Organisational Information System at Business Wear Ltd - Research Paper Example

Organizational Information System Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 1- Introduction 2 2- Business Background 3 Part 1 3 3- Information System implementation 3 3.1- Areas of information system implementation 4 3.2- Business information processing 4 3.3- Business systems for Business Wear Ltd 6 4.4- Levels 0 and 1 diagrams 8 Part 2 10 4- Business Wear Ltd EPOS 10 4.1- Working of BWL EPOS 10 EPOS Service Description 11 4.2- IS development methodology 12 4.3- Context for IT Service Delivery 12 4.4- IS methodology Method and Approach 13 4.5- IT Governance 13 4.6- Strategic IT Governance 14 4.7- IS development process 14 4.8- Computer network 15 Part 3 16 5- Types and levels of systems 16 5.1- For Management 16 5.2- For Salas and suply chain 17 5.3- Different levels of systems 18 5.4- Link between EPOS and other BWL systems 19 Part 4 19 6- Ecommerce System for the BWL 19 6.1- Internet shopping and business 20 6.2- Differences between traditional vs. Internet 21 6.3- Advantages of Internet in business 21 Discovery 21 Communication 22 Collaboration 22 8- Bibliography 23 1- Introduction The current age can be considered as age of information technology as information technology is playing most important role in almost every walk of life. The area of business is also extremely influenced by information technology, because, at the present, organizations have modern and up-to-date tools and techniques for the management and handling of business activities and operations. The main intention behind the development and implementation of the modern and up-to-date techniques of information technology in the business and corporate structures is to enhance the overall corporate performance and enhanced management of the business data. In addition, information systems are essential for every organization that handles organizational business information and management process. Business Wear Ltd (BWL) is British formal menswear store chain. At the present, this business is operational through the traditional ways of operation and business management. Business Wear Ltd (BWL) was established as a small business but presently it has a huge business setup that requires extensive business handling and management of operations. In this scenario the need for the effective business management can only be possible through the implementation of the useful information technology based infrastructure. The main goal of this report is to provide a deep and comprehensive analysis of the new technology infrastructure implementation at Business Wear Ltd (BWL). This report will recommend and provide the detailed overview of the different technology platforms appropriate for the Business Wear Ltd (BWL). 2- Business Background Business Wear Ltd (BWL) is UK based business, which was started as a small business and presently emerged as a new and high class business structure that needs better business management and handling of the business operations. Presently Business Wear Ltd (BWL) is having 8 branches in 8 major British cities with a staff of 50 employees. In such a business setup there is vital need for the better business management and synchronization among all different departments of the business. However, at the present, the Business Wear Ltd (BWL) has different departments such as accounting, sales, HRM, marketing, logistics and warehousing. The effective management of these business departments is really essential to get better business revenue and potential marketplace. Part 1 3- Information System implementation According to Salmela (1999), the quality of business management is one of the most important business uniqueness of the 20th century. It has added a systematically stranded attitude to compact by means of imperfections in fabrication, focused concentration on clients, as well as highlighted participative organizational operations in business (Salmela, 1997). Lillrank (2003), states that a number of researches pointed out that deprived, imperfect, not on time or missing information is supposed as a the majority severe business quality crisis. In addition, business information should not be handled in the same way as a plain by-product of a variety of actions however by means of the similar significance as products. Quality of information, though, appears to be a subtle theory (Lillrank, n.d). In case of the Business Wear Ltd the new business information system will offer management of the business information and handling in efficient way. This will facilitate in effective business information recording, searching, processing and assessing. In this way business would be able to achieve facilities of better management of the business operations, effective dealing and better decision making. 3.1- Areas of information system implementation Business Wear Ltd has various areas of business management and organization those can be effectively supported through the new business management system. Here the business information system at Business Wear Ltd can be implemented for the sales management, marketing management, supply chain management and for the business decision making. These areas can be well managed, handled and tightly linked to each other through the new business information technology system implementation. 