IT Management Role in Magnum Enterprises - Term Paper Example

?Part - I Assume you have taken over responsibility to play the lead IT management role in Magnum Enterprises. Your boss, Rachel Heigl, is Magnum’s CIO. The IT management group is comprised of six people who you will be supervised. Ms. Heigl is an enlightened manager, and she believes that if you are to carry out your responsibilities effectively, you need to work with her in defining your IT management role. As a first step, she invites you to write a short statement where you describe what you see to be your role as head of the IT management effort at Magnum. The role of an Information Technology (IT) Manager varies with respect to the company; therefore, the IT Manager can be responsible for diverse areas of the information technology. The areas of responsibility of the IT Manager include but not limited to the IT Project Management, Computer Network and Server Administration, compliance of Information Technology and procedures, Information Security, moreover, the responsibility of automating a company by implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) including diverse departments (finance, sales & marketing, procurement, operations, inventory etc.) of a company. However, a lead IT Manager can also be responsible for the developing and implementing information technology policy, strategic direction and planning for implementing information technology standards in a company by utilizing human and technical resources. One of the known definitions of the management is “getting things done through other people” (The Big Geek, 2010). It would be a great opportunity for me to work as Lead Information Technology Manager in Magnum Enterprises. Keeping in view the diverse roles of the lead IT manager and the purpose of Magnum Enterprises for hiring me, I would like to discuss on integrating the software, hardware and business management capabilities. I believe that the role of IT Management includes: the research and development by understanding the IT requirements of the company and implementing software and deploying hardware so that the company should be able to enhance productivity. In order to achieve my objective, I need to work on developing the policies, action plans keeping in view the operations of the company. The IT policy and strategic plans should be in accordance to the company’s priorities so that the company would able to achieve its predefined goals. Actually, the IT is utilized to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the company’s business processes by developing and utilizing software applications / products so that the customer’s of the company should get quality services. Once the company would be able to achieve customer satisfaction, the company would ultimately get increase profitability and competitiveness. It is significant to know the goal, objectives and mission statement of the company before developing any strategy. Therefore, primarily I will review the company’s goals and objectives to keep myself informed of the priorities of the Magnum Enterprise. It will not only give me the right direction but also guide me to take informed decisions. It is important to investigate the business process of the Magnum Enterprises, moreover, the current IT infrastructure, provision of services to the customers, the prevailing IT standards and procedures. One of the important responsibilities of the lead IT manager is to communicate with all the stakeholders. Furthermore, I believe that the lead IT manager is a mediator between the company’s senior management and the team, therefore, it is equivalently significant that I should know the tools required for reporting to the senior management / Chief Information Officer (CIO) – Ms. Rachel Heigl. Furthermore, the current job roles of the team so that I could be able to assign the tasks to my team. It is primarily the responsibility of the lead IT manager to motivate, inform and utilize the team in an appropriate manner so that the team would be occupied to achieve the company’s objective by implementing IT. Therefore, I will educate my team on utilizing the IT standards in integrating software, hardware and business management. Usually, the companies deploy IT to not only support business operations but also to take informed decisions and getting strategic advantages. The business operations may include but not limited to the organizing and managing complicated manufacturing processes, financial operations and improving teamwork’s efficiency and productivity. As far as the informed decisions are concerned, the companies develop databases so that the higher management should be informed regarding the prevailing trends to take informed decisions by also providing the information on the competitors. Lastly, the IT is also utilized for the strategic advantages by developing and implementing the automated sales and marketing systems, computerized inventory and procurement system and automated customer’s order system. In other words, it can be stated that initially it is important to automate the internal processes of the company by developing and implementing Enterprise Resource planning (ERP) that deals with each and every business process and operation of the company. Moreover, the ERP contains all the above given automation of departments as integrated modules of the system in a way that single system could be utilized to gain all the above given advantages that eventually leads to the company’s benefits. It is imperative to consider and figure out the five (5) knowledge areas of the information systems for the lead IT manager implementing information technology infrastructure and applications. The five knowledge areas include: the foundation / basic concepts, business applications, information technologies, development / business processes as well as information technology management challenges. Basic / foundation concepts of information technology include: the role of information systems keeping in view the both aspects including the technical as well as business concepts, moreover, the concepts that widen the information and guidelines on gaining the strategic advantage. Moreover, as lead IT manager it is my responsibility of ensuring that not only my each team member but also all the stakeholders (customers, CIO etc.) should know and understand the required concepts (O'Brien & Marakas, 2009). It is significant for me to explore the business application area of the information systems as lead IT manager. The business applications include: the commerce applications, decision support systems and Enterprise Resource Planning system. Moreover, it is important to consistently explore the existing applications of the Magnum