E-business System Management Report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays

Information Technology – E-business System

Introduction

The transition from the industrial society towards the information age has undeniably had a massive impact not only on the social and cultural aspects but also on the economic nature of life. It is, therefore, crucial for managers to adopt the latest information technology for improvement. Information systems have revolutionized organizations regardless of their type and size. Managers around the globe require an adequate understanding of the role of information systems in improving their decision-making processes and daily business activities. It is crucial to note that the success of any information system depends on the user acceptance and attitude towards its integration. There are various types of users (such as the passive, the manipulators and bureaucrats) in organizations who determine the ultimate results of the information system. Today, the competitiveness relies on the efficiency of the information systems since they provide the relevant information necessary to make accurate decisions. The management is, therefore, enabled to track, save, organize and distribute data to the relevant people for use. The impact of social media as a platform for business has rapidly altered the 21st century’s business processes of all major organizations. The importance of social media to any organization lies in the fact that the potential consumers are involved in the production of data on the platforms. Moreover, there is an instant creation of real-time involvement by people regardless of their geographical location.

Background

Northumbria Country Foods (NCF) has an undisputable reputation evident by the increasing demand from its customers despite the economic recession. As a famous nutritionist who focuses on the quality of food rather than the trends, Dr. Beth founded the company based on the safety and contents of her products. Moreover, the presences of huge investors, growth plans, and growing demand have become the major reasons for adjustments and revolution through efficient information systems. Most significant in the company is the plan to expand it first through joint ventures with a multi-national and secondly via developing a winery to allow for variety. However, there is a growing need for sustained growth that has led to concerns for an efficient information system. Ready meals have especially faced increasing criticism over the level of fats and infamous chemicals commonly known as high fat, salt, and sugar foods. While the concerned for unhealthy substance is a justifiable cause for criticism and protests, it is an opportunity for Northumbria Country Foods to beat its competitors since the executive officer is a nutritionist. Since it deals with food (an extremely sensitive product), validation of the data, and quality assurance especially through customer feedback will ensure the fulfillment of customer requirements. Fulfilling customer requirements helps to improve its competitiveness in the long run.

Benefits of information systems

Availing Information

The major purpose of an information system is that it will provide the NCF staff with the appropriate data useful in making decisions. For example, the sales personnel may obtain an overall picture of the entire departmental activities at a particular time. With the information, the salesperson may determine the trends in customers’ activities (Muhsinzoda, 2015).

In comparison to the traditional paper record system, information systems save the production cost while saving the time necessity. While the paper recording system requires manual entry of the data without any method of alteration or manipulation, information systems offer platforms for a clerk to key-in the data while checking for any errors instantly. The traditional paper system is not only prone to errors but also makes it difficult to find the errors. It would consequently take more time to extract information from a manual system than an advanced and efficient information system (Sylvan, 2013).

Custom Formats

Information systems utilize custom formats to increase their efficiency as they make the data easier to extract, manipulate, and produce. Through a systematic arrangement of data, a salesperson, for example, may obtain information about the productivity progress of their contacts on a chart on the screen. The marketer, from another department, may obtain the same information but in their desired preference such as a list of the interested customers who logged into the website.

Real-Time Data

With an information system, the users can detect and determine immediately there is an alteration in the data they are monitoring. This data may range from machinery, customer involvement, or staff performance depending on the department and the users. Immediate updates help to act upon issues arising as soon as they emerge.

Adaptability

Adaptability is a crucial value of information systems that helps to reduce the cost of construction or alterations. Their flexibility and adjustability enable the system to change to the adjusted requirements and needs of the users. Such is the case with Northumbria Country Foods.

Globalization

With information systems, the world population has succeeded to bridge the generation and cultural gap across societies. Sharing information creates a platform to share knowledge and create relationships while communicating across cultures, international boundaries, and languages. Consequently, geographical, linguistic and cultural differences suffer the impact of information systems that create easy interaction. This value is especially crucial to multi-national companies seeking to expand their territories into areas with unique cultures and languages.

Job Creation

Information systems have enabled the creation of new types of jobs and consequently employment opportunities for the rising number of jobless (yet educated) young people. These unemployed young people are a concern both in the third world and industrialized countries in the 21st century. New jobs include computer programmers, system security personnel, managers, designers, hardware and software developers, and analysts (Berisha-Namani (2010).

Disadvantage

The introduction of information systems has brought with it some demerits such as the lack of job security as more people lose jobs. An increasing number of people, who worked as manual data entry clerks, lost their jobs because the computerized systems replaced their places. Since the computers are more effective in saving time and cost, the traditional clerks had to have the knowledge and skills to manage the systems or lose their jobs (Howard, 2012).

