Management Information Systems - Assignment Example

? Management Information Systems Inter-organizational Systems An inter-organizational system (IOS) can be simply defined as a system that facilitates the automated flow of information between organizations so as to achieve a desired level supply-chain management system, which in turn leads to the formation of competitive organizations. An inter-organizational system greatly assists the management to effectively forecast client needs and to ensure the uninterrupted and on time delivery of products and services. This system addresses different tasks associated with business processes across the organization and therefore an IOS can play a notable role in managing buyer-supplier relationships. Evidently, these activities will assist the organization to improve its productivity automatically and hence to optimize communication across all layers of the organization and between the organization and the supplier. To illustrate, each football kit sold in a retail outlet is communicated to the supplier automatically and the supplier in turn will send more football kits to the retailer to address the shortage of items sold. Electronic data interchange is the most applied form of inter-organizational system and it facilitates instantaneous information transfer from computer to computer. An effective IOS can benefit an organization in several ways. First, it greatly aids the organization to reduce overall risk level in the organization, and to take advantages of economies of scale. Second, an IOS helps the organization to utilize the exchange of technologies and to increase competitiveness to a great extent. Finally, this system is beneficial for organizations to eliminate investment barriers and enhance global communication. There are some potential challenges to inter-organizational systems. According to Frick and Hemmerich, et al, the most potential challenge facing management is to assess the benefits and success of an inter-organizational system, for still there are no sufficient assessment methods and benefits measurement processes (“Benefits Identification..”). As a result, it is a difficult task for system managers to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the system and measure performance efficiency. Therefore, managers often fail to recognize pitfalls in the IOS and consequently the requirements of the system are unmet. Since there are no effective assessment methods and benefits measurement processes, system managers find it difficult to convince the top management about the feasibility of financing an inter-organizational system. Due to this weakness, managers cannot evaluate employee performance in connection with the IOS operations. In short, it is difficult to identify how an IOS influences the supply chain efficiency and the overall organizational performance. If the employees are not familiar with the inter-organizational system, it can be a challenging task for the system managers to ensure proper flow of information within the organization. Lack of funding is another challenge unique to IOS. As mentioned already, the top management often hesitates to fund IOS needs because most of the IOS benefits are intangible and the top management officials cannot be easily convinced about the potentiality of those intangible benefits. Finally, fast changing technologies, particularly information technology raise potential threats to the efficacy and affordability of the inter-organizational system. 2. Digital Economy Digital economy can be simply stated as an economy which is based on technologies. Digital economy is interchangeably referred to as internet economy, web economy, or new economy. With the emergence of new business practices and technologies, the concept of digital economy is being greatly intertwined with the traditional economy but a clear delineation is very difficult. The term digital economy was coined by Don Tapscott in his book titled ‘The digital economy: Promise and peril in the age of networked intelligence’. According to the Australian Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, “the digital economy is the global network of economic and social activities that are enabled by information and communications technologies, such as the internet, mobile and sensor networks” ("What is the digital economy?”). This web economy encompasses computers, phones, and other devices people commonly use each day. Today the concept of digital economy significantly influences the daily living of individuals. For instance, the digital economy assists people to finance purchases using debit or credit card and to send pathology results to physician electronically. An improved digital economy benefits a nation to promote the wellbeing of its citizens in terms of their economic, educational, health, and social status. Many factors have contributed to the existence of such an economy. The growing volume of financial transactions is a major factor that led to the emergence of a digital economy. As a result of the increased and complex financial/business transactions, people find it inconvenient to keep huge amount of money in hand. It is clear that the concept of digital economy helps people avoid physical transfer of money to a great extent. In addition, people can save considerable amount of their time when making purchases online or transfer pathological results electronically. People find it convenient to carry out their duties and responsibilities through the digital economy because they can do it from anywhere around the world anytime. Finally, fast developing modern technologies have also significantly contributed to the existence of the web economy. Since the importance of digital economy is increasing day by day, governments are taking vehement efforts to gain benefits from the advancing digital economy. Recent reports indicate that the number of people accessing internet is notably growing every day and market researchers forecast that this number would be doubled over the next decade. Today internet is of great influence over the business sector and the overall organizational productivity greatly depends on the strength of online networks. To illustrate, currently the multinational food corporation Nestle receives its entire orders directly from supermarkets over the internet. In addition, the shipping company UPS greatly depends on online networks to optimize its delivery routes, and this strategy assisted the company to save 12 million liters of fuel from 100,000 trucks. (OECD, “The Future of the Internet Economy”). Undoubtedly, this trend will continue to be the same over the next decades and this situation adds to the future scope of the digital economy. In short, more people would depend upon the internet economy in the near and longer term future. 