Enterprise and developing strategies for integrating the new applications to the existing software applications. Therefore, in order to review the existing infrastructure of the IT applications, I would definitely ask the senior management and my team to describe me either by diagrammatic illustration or a presentation / meeting. It will help me to improve the IT systems of the company by integrating the software applications. It is pertinent to mention here that without software application integration, the individual / separate software applications can never enhance the productivity and efficiency of the company’s employees. Therefore, it would be suggested to learn the Enterprise Resource planning to fully automate the company. Usually, the ERP system consists of following modules: The Planning module of the Enterprise Resource Planning system enables the company to utilize the resources in an efficient manner. Furthermore, planning minimizes the deployment of built-up capability, components, parts and substance resources using chronological making records and deals prediction. The Project Management module is specifically for the companies dealing with projects. The module helps in planning, scheduling, development and managing resources for a project. These are key considerations for completion of the projects despite the nature of their difficulty. In this module, the projects are well thought-out as a set of tasks and structured into phases and sub-phases. The Purchase module not only makes the procurement process efficient, but also establishes transparency in the companies. It not only automates the processes of identifying prospective suppliers, settle charges, giving purchase order to the supplier, but also billing process as well as management of customers/clients. The purchase / procurement module is not only integrated with inventory control and production planning modules of an Enterprise Resource Planning system but as well as supply chain management software (if any). Every company deals with finance and accounting, therefore, the financial module is one of the core modules of the ERP system that plays vital role in the success of the company. This module of the ERP system deals with finance and account related transactions. Moreover, it caters total flow of money (online/cash/bank) through automated processes of creating online balance-sheet, trial balance, debit/credit, profit & loss etc. The process of maintaining a suitable level of inventory in a stockroom could efficiently be managed by the Inventory Control module of the ERP system, hence, it enhances productivity. The automated process enables the company to take informed decisions regarding inventory management. Some of the activities of inventory management are identification of available stock, laying down objectives, supervision and reconciliation of stock. The Human Resource (HR) module is one of the widely implemented ERP system’s modules. The Human Resource module simplifies the supervision of human resources and assets. The module keeps on maintaining complete staff data (information) in a database including contact numbers, e-mail, address, salary details, presents & leaves and office assessment etc. The third knowledge area of the information systems is the information technologies that refer to a wide range of computer software, hardware, computer networking, and the components of data management that are necessary to execute and operate the information systems. The computer hardware technologies range from input devices to the mainframe computer servers, moreover, the external and internal storage devices, laptops, personal digital assistants (PDAs). The computer hardware technologies have high priority importance in the information technologies; moreover, these are essential and crucial in building the IT infrastructure of the company. In order to utilize them properly, I believe that the Magnum Enterprise has a group of employees that include: the network administrators and managers, network security specialists and help desk assistants. Software applications are used to properly utilize the computer hardware and there are two types of software include: the application and system software. The system software is installed to utilize the computer hardware that includes: the Operating Systems, the hardware drivers like the software for the printer device etc. Whereas, the company should have the applications software that includes: the database management systems, customer relationship management system etc. Moreover, it is important to regularly check the computer hardware, software and the team has to report all the issues (if any) to me in resolving them. I believe that the development process is the most critical knowledge area of the information systems and I need to focus it on priority as lead IT manager. The development process refers to the planning, designing, implementing, and operating the information systems in accordance with the company requirements. Before the selecting the development process (either prototyping or system development life cycle), it is imperative to ensure the computer hardware and software integration with management capabilities and the business processes. It is important that my team should have knowledge of both development processes. Initially, I would like to describe the prototyping developing process deals incomplete software or model of information system. In other words it can be said that prototyping is the user interfaces (logically connected) without functionality of the information system under development that are quickly developed for showing to the customer taking their concurrence. There are five phases of the prototyping development process that include: the analysis, design, implementation, testing and maintenance. In the first phase, the user requirements are gathered, analyzed and specified. In the design phase, the gathered user requirements are transformed into the software artifacts to complete the design or architecture of the information system. In the third phase, the software developers code the information system in any of the selected computer programming language keeping in view the developed design or architecture. In the fourth and the fifth phase, the software is being tested in order to remove bugs and maintained. One of the important tasks is to develop prototype after analysis phase and it can be repeated until the customer gets satisfied. It is worthwhile to know the advantages of the prototyping process that include but not limited to the less development time and cost, it results in higher user satisfaction as it requires users’ involvement to give their feedback on the developed prototype (Trivedi, 2012). The