Social media

The social media platform has proved extremely useful, in among others, marketing styles, improving consumer relationships and human resource management. The low cost of managing social media is the reason that makes it most popular and a trending globally. With low costs, most companies can acquire crucial data that will enable the management in their decision-making processes (Heijnen, 2012). According to Heijnen, social media acts as a gold mine for firms seeking to extract information that consumers create through interaction with the firms’ websites. On the other side, however, exposing any firm’s information on social media has serious consequences not only for the consumers but also suppliers as well as competitors. To some extent, the marketing departments have lost control over part of their duties to online consumers. These customers develop and share information over platforms such as Facebook and Tweeter in a text, pictures and motion pictures (Muhsinzoda (2015). Social media research includes; social media analysis and social media intelligence (Heijnen, 2012). According to Heijnen, social media analysis develops and evaluates informatics tools and techniques to obtain, analyze and present data and trends. Social media intelligence, on the other hand, obtains crucial information and combines application settings to develop appropriate decision-making techniques and create designs to benefit the firm (Heijnen, 2012).

Disadvantages

The security of company information is at stake with hackers and cyber-bullies on social media. A leakage of crucial company information could cause much damage and huge expenses in the recovery process the data. The vulnerability of private company data causes most companies to limit their involvement with social media. In as much as the world is now a global village through an effective social media, smaller cultures have lost their value and significance as research reveals the young generation submits to the western culture (Sylvan, 2014). The United States’ culture, for example, is the most popular and most emulated culture on earth today.

E-business system

E-business systems utilize advanced online technologies and tools to conduct business process entirely over the Internet. Although most companies limit their processes, the trend has, over the years gained popularity especially with the aim of communicating with overseas customers. Such are the cases where the organizations are yet to acquire premises in the locations yet there is high demand for their products. An e-business system comprises a website (as host) and email account. Other necessities include reliable internet connection, databases, shopping-cart software and a manager. It should offer an attractive yet simple design for visitors (including the staff) of a wide variety to navigate comfortably.

Disadvantage

E-business systems expose crucial company information to untraceable unauthorized access. Security threats and blackmail cases are on the increase despite the efforts to improve security systems regularly. The losses incurred after the loss of data causes many companies (both small and multi-nationals) to restrain from utilizing the technology.

Business Intelligence systems

Business intelligence systems are technological processes of obtaining and analyzing data to provide actionable information useful to executive managers to make informed decisions over their businesses. They help the managerial staff to understand the current trends and dependencies, especially for external sources. Although business intelligence systems were constrained to support the decision-making process, they have evolved to accommodate wider activities (Askenas and Westelius, 2000). These tools and applications define efficient methods to extract data (from both internal and external sources), arrange, analyze, and finally create reports and results that indicate trends (such as charts). A business Intelligence is, therefore, the most important of the three systems.

Importance of business intelligence systems

By accelerating and improving the decision-making process, business intelligence systems optimize the internal business processes that in turn improve operational efficiency. As a result, improved income helps the organization to gain the competitive advantage in the market. In Heijnen’s research, 78% of companies that focused on investing in efficient business intelligent systems ultimately improved their income within the first year of their implementation (Howard, 2012). Efficient business intelligence systems can use various types of data such as historical information to detect problems in the organization that requires attention. Moreover, it is easier to predict market trends using effective business intelligent systems. BI systems are also important because they utilize a wide set of data analysis applications (such as queries, reports, analytical processing, cloud, open source, and location intelligence) to provide useful and appropriate information.

Implementing a business intelligence process

Gathering Information on Needs, Resources, and Requirements

It is extremely important for the managers of NCF to first, select a steering committee that will initiate the process of involving all stakeholders in the initial stage of the process. These stakeholders must define the requirements of the users in various departments without bias.

Create and Define Phases

The committee should break down the requirements and form phases that will divide the tasks into simpler organized tasks with relation to time. The phases help to determine the work progress and productivity. The committee can also detect errors very easily in case they appear from the feedback from minor project managers. The scheduling of the phases depends on the chunk of work, its complexity as well as the daily running of the company based on available resources.

Validation

Feedback data requires validation to ensure effective progress. Data integrity is extremely important in defining a business intelligence system to reduce errors that may lead to poor decisions. A business intelligence system based on errors might never gain the confidence of the users as it will produce more errors resulting from the initial errors.

Departmental Implementation

The new system should not phase out the old system immediately across the entire company. Instead, the committee should select, for example, a department with simple tasks and with minimal resources for trial. Later, the implementation process may proceed to other departments with delicate and complex business processes (Howard, 2012).

Constant Adjustments

After complete implementation, the committee should constantly check and adjust the system until it completely addresses all the user requirements initiated and arose after its implementation (Dresner, 2011).

Further developments

Although it is right to adopt technology in order to retain relevance in society as a business enterprise, Northumbria Country Foods should focus more on standardization and governance rather than maintain the trend and retain its competitiveness. The approach in selecting the appropriate information system should, therefore, be more focused to gaining a program that ensures effectiveness and efficiency rather than adopting the latest technology available. Constant examination and updates on the system are extremely crucial in ensuring the system is relevant and helpful to the current needs of the users. The committee concerned with its effectiveness should also collect consumer feedback to determine its efficiency to customers as well as the local staff.

E-business System Management - Report Example

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