Information Management - Essay Example

Information Management Word Count (from Introduction to Conclusion 2308 Contents of the Report Introduction 2) Evolution of Information Systems 3) Implementation of Information Systems 4) Critical issues of development 5) Potential Developments 6) Case Study 7) Conclusion 8) References Introduction As we step into new age of technology where boundaries between nations are fading and businesses are expanding over a wide range of customers, “Information” has become the most valued asset of every business environment worldwide. From employee database, online customer order / services to re-designing a marketing plan or optimizing critical engineering processes, “Information” has placed itself on the top shelf in every stream of business environment creating a huge demand for Information Management. Information management has various phases starting from storage, analyses of the stored data, building models that can simulate and help in understanding the factors affecting the business trends. Such models could be of great help in implementing the organizational / technological changes required to improve the business. Evolution of Information Systems Over the decades, technology has evolved manifolds. The major enhancements pertaining to the technological developments involve the communication media. Transfer of information amongst the users has always been a critical issue embedded in the communication strategies. Business environments have imbibed the technology trends up to a great extent in order to enhance their functionality as a complete unit that integrated diverse areas of work (Govindaraj, 2001). The necessity to manage all the data and information related to the vendors, consumers, employees, work processes, business transactions, stakeholders and so on had to be addressed to the minutest details. This issue demanded for an evolution of a system that could store all the information generated at diverse fields of work and support the handling of information in a limpid manner. The system that provides the infrastructure to manage and maintain such task is known as “Information Systems Provision”. Implementation of Information Systems Information Systems is implemented on the type of the information, whose analysis is required to understand the processes and parameters linked to the data. This data may be acquired from various fields of the concerned business environment (Warboys, Kawalek, Robertson and Greenwood, 1999). Following are the requirements to implement an Information System for a marketing division. 1. To model the dynamics of the processes those effect the production. The model should study and analyze all the factors effecting the overall production of a product. These factors can be either internal like the raw materials, the production processes, desired quality of the product, packaging, product design and so on or external like the market demand, brand image, consumer requirement, marketing expenses, transportation of the product, etc. 2. To evaluate the expenditures and Return on Investment (ROI) Any unplanned business process with huge investment for repair can cease the production, causing huge unexpected losses. To avoid such situations the information regarding such occurrences in the past could be used to have a better planned budget. The current market demand and price of a particular product helps in building up a production plan within the budget. And the information on ROI could be modeled to make decisions easier for safe future investments. 3. Identification of essential goods and services Identification of goods and services that satisfy consumer needs is very essential. As consumer satisfaction is the only factor that distinguishes the enterprise from its rivals, it helps in gaining an upper position in the market economy. It is difficult and complex to predict how the technological changes will affect those needs. Decisions can be made based on the model that can take into account the geographical, cultural and physical factors of the targeted market. 4. Database Management of raw data The data obtained from all of the above steps is humungous. A separate database should be created that can hold the data and do all the necessary operations to provide the data in the required format as demanded by the model. The operations include maintenance, storage, retrieval, and updating of the data. This database should be ubiquitous to any work area of the business environment. Thus, an Information System for a marketing division should be modeled such that it supports the above mentioned requirements. Critical Issues of development of Information Systems There are various factors that influence the development and growth of an Information System. Most of the factors are the needs for the improvisation of a business. They also include some key issues that occur as consequences to the changes done to the Information System. The following issues are discussed starting with a generic overview proceeding with an insight of their effect in the development of Information management in a marketing division. 1. Dynamic Infrastructure of the Information System One of the major concerns for the development of any Information System in a business environment is its dynamic nature. In every business, there is an immense need to leverage the technology that can drive innovative solutions. The infrastructure of any information System has to be dynamic in nature (KaasbØll, 1997). In today’s world, where only “change is constant” one cannot create a database and expect it to support the data generated for the next 10 years. From databases that support raw data to information system models that can simulate the future market scenario, every single phase of the information should be modifiable as required. But the real twist in this issue comes with the cost limit. All the dynamism and the modifications should be done taking into account the limited financial resources of the firm concerned. In case of a marketing division, tasks like re-designing a production line or re-structuring an assembly line, etc would fall under this category of issues. 2. To optimize the implementation of innovative solutions A successful organization not only relies on finding innovative solutions or products but also on the effective implementation of those solutions. Here, technology plays a major role as these technological developments can make the implementations simpler, providing a wide range of choice. But the question arises so as to which is the right choice? This can only be answered by thorough research on the cost, stability and reliability of the technology to be used (WALSHAM, 1993). The Information System of the firm should be able to process this task by taking the external (technology functionality) and internal (business environment) entities into account. Thus, the understanding and integration of technological innovations plays a key role in the modeling of any Information System to support the business goals and strategies. In case of a marketing division, the need to equip itself to make new products or to modify the old products poses a challenge to the Information System. It has to analyze all the possibilities and provide the solution that is technological stable and cost-effective, to implement, maintain and modify in future. 