second development process is the system development life cycle to develop information technology solutions. It is pertinent to mention here that this development process is usually used for developing large applications for the company. I consider that my team should have knowledge of this development process. There are five (5) phases of the system development life cycle include: the requirement gathering, requirement analysis, system design, system implementation and maintenance. Initially, it is desirable to conduct a feasibility report either the development of the system would be beneficial with respect to the cost for development, moreover, the technicalities of the system are in accordance to the objectives of the company. It also investigates the areas include: economic, organizational and operational feasibility. The operational feasibility deals with desire and willingness of all the stakeholders include: the customer, end users (employees), suppliers / vendors, and management of the company to utilize the proposed system up to its extend. If the system is feasible for development, then after gathering the complete requirements, it is required to plan the system’s tasks in a way that it can be completed within specified time and cost while ensuring fulfillment of all the specified business requirements. The work breakdown structure is developed according to the requirements of the customer, the data flow diagrams and system flowcharts are developed keeping in view the business processes and rules as well as the objectives of the company for development of the system. These activities are followed by the architectural design of the system and implementation of the system in which all the requirements are transformed into the coding. The system is prepared for testing so that it would be made available for deployment in the company. It should be kept is mind that the maintenance phase of the system development life cycle is on going till the company utilizes the software application. The fifth and last knowledge area of the information system is management challenges and these challenges are related to the ethical responsibilities, security management issues and the problems related to managing the information system’s operations. Being IT manager of the Magnum’s Enterprise it is my responsibility to resolve all the above given challenges. The ethical responsibilities include: the utilization of the internet and IT applications in an appropriate manner so that it could not harm the company or the employees. It is one of my primary responsibilities to secure the information of the company from the hackers and employees of the company. In order to prevent the information from the hackers, it is required to install a firewall and antivirus to remove vulnerabilities. Moreover, it is required to develop a policy on the system access rights of the employees so that secured information can only be viewed / accessed by the relevant employees only. The security and ethical issues are the core responsibilities of the IT manager; therefore, I would focus these issues while implementing information system in a way that the productivity and efficiency could be increased. Despite expanding the information technology infrastructure and increasing computer network of the Magnum Enterprise, it is important to manage the IT at the end user or employees of the company, the information technology at an enterprise / company level as well as it is also significant to consider the global levels of a business. Moreover, it is equally important to develop a disaster recovery plan by taking backups of the company’s data daily / weekly / bi-monthly. However, if the Magnum Enterprise does not have an already developed plan, I would like to add these components in the strategic or / and action plan of the company. Part 2 “Six months after you take over the lead IT management role at Magnum, the CIO, Ms. Rachel Heigl, is pleased with your work. She has just attended a meeting of Magnum’s executive committee (the committee comprised of the most senior managers of Magnum), where the CEO and Vice President of marketing have indicated that Magnum’s mediocre e-business capabilities must be strengthened. As CIO, Ms. Heigl is given primary responsibility in improving Magnum’s e-business performance. She in turn puts you in charge of a small task force comprised of representatives from the operations, marketing, finance, and legal departments.” It is significant to improve the performance and efficiency of the e-business of the Magnum Enterprise; therefore, being lead IT manager I started to develop a way forward. As the e-business involves many departments of the Magnum Enterprise include: the finance, marketing, operations, legal and the information technology department, therefore, it is important to develop a team having representatives from these departments of the Magnum Enterprise. The representative of each department would have to present their views and input on the business processes of their respective department. I would accommodate the input and comments received from the representative of each department in my strategic plan. One of the core departments involved in the process of e-business is the marketing that deals with the promotion of the products and services provided by the Magnum Enterprise. The marketing department also develops strategies and plans to make the products or services attractive in a way that these can be sold to the customers. These are the main responsibilities of the marketing department; however, I am unaware of the business processes that are used by the marketing department to incorporate in my strategic plan. Therefore, it is significant to interact with the representative of the marketing department to get information on the roles and responsibilities of the marketing department. The main elements of the marketing information system include: analysis of the market in terms of pricing, timings, marketing planning and informed decision making. In the words of Hitesh Bhasin in 2010, the marketing information system can be stated as: “A marketing information system (MIS) is a set of procedures and methods designed to generate, analyze, disseminate, and store anticipated marketing decision information on a regular, continuous basis. An information system can be used operationally, managerially, and strategically for several aspects of marketing.” (Bhasin, 2010) The main elements of the marketing information system include: analysis of the market in terms of pricing, timings, marketing planning and informed decision making. There are seven components of the marketing information system include: sales management, internal marketing / accounting system, marketing