3. Client Departments Today client departments have an important role to play in an organization’s functional areas such as accounting, sales, human resources, engineering, or manufacturing with respect to information technology. Client departments function in an organization to identify client needs and to answer client queries. Another important role of client departments is to promote customer interests by addressing customer complaints timely and effectively and thereby achieve customer satisfaction. A client department has many important duties to perform in an organization’s key functional areas like manufacturing and sales. It is clear that customers’ product expectations change with time and hence it is necessary for the organization to identify the changing customer tastes and manufacture products accordingly. Hence, there should be an effective client department, which is in close touch with changing customer needs, to meet customer satisfaction effectively and to improve sales. The client department uses different tools such as direct market surveys, telephone surveys, and online surveys to understand prevailing customer tastes and specifications and manufacture products in the best interests of the customers. Evidently, this practice would assist the organization to avoid losing its existing customers to competitors and enhance customer retention. Similarly, the client department has some key roles to play in the functional area of sales. It is clear that sales department has direct exposure to customers and therefore this department’s interactions with customers constitute the major factor influencing the profitability of the organization. Here, the client department has the duty to assist the sales team to serve the customers well and thereby keep them loyal to the company. The client department should maintain a customer service desk in connection with sales in order to answer customer queries and to take immediate actions on their complaints. In addition, the client department has the duty to deal with post-sales services so as to meet customer satisfaction in the long term. There are some potential challenges related to the role performed by client departments in modern organizations. Use of outdated IT systems and networks is the major issue affecting the roles of client departments because its operations are purely based on information technology. In the context of fast advancing technological landscape, it would not be possible to serve customers using outdated computer systems and networks. In addition, an inexperienced IT workforce that is not familiar with modern trends in information technology cannot significantly contribute to the performance efficacy of client departments. Finally, an inefficient IT management may limit the scope of client departments in modern organizations because they need a strong IT platform to deliver improved benefits. Hence, the IT department must ensure that the organization’s IT systems associated with the client service are timely updated and they can address the complexity of the modern business. In addition, the top management must give particular focus to employee education and training so as to make them fittable to the needs of the growing IT sector. Finally, it is advisable for the top management to organize periodical meetings to measure the performance efficacy of the IT management and to take steps to improve the performance of the IT department if it underperforms. 4. Decision Support Systems and Executive Information Systems A Decision Support System (DSS) can be simply referred to a computer-based information system that supports decision making activities in an organization. These systems greatly assist the management and mid and higher planning levels of the organization to make sound decisions, which could not be specified in advance due to rapid changes in the business environment. A DSS may be either fully computerized, manual, or a combination of both. As Keen points out, when literatures present DSS as a tool to facilitate decision making process, many management professionals argue that it is more like a tool to support organizational processes ("Decision support systems..”). Some scholars have broadened the scope of this concept in order to cover any system that would facilitate decision making. One of the major characteristics of the DSS is that it helps upper level managers to address underspecified problems they face. DSS has the potential to combine the application of analytical techniques with traditional data access functions. A fascinating feature of this system is that it pays particular attention to flexibility and adaptability so as to manage changes in the environment and the user’s decision making approach. A well designed DSS can assist the management to compile valuable information from a combination of documents, raw data, personal knowledge, or business models and this practice in turn is helpful to identify problems and make decisions. Evidently fast decision making process is vital to serve customer needs, and hence DSS benefits customer relationship management