3.2- Business information processing According to (Turban, Leidner, McLean, & Wetherbe, 2005; Whitten, Bentley, & Dittman, 2000), an information system collects, processes, stores, evaluates, and distributes information for a particular function. Similar to any other system, an information system consists of inputs (such as instructions and data) and outputs (reports, calculations). It performs operations on the inputs by using technology like PCs and develops outputs that are delivered to users or to other systems by means of electronic networks (Whitten, Bentley, & Dittman, 2000; Turban, Leidner, McLean, & Wetherbe, 2005). Information inputs: In the Business Wear Ltd, the main business information inputs could be from the different areas of the business. Below I have outlined some important areas from which business information can be approached: Customer information Sales information Marketing research Warehouse statistics Employee’s information Business plans Business operation: In this business information the new business technology can carry out a variety of business operations to extract better and more fruitful business results for the business. These operations could be of different types. The main business operation would be about the business revenue calculation, payment assessments, main sales statistics calculation, etc. these all type of business information can be based on the business needs and intentions. For example the marketing department needs to assess the business customer shopping behavior; in this scenario the department will assess the business customer buying behaviors and sales record. The marketing support system will be developed in such a way that it could support the marketing manager business assessment intentions. Information outputs: The output of the Business Wear Ltd information systems will be of different types. This can be based for the different types of the business areas. For instance the business information extracted from different business information systems areas are given below: Business sales reports Business revenue reports Customer statistics reports Decision support statistics Marketing strategies Employees records 3.3- Business systems for Business Wear Ltd Business Wear Ltd supply chain management incorporates the supplier, distributor, and customer logistics requirements into a single consistent practice. The Business Wear Ltd supply chain is a group of corporal attributes for instance industrialized plants, distribution or supply centers, conveniences, retail outlets, staff and information, which are connected from side to side activities such as procurement or logistics, to deliver goods or services from starting place through utilization (Laudon & Laudon, 1999). The management information system for the Business Wear Ltd will be a set of information and computer systems those will be aimed to attain the effective business objective of the organization. The management and development of information technology techniques and tools will help the Business Wear Ltd business executives and the general workforce in activities regarding the processing of the business information to take the effective business decisions. Business Wear Ltd Management Information System will be particularly functional in the verity of business data and the production of reports to be utilized like tools intended for decision making (Shelly, Cashman, & Vermaat, 2005; Stair & Reynolds, 2003). Business Wear Ltd decision support system (DSS) will be an application like an information system that will offer the Business Wear Ltd business users (management) with decision-oriented information when a decision-making state of affairs will appear. Also, Business Wear Ltd decision-support system (DSS) will facilitate the management in the decision making by integrating information, suitable logical models and techniques, and easy to use interface into a single commanding system that facilitates unstructured or semi structured decision making. In addition, Business Wear Ltd DSS will offer users with an appropriate group of tools, techniques and facilities for assessing key blocks of data. Furthermore, Business Wear Ltd DSS will based on the fact that management information systems and transaction processing have previously collected the information required to offer information for unstructured decisions (Whitten, Bentley, & Dittman, 2000). 4.4- Levels 0 and 1 diagrams Part 2 4- Business Wear Ltd EPOS Business Wear Ltd Electronic Point of sale (EPOS) will offer a better business support regarding the effective business handling and management. The electronic Point of sale (EPOS) will be organized in a way that it could offer the facility regarding the management of the business operations and recording the business information. 