reach customer satisfaction and move forward towards creating and developing new and better services that will increase the revenue of the company. Etisalat became the second mobile license, and received the earliest 3G license in the country of Saudi Arabia. Its subscribers have increased in huge numbers from 4 million in the year 2004 to more than 139 million at the end of the same year. About seven hundred million people now have access to its service, and to more than two thirds of the planet’s surface Etisalat has its network coverage service. It has now become a pioneer in next generation networks by providing services in both forms of wired network and also wireless network services throughout the country and also has increased its global presence widely. The company got successful in carrying out the premier 4G LTE speed test on the globe by reaching a highest speed of 300 Mbps. This fast speed service is a big achievement for the global telecommunications business and this achievement has established Etisalat as a principal in portable broadband globally. This expertise of the company has helped it to increase its market share by expanding its markets Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where the company has introduced mobile broadband services, including video call and mobile TV, these services has changed market dynamics and has provided easy and affordable internet access for a vast population. The company has also shown strong commitment towards corporate social responsibility and has partnered with many governments and non-government organizations to improve the health and education system of with the use of technology. Over the course of year, the company has growth in both size and revenue, retaining and also increasing more customers and gaining higher revenues across the global market. Etisalat has been awarded as the ‘Best Overall Operator’ in the Middle East for 10 times since 2006, and been given as the Best International Carrier at the World Communications Awards in 2008. The forward movement by Etisalat in 2012 has a huge positive impact on the Company’s future growth; its vision of becoming one of the most admirable telecommunications companies in the world has helped it to have a fast growth and gaining huge market shares (Etisalat, 2012). The Etisalat Group organization structure basically has two autonomous Operating Units which are Etisalat UAE unit, this is for providing Licensed Telecom Services in the United Arab Emirates and Etisalat Services Unit, and this is a wholly owned holding company for providing certain non-telecom services to the Corporation and also to the third parties. Both the units does their respective operations and report to the Board of Directors on a regular basis present in different countries (Baligh, 2006). The total revenue of the group has Group has increased by 2% to reach AED 32.9 billion, which is been accomplished with the growth in international operations that nearly contributes to 29% of the company’s consolidated revenue. The company has looked to target the whole population across the globe tracking even the corporate world and also the government bodies and has tried to build and expand its market share in different parts of the world coming up with new developed technologies and services in the telecomm market and providing high customer satisfaction. The IS/IT Department Role Information Technology is a very important part of any telecommunication industry, since the early 1990’s the very essence of every companies growth especially in the telecommunication industry depends on development of new technologies and new business models coming up with new services and which highly depends in the IT department of the company. It department helps the company to increase customer satisfaction through better customer relationship management. It department plays a vital role as it different services like email is the principal means of communication between the employees in the company and its suppliers and also reaching the customers. It department does helps in creating and maintaining various data of other departments in the company. As Etisalat is growing in a huge way and expanding globally the company need to have good communication among all its customers which is done and maintained by the IT department. The companies IT department helps in tracking the sales data, expenses and productivity levels. Apart from all these for a company like Etisalat which is highly depended on the growth in the telecom sector which is completely based on the innovations coming up in the service sector, all those innovations and new techniques are basically developed by the IT department in the company which helps it to come up with new innovative products. IT department does also helps to reduce the costing company and also the time for various functions in the company as a result it helps in increasing the profit of the company by improving its process and also helps it reach the customer end through various processes. The IS/IT role as a functional support The IT department gives a very important functional support to the whole company in various ways. As the company Etisalat is into telecomm service provider, providing huge number of services and has become one of the global leaders in this market coming up with new services like 3G high speed internet services. The company is into Wireless, fixed line, cable and satellite service provider in total so the IT department has certain functional roles like Application development and maintenance, coming up with new applications to give the customer best facilities and providing customer satisfaction and also keeping a good maintenance for the applications that have been already developed and launched in the market. The It department functionally supports the