intelligence, marketing research, customer relationship management, targeted marketing and product management. The marketing research helps the management to improve the quality of the products / services, the information on the competitors and customers needs for the products. The internal marketing supports the management and cost accounting as well as provision of useful information on the past data of the marketing. The customer relationship management incorporates the business processes related to the provision of the services / products to the customer and maintaining customers’ records that helps to the targeted marketing (O'Brien, 2009). The information security, privacy, and copyrights are the main concerns of the information technology. In order to cater these concerns of the information technology it is highly significant to take input from the legal department of the Magnum Enterprise. Therefore, my team would have a representative from the legal department for the provision of views not only on the above given concerns but also the information access rights of the employees, monitoring of the computer network activities as well as the internet usage of the employees, privacy laws, copyright, application of the username and passwords, security of the employees personal information as well as the company’s secret data and advise on the violations. Being a lead IT Manager, it is my responsibility to cater the legal concerns while developing and implementing the information technology, the computer network infrastructure and software applications. Moreover, it is my responsibility to develop and implement the guidelines for using the information technology to avoid the company committing the violation. As the finance is the core functions of any company, therefore, it is important to understand the financial and accounting systems of the Magnum’s Enterprise. The representative of the finance department would facilitate and brief me the functions of the finance in the Magnum Enterprise to incorporate in the IT strategic plan. The role of the finance department is to handle all the financial transactions of the company include: the employees’ payroll, payments of items procure, inventory and cash management, financial processing the order of the customers, financial relationship with the customer, vendors and suppliers. It is one of the high priority departments for automation, as it is required that the financial management should always be accurate, efficient and effective. Therefore, being a lead IT Manager I believe that the success of the Magnum Enterprise is directly proportional to the implementation of the accurate and efficient financial management system. Moreover, it is requisite to upgrade the financial system constantly, therefore, the inputs and views of the finance department’s representative are regularly required. The Manufacturing Information System is being designed and developed to support the functions and operations of the production unit / department. Organizations are highly depending on the efficiency and effectiveness of the production department to increase their productivity and profitability. There are diverse types of Manufacturing Information systems that usually comprise of the robotics, controlling the processes and machines of the production units; moreover, the computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) is used to control and monitor the complete processes of the manufacturing unit through computer systems. The process control utilizes computers to supervise and manage the physical processes of the manufacturing unit, whereas, the machine control also involves utilization of the computer systems to instruct the machine for performing the desired actions to develop the products. These are the key operations and functions of the organizations based on manufacturing and production of the item for consumption. Being IT manager of the Magnum Enterprise, I believe that it should be known to me in a way that the views and inputs of the representative of the Production department could be incorporated in the development and improvement of the IT systems and infrastructure. There are a huge number of benefits for involving the representatives of diverse and all departments of the Magnum Enterprise because every employee and the department have to interact with the information technology systems and / or services. The consents of the representatives of every department have to be incorporated in the information systems, as they have to use the system. Moreover, the ultimately the Magnum Enterprise would get benefits of implementing and improving the automation of the whole company. For example the benefits that can be gained by automating and improving the marketing departments include: sales of the products would be increased from the improved marketing techniques using information communication technologies, hence, the revenue of the company would be increased. Moreover, by utilization of the information technology in every department the customer would be able to get 24/7 accessibility to the services of the Magnum Enterprise. In order to improve and strengthen the capacity of any organization in the field of the Information Technology, you always need to face technical as well as managerial challenges. Therefore, being IT manager of the Magnum Enterprise, it is my responsibility to keep an eye on the challenges as well. It is also required to develop risk (challenges) management plan to enhance the efficiency of the e-business of the Magnum Enterprise. Some of the technical challenges that can be faced while enhancing the e-business by re-engineering the business processes include: the information security the hackers or outside to the organization, the information privacy and confidentiality from the irrelevant employee, data integrity or informational accuracy, implementation of the access rights, provision of the information to the customer by 24/7. Privacy and confidentiality employ the protection of the personal and business information that have been stored in the database as well as conveyed through the official email addresses. The privacy and confidentiality can be achieved by implementing data encryption software and hardware or firewall. Moreover, by utilizing the authentication technique, the information can be made secured to some extend as it confirms the user’s identity by ensuring correct username and password and / or thumb recognition. The firewall is used to prevent unauthorized users to get into the computer network, hence, it avoids vulnerability. The information accuracy and / or data integrity can be ensured by designing, developing and implementing high quality databases in a way that the