4.1- Working of BWL EPOS The purpose of Business Wear Ltd EPOS is to offer business to avail the new emerging business facility. This new emerging business facility will offer Business Wear Ltd business a better marketplace standing and more customers. This will also support the manual business practice. This EPOS will effectively manage and handle the business transactions and customer record. The Business Wear Ltd EPOS will be an automatic system that can manage all the business sales and dealing process in better way. This system will be a web based information system. The basic aim and purpose of this system is to manage the main tasks of the business sales, for instance we will develop an automatic system for the data storage, searching and editing of sales record. In addition, this system will provide the online access to a broad customer space. The new Business Wear Ltd EPOS system will provide a database system for the administration to store customers and sales details and would be able to print out sales, account reports of each customer, make queries and search for a particular customer record. Also, another objective of Business Wear Ltd EPOS is to generate profit for business, and gain a competitive edge by applying this state of the art technology in business. This project will be completed when it will be able to manage and handle the online transactions, sales and purchase deals through an error free environment. This project will facilitate the people in their daily online fashion related search and shopping. This system will automate the process of the fashion items shopping. Business Wear Ltd has already the pre-established stores, but those are dealing in some specific fashion items. This idea is to develop a system that could provide Business Wear Ltd the online fashion related search and shopping at its door step. This project will add value to the already working Business Wear Ltd fashion stores. In addition, this project is aimed at improving the Business Wear Ltd fashion stores access to distant customers. This Business Wear Ltd EPOS will enhance the market value of the suppliers and provide them a better competitive edge. EPOS Service Description I have established few main EPOS services description: Business Wear Ltd Fashion search Online Order management Total accounts administrations Customer data bases management Business information handling Monthly report Customer shopping receipt generation Inter-departmental communication Online Marketing faculty 4.2- IS development methodology Business Wear Ltd aimed to develop a new information system strategy (ISS) that is normally believed to be extremely profitable and beneficial while developing and planning information systems. The process and overall development of information systems strategies are sometimes executed in an ad hoc way, however, it can be assumed through the support of frameworks. A number of these frameworks comprise the coordination of obtainable practice, as others are the outcome of theory information system development (Levy, Powell, & Galliers, 1999). 4.3- Context for IT Service Delivery The new technology is aimed at enhancing the following areas of the business corporate business: Easy way of working Better data collection Easy management of the data Less conflicts among data formats Easy data sharing among all division of the corporate Less or no dirty data 4.4- IS methodology Method and Approach The information system methodology that we are going to develop for the Business Wear Ltd is intended is to analyze the main system aspects and features. Here this information strategy will drive the main system structure and will address the following questions: What technology we have currently What type of facilities are required How can be obtain main objectives 4.5- IT Governance Figure 1- Business Wear Ltd. IS Strategy 4.6- Strategic IT Governance Business Wear Ltd has established an information systems strategy group that handles and controls the business strategic objectives. Here we have the following divisions of the information systems strategy group. This is the main governance structure of the corporate: Senior management Project managers IS development team heads Information Systems Group Manager Business Wear Ltd business information systems strategy will also support each department by offering the following facilities to the administration and system development teams: Building up the cross-department and standardized solutions to frequent business problems Enhancing the performance of IT resources as well as technology to encourage business transformations all through the corporate Establishment of cooperation among the all departments Presenting all supports for the system development teams Usability management 4.7- IS development process Below I have presented the main process of the development of the IS for the Business Wear Ltd. this development will follow the straight water fall development process. - Figure 2- IS development process 4.8- Computer network We have decided to implement the wireless network technology infrastructure at the Business Wear Ltd. The main intention regarding this new wireless network technology implementation is the distant locations of the business areas. These are located at distant locations inside Britain and only the wireless network technology is the ultimate solution to this business. Part 3 5- Types and levels of systems 5.1- For Management Decision Support System For the Business Wear Ltd. we will implement the decision support system. According to (Whitten, Bentley and Dittman, 2000), a decision support system (DSS) is an application of an information system that offers the users with decision-oriented information when a decision-making state of affairs occurs (Whitten, Bentley, & Dittman, 2000). Also, a decision-support system (DSS) facilitates the management in the decision making by integrating information, suitable logical models and techniques, and easy to use interface into a single commanding system that facilitates