3. Expenditure Control – Increase in efficiency The expenditure control and increase in efficiency are two critically related entities. Any organization aims for higher efficiency of the processes but keeping in mind the limited resources (IBM, 2007). An Information System is expected to tackle this critical issue and find the most optimized solution that makes efficient use of the limited resources and produces maximum desired result. When it comes to a marketing division, the strategy of most efficient usage of resources (that might change depending on the product) should be provided by the Information System. 4. Security of the Information As it has already been stated that as businesses step into the global market, “information” no longer remains as data but, becomes the most valued asset of those businesses. With all the above mentioned issues that effect the development of an Information System, “Securing” that information is the most critical one. What good would it do if you update and improvise technologically but couldn’t protect your data that lead to those decisions? The technological innovations do not always come in the right directions. As each day passes by, there are more viruses, more hacking programs, more threats created to challenge the security of such information systems. The greatest of all challenges is to be able to update the security protocols before the attack or the threats could damage the information. The development of any Information system could take care of the basic security principles by drawing boundaries to the access control of the information based on factors like people, authority, nature of data being accessed, physical region of access request etc (Stoneburner, Hayden, and Feringa, 2004). In case of a marketing division, information like blue prints of its production line design, product designs, etc should be accessible by employees who have the right authentication but should be secured by any threats that might occur while running a wrong application. That means that the security system should not allow the false application to modify or access the data. Potential Developments - Integration of Information Systems and Business As discussed in the earlier section, it is understand that today’s Information Systems are facing challenges in all directions from infrastructure dynamism to security principles. The solution to all these challenges comes from the bigger picture of integrating the Information System strategies with that of the business. This integration shows how well the Information Systems Infrastructure can support the business strategies to achieve the business goals (Robson, 1997). The potential developments in this area are given as follows: 1. Understanding the relationships of all the divisions in a business environment Information Systems are not anymore treated as a separate division in businesses, but are a part of every division. Information Systems is being used not only to study the interfaces between the business and the consumer but also to understand the relationships between different divisions. Information Systems could be used to understand the impact of a business strategy on all the divisions of the business environment. 2. Prioritizing Information Systems Provision strategies to meet business goals Information Systems are being used to check for the feasibility of proposed business strategies to achieve a goal. The feasibility checks are mostly done based on the cost – benefit margin of the firm’s budget allocated to achieve that goal. 3. Getting a closer and faster picture of customer needs (FIF) Information Systems Architectures are constantly evolving to bridge the gap between the customer and the producer (firm). “An autonomous information service system has been proposed, called faded information field (FIF). FIF is a distributed information service system architecture, sustained by push/pull mobile agents, through recursive demand-oriented provision of the most popular information closer to the users to make a tradeoff between the cost of service allocation and access.”(Xiaodong Lu, Yi Zhou, Arfaoui, H., Mori, K, 2003). Such architectures are taking into consideration the most popular information of the user to get a closer picture of the user’s needs. This approach helps in choosing a strategy that can meet the customer’s needs as well as fall within the cost-benefit margin of the service provider. Case Study - AXA Sun Life AXA Sun Life was established in the year 1997. It was the result of the merger of Sun Life Group and AXA Equity & Law. In the merger AXA has brought in the majority of shares. AXA Sun Life is one of the leading firms in UK that deals with pensions and industry investment (I Beeson, S Green, J SA, A Sully, nd). It covers various fields that deal with pension categories such as personalized and group. It also deals with life assurance, onshore and offshore bonds in the industry pertaining to investments. AXA Sun Life has diversified its business into financial advisers, direct marketing operators, direct sales strategies, representatives and business partners. AXA Sun Life (ASL) has integrated the diverse functional work areas pertaining to its organization. This integration was successfully carried out by adapting to the Information Systems provision that provides an easy approach to various processes and systems placed in the organization. The Information Systems have been centralized so as to include strategy determination, systems development functions to support the systems to provide better computer services. This firm is dependant on the Information Systems implementation to choose a suitable business development strategy based on budget/prioritization processes leading to an optimal business solution. With the help of Information Systems AXA SUN Life produces an annual strategic plan for future years that helps in building a strong value in the corporate sector. This strategic plan is acquired with the help of thorough analysis on the previous year’s strategies and experiences. Information systems acquire information pertaining to the diverse work areas of the organization. This information is transformed into an annual strategic plan to be implemented so as to achieve the business environment goals in totality. Information Systems also support the developments through Information Technology solutions by incorporating both technical and personnel strategies. Thus Information Systems are utilized in the strategic development department of the organization in order to develop robust strategy for the upcoming year so as to accomplish the business goals. Thus the strategy development department monitors the implementation of various strategies developed