to a great extent. In addition, since DSS supports decision making process and other organizational processes, it can improve the efficiency of supply chain activities significantly. An Executive Information System (EIS) can be stated as a management information system that promotes the flow of senior executive information and supports decision-making needs. The EIS allows the management to easily access internal as well as external information relevant to the organization’s goals and objectives. As Power points out, generally an executive information system is considered to be a specific form of decision support system (128). Typically EIS has four components such as hardware, software, user interface, and telecommunication. EIS focuses on the use of graphical displays and user-friendly user interfaces and it is characterized with strong reporting capabilities. In a broad sense, it can be stated that executive information systems are company-wide DSS that assist the firm’s top executives to compare, evaluate, and demonstrate the shift in key variables so that the executives can properly monitor organizational performance and recognize opportunities and threats. Since extensive computer experience is not required to manage EIS, even inexperienced top level executives can use this system efficiently. In addition, EIS facilitates timely delivery of key management information and assists mangers to take timely and potential decisions. Another potentiality of EIS is that it makes information easily understandable to the beneficiaries intended. As the executive information systems facilitate effective delivery of executive information, it plays a crucial role in helping the managers to make prompt decisions. It is obvious that the efficiency of supply chain management is mainly determined by key top management decisions and therefore EIS can notably influence the operations of supply chain management. 5. Case Presentation From the case description, it is clear that greater level of uncertainty in the modern market environment, particularly related to currently fluctuations, can sometimes adversely affect the operating costs and profitability of the business. Therefore, it is necessary for the organization to improve buyer access to critical information. Since most of the benefits of the newly planned technology are intangible, convincing the management about the potentiality of this technology would be difficult. Hence, the only way to convince the management is to explain how the technology is able to deliver the specific intangible benefits. The planned technology is capable of improving employee access to key information which can greatly influence their performance efficiency. It is evident that improved buyer access to information would assist the buyer to analyze the situation clearly and come up with prompt business decisions. Therefore, the proposed technology has the potential to enhance buyer decision making significantly. It is obvious that an effective decision making process can positively impact employee productivity, which in turn would add to the firm’s overall profitability. Therefore, this technology can serve the growing needs of the management better in the long term. Similarly, effective and uninterrupted information flow and improved access to information are two key factors determining the efficiency of supply chain management. Supply chain operations are based on different organizational and managerial information, and hence any pitfall in the information flow would limit the viability of the supply chain. The new technology is able to enhance the flow of information across different levels of the organization and to avoid any delay in the delivery of supply chain activities. In this way, the planned technology would assist the top management to improve the overall operational efficiency of the enterprise. As discussed already, this technology can assist the top level management to form immediate decisions and to promote uninterrupted supply chain operations. Evidently, this continuity in the supply chain delivery will certainly assist the organization to meet customer satisfaction, which in turn would strengthen customer responsiveness. In the context of intense market competition, today organizations give specific focus to customer relations, and hence they spend huge amount of money on customer relationship management. Therefore, the planned technology implementation can benefit the organization to strengthen its customer relations and to save huge amounts spent on customer relations management. Finally, intangible benefits expected from this technology such as high level operational efficiency, improved decision making, increased productivity, and better customer responsiveness are extremely important for the long term sustainability of the organization. Hence, these intangible benefits will certainly far outweigh developmental, installation, and maintenance costs of the new technology. To conclude, the proposed technology implementation can greatly assist the organization to accomplish its long term business goals and objectives. Works Cited Frick, Nobert and Hemmerich, Kai Manuel et al. “Benefits Identification in Inter-Organizational Information System Implementation Projects: A Multi-Case Study Approach”. 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. IEEE (2012), 4260-42667. Web. 9 Dec 2013. “The Future of the Internet Economy”. OECD Policy brief, 2008. Web 9 Dec 2013. Keen, Peter G. W. "Decision support systems : a research perspective." Cambridge, Mass. : Center for Information Systems Research, Afred P. Sloan School of Management, 54. (1980): 1117-80. Web. 9 Dec 2013. Power, Daniel. J. Decision Support Systems: Concepts and Resources for Managers. US: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002. Print. "What is the digital economy? Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy." Archive.dbcde.gov.au, 2013. Web. 9 Dec 2013. Read More