unstructured or semi structured decision making. In addition, a DSS offers users with an appropriate group of tools, techniques and facilities for assessing key blocks of data (Laudon & Laudon, 1999). Furthermore, Business Wear Ltd. DSS will be based on the fact that management information systems and transaction processing have previously collected the information required to offer information for unstructured decisions. The Business Wear Ltd.DSS will offer the management with facilities to use that information and evaluate it to take a decision (Whitten, Bentley and Dittman, 2000). Management Information System We will also implement the management information system for the BWL business. This management information system for the BWL will be a collection of software applications that will help managers to collect, systematize, and evaluate information concerning a workgroup, department, or a whole organization. This MIS system for BWL will be designed and developed to meet the requirements of three diverse classes of managers, executives, middle managers, and front line managers by creating an assortment of scandalized reports drawn from the organization’s database. This BWL management information system will summarize huge amount of organization’s data into information that is functional to each type of managers. As management information system is a structured group of people (staff, users, customers), actions, software, databases, and devices utilized to present customary information to managers and decision makers. Therefore, the concentration of a BWL management information system will be mainly on working effectiveness. Moreover, production, marketing, finance, and additional useful areas will also be maintained by management information systems and connected through a central database (O’Brien, 1999; Laudon & Laudon, 1999; Shelly, Cashman, & Vermaat, 2005; Stair & Reynolds, 2003). 5.2- For Salas and suply chain ESPM We will implement the web based electronic supply chain management system for managing the sales and supply chain. The implementation of the electronic supply chain management system will reduce contract cycle time that is also a main favorable scenario of the online supply chain management that allows to minimize the travel, meeting and other expenditures attached to the contracting process. In addition, all the information and data regarding the online ESCM is already in the soft form and management of documentation and reporting of all tasks will become easier. Here we will also attain the following advantages for the BWL (Anderson & Lee, 2003): The allocation of the ESCM allows appreciative of appropriate reimbursements as well as discounts. We have reduced risk regarding the online trading and cash management. Here we have no problems regarding the auto-renewal term of the contracts. Through the ESCM the regulate processes is automatic. Here we have better customer’s fulfillment management through online services and management of the CRM. The ESCM allows evergreen contracts Here we also have the enhanced visibility of the overall organization process. Here we also ease of the management attempts. These implementations of the ESCM decrease formation efforts. 5.3- Different levels of systems In the BWL there will be different levels of the business information systems. For instance, in the business management department we will have the higher management and lower management. The decision support system will be used by the higher management of the BWL business while the MIS system will be used at all levels of the business management inside the business of the BWL. In case of the online SCM system the system will be used at all levels of the business. Its main users will be the customer and business sales respondents. This system will be used by the business warehouse manager for handling and maintaining the business. 5.4- Link between EPOS and other BWL systems In case of EPOS and other BWL systems all the areas are tightly linked to each other. The EPOS can be said as the main and initial point of the business information cycle. This initial point of the business information offers the information regarding the management of overall business operations. In this project, EPOS will offer the customer, sales, dealing, transactions as well as marketing information regarding the overall business of the BWL. Therefore we can say that EPOS is the initial point of the overall business of the BWL. Part 4 6- Ecommerce System for the BWL The Internet has turn out to be an essential part of how we exchange information or communicate by others and how we manage business. The rapidity as well as ease of the online experience formulates it an ideal medium intended for buyers and sellers (Burger, 2006). The wide-ranging presence of the Internet for the exchange of transactions between buyers and sellers is the basic reason for the development of electronic commerce (e-Commerce). “Electronic commerce is the course of action of purchasing and selling goods and services electronically with computerized business transactions by means of the Internet, networks, and other digital technologies” (Laudon & Laudon, 1999, p. 25) and (Stair & Reynolds, 2003, p. 19). It also includes actions behind those market transactions, for instance advertising, customer support delivery, marketing, and payment. By substituting manual and paper-based techniques with electronic methods, and by making use of information flows in modern and energetic modes, e-Commerce can speed up ordering, delivery, and payment for goods and services on the other hand reducing organizations operating and inventory expenditures. 