saved information is accurate and complete. Moreover, the antivirus can be installed to safe the data from corruption or inaccuracy by the virus attack. We can implement the Access Control List feature of the Windows Operating system or Discretionary Access Control (DAC) feature of the Macintosh Operating Systems to secure the files of the users. In the ACL and DCL, the users are granted several system usage rights to access the computer network, however, the remaining parts or sections of the computer network are restricted to access. Furthermore, there are several other software and techniques to implement the access control that include but not limited to the implementation of the digital certificates, deployment of the firewalls, developing the virtual private computer networks, etc. The last challenge that we have to cater is the availability of the services to the customers and employees of the Magnum Enterprise and to avoid or reduce the unavailability, it is highly significant to develop backups of each every technology as well as a computer system. In case the live computer system hangs up due to any disaster, the backup systems should get live to give their services to the customers and employees without any interruption. Once the business has been automated and implemented successfully, it is always required to improve the information technology systems as well as infrastructure with the passage of time by actively monitoring whether the systems are fulfilling the requirements of the Magnum Enterprise’s business. The computer systems and infrastructure become obsolete with the passage of time, therefore, they cannot provide consistent service to the customers as they are not supporting the huge network traffic. In this case, the Magnum Enterprise can lose several potential customers and ultimately they have to compromise with less revenue. Therefore, one of the solutions is to enhance the speed of the network backbone so that efficient services can be provided to the customers; otherwise, it is necessary to start replacing the infrastructure without interrupting the services. System compatibility is one of the key technical issues, therefore, it should be kept in mind while developing and / or replacing the infrastructure that the new systems are compatible with the existing hardware as well as legacy software applications. These precautions would help the Magnum Enterprise to reduce the operating cost of the company as well as increasing efficiency and productivity (O'Brien, 2009). In parallel with managing and handling the technical challenges of the information technology implementation, it is also the responsibility of the IT Manager to address the management challenges of the Magnum Enterprise. The challenges not only pertain to the implementation approach of the program but also to the Social, Ethical, Legal along with acceptance and ownership of the IT enabled processes and resources by the company as well as all the stakeholders. IT enablement demands a cultural change (ethical issue) for which the all the departments of the Magnum Enterprise have to show a proactive approach to accept and manage the change during the transition period. One of the aspects of the legal issues is the IT resources, both physical and human, need financial and administrative support on a continuous basis for its sustainability after the completion of projects. Moreover, after implementation of the information technology systems, its proper usage is the ethical responsibility of each employee rather resisting the change. Not only the above factors contribute to an inefficient implementation of the information technology systems, but also the organizations facing multiple internal issues in making the e-business successful. These include inefficient requirement gathering from the diverse departments, vendor selection and contract management, record keeping, duplication of work and lack of capacity to implement the program. On the other hand, the exhausted usage of information technology equipment has the vulnerability of causing health problems for the employees. The health problems include but not limited to the neck problems, backache, eye strain, as well as job stress. It is the responsibility of the IT Manager to resolve all the above challenges in implementing the information technology successfully. Being IT Manager, I would manage the team by assigning tasks keeping in view that the employees are utilized in an appropriate manner. There is a technique of the ergonomics science which can also be utilized to resolve the health problems of the employees. The ergonomics science refers to the utilization and development of the safe health conditions in a way that the productivity of the employees should not be decreased while enhancing morale and motivation (O'Brien, 2009). Moreover, the management challenges do not limit the above but also the arrangement and management for retaining the employee at all levels, appropriate communication at all levels of the employees, the time management, low performance under pressure situation, inefficient in the identification of the project risks and corrective actions (risk management), and weak in delivering the quality professional reports. The dealings of the manager with under performing employees, bringing the best employees out of a mob, hiring the right people, assigning jobs to the right person having suitable skills, responding the crises, and continuous improvements. Moreover, the companies having international customers face more customer management challenges like the customs, cultural interests, Geo-economic, political philosophies, dissimilarity in languages, religions, and social attitudes (Harwell, 2009). It is pertinent to mention here that the IT Manager cannot solve all the above problems / challenges of his / her own; therefore, it is one of the main reasons that the coordination between the cross functional departments is not only necessary but a key to success and continual improvement. Therefore, I would recommend that a team having representative of the diverse departments are necessary in the implementation of the automated systems. Moreover, it is necessary for resolving the management as well as the technical challenges in re-engineering the e-business of Magnum Enterprise. Works Cited The Big Geek. Defining the Role of an IT Manager. 2010. Web. 01 Dec. 2012 Trivedi, D. Introduction to Software Engineering. 2012. Web. 01 Dec. 2012 O'Brien, J. and Marakas, G. Introduction to Information Systems. McGraw-Hill Irwin, 15th edition. 2009. Print Bhasin, H. Marketing Information System. 2010. Web. 01 Dec. 2012 Harwell. The 7 Biggest Challenges to a Manager. 2009. 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