company in the different platforms such as maintain CRM(customer relationship management) which is very important as to acquire the market and also in retaining the customers those are already been provided with its services. The department of billing and collecting needs the support of the IT department in huge way as they need to keep a track over the billing and payment made by the suppliers and also the customers and also for collecting the payment through electronic media it needs the support of IT department as it is the one which creates the platform for the electronic transfer and updating of the payments. Maintaining the customer portal, customer portal is the one through which the customers can directly contact with the company and give reviews about a particular product and also provide suggestions. This is very important in this competitive world and especially for Etisalat to know the customers requirement and as they always try and innovate to reach customer satisfaction, for them this portal is very important to know what the customer need are exactly and IT department helps the company to create a platform and maintain it for the customer portal where the company can directly come in contact with the end customers. Inventory management , having a good management technique for the inventory is very important as it helps in reducing the cost to a great extent and thus it takes the support from the IT department to provide various software’s and services that can help the company to have a better management of the inventory and reduce the cost incurred in production. For a company so huge like Etisalat it is very important to have a good review system for the auditing process and also for checking other financially related functions, these review systems and the platform used for checking the performance and financial data has to be a good and well build one for which the IT department plays a vital role as it designs the platform over which it is been done. There are many other functions in the company where IT support is very much required like quality checking of the service that has been provided. The functional support of the IT department is nearly there for every department in the company. The IS role as decision making support The fast development of information systems technologies has brought huge changes to economy, organizations and in all area of businesses and in a quick time. Earlier IS was used only as the organizations functional support. The improvement in technology made it possible for the employees of the company to access data more quickly and the new programming systems did allow the company to come up with new and refined operating systems, which helped the organization with necessary data to run it in more effective way and improve the productivity and efficiency on daily basis. Information systems helped the managers to get access to the data very quickly and easily as a result it helped them to make important decisions at a crucial time which always helps the organization to grow. In Etisalat IS has helped the management take many decisions which has helped it to improve its brand image in huge way like in 2012 of the many market innovation decisions one was that of providing a service to the allow the Hajj and Omrah returnees to contribute their unexploited credit for the charity purpose in Saudi Arabia, along with this an i-Bill feature was also been offered so that subscribers can benefit from detailed and timely billing, these kind of decisions does helps in creating customer satisfaction and improve the market share. IS does also helps in making decisions by passing the information among the different levels of organization through MIS (Management information System). IS helps the higher level management i.e. the strategic management decision makers in taking crucial decisions like going under the agreement with IBM global and even building a partnership with Korea Technologies (Namani, 2010). Conclusion Through this case study it can be seen that Etisalat has grown over the years in the telecomm market providing huge number of services to the customers and also achieving the customer satisfaction. The company continually has grown over the last 40years and has come up with new and innovative services throughout the global market and has become one of the leaders in the telecomm business market. The IT department in Etisalat plays a vital role in the company having its presence in every department as every other functional department does requires the support of the IT department for a quick and better functioning. In companies like Etisalat which is into telecomm industry depends hugely on the IT department as its major functions are been done by the Information system and all the data’s are been stored and reviewed by the use of MIS (Management information system). Thus in today’s generation when majority of world’s population is moving into IT and also is moving very fast the company needs to have a strong base of IT department in the company so that it doesn’t lags behind in the competitive market and can know the customer requirements easily. References Etisalat,2012. Annual Report. Retrieved From: http://www.etisalat.com/en/system/docs/reports/Etisalat-2012-En.pdf. Baligh, H. 2006. Organization Structures: Theory and Design, Analysis and Prescription. New York: Springer. Namani, M. 2010. The role of information systems in management decisions making-an theoretical approach. Retrieved From: https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&ved=0CDYQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fhrcak.srce.hr%2Ffile%2F74937&ei=3f0OU57pOM6UrAfv3oHAAg&usg=AFQjCNHV0cDI6II3T5pUgHEnj_EMRSCiew&sig2=jj8IQpnTYDHaUFmyKTGi5w Etisalat, 2014. About US. Retrieved From: http://www.etisalat.ae/en/aboutus/about.jsp. Read More