6.1- Internet shopping and business The revenue models particularly explain diverse methods for earning profits. The revenue model describes the main business earnings and its relation to the sales of products or services. This can be both for selling straightly from the main or, dealer of the service in the course of a mediator who will obtain a cut of the selling cost (Carter, 2009). There are many ways for the online revenue generation. The ecommerce have not derived lot of online revenue generation techniques. However in case of the BWL business the main revenue model will be online selling of the physical goods, which is now emerged as a most successful e-business; lot of online business corporations are generating revenue from this business. The implementation of the web based business for the BWL will offer the two main options: Marketing for the BWL web based platform or ecommerce website will encompass attracting web users to our website if the customer once there, he can become a customer. Through a single mouse click we can bring customers to our business place. However it requires lot of research, effort to develop an effective marketing policy (Web Transitions, Inc, 2009). We are free from the carrying bundles of money. Technology has transformed the local store purchase to a card. Now customers can pay their bills through Internet (Quek, 2009). Therefore, we will implement the web based payment system for the BWL that will attract more customers. 6.2- Differences between traditional vs. Internet Internet facilitates the businesses (small, medium, and large size organizations) to enter into the international markets and reach a variety of categories of people whilst personalizing the buying practice for each one and offering active information on inventory, suitable prices, best-selling products, etc. However, traducing the goods and services to local people in a retail store is fine, and millions of businesses succeed in local trading. But, effectively trading the goods and services to more customers, more proficiently, by means of the Internet will augment businesses’ revenues (Ray, 2004). 6.3- Advantages of Internet in business With the modernization of the Internet we have seen an explosion of business applications. Below I have outlined some main advantages of the Internet regarding the effective business management (Turban, Leidner, McLean, & Wetherbe, 2005, p. 128). Discovery Discovery encompasses searching and retrieving information. However, Internet offers customers the facility to see and retrieve information. Discovery is offered by software agents because the amount of information on the Internet as well as intranets is rising speedily (Turban, Leidner, McLean, & Wetherbe, 2005, p. 128). Communication The Internet presents quick and inexpensive communication methods that vary from online bulletin boards to complicated information exchanges among several companies. Internet also offers information distribution and information processing. E-mail, newsgroups and chat groups are few examples of communication methods (Turban, Leidner, McLean, & Wetherbe, 2005, p. 128). Collaboration Since with the use of Internet the communication has improved so electronic collaboration among individuals and between organizations is growing quickly. There numerous applications that can be used, varying from screen sharing and teleconferencing to group support systems. Various collaboration software, tools and applications, acknowledged as groupware and workflow, can be utilized on the Internet (Turban, Leidner, McLean, & Wetherbe, 2005, p. 128). 7- Conclusion The Internet and business information system have turned out to be major part of every business and organization. The needs and implementations of business information technology in the business are growing more rapidly and offering better reorganization in the global business markets. This research has presented detailed analysis of the new business information technology systems and web based business infrastructures and e-commerce structures for the BWL. In this research I have outlined the main areas, development, implementation and significance of the IT and web based business technology to BWL for improving their business operations and management. This research has outlined the main areas and aspects of BWL business those can be extensively influenced and enhanced through the new business information systems technology and Internet. I hope this research will offer an insight into the BWL business its intention regarding the implementation of the new business infrastructure. 8- Bibliography 1. Anderson, D., & Lee, H., 2003. New supply chain business models – the opportunities and challenges. Available at: http://jobfunctions.bnet.com/abstract.aspx?docid=90031 [Accessed 31 December 2009]. 2. Burger, A. K., 2006. The B2B Renaissance, Part 2: Solutions in a Global Economy. Available at: http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/section/business/ [Accessed 31 December 2009]. 3. Carter, B., 2009. The 5 Best Revenue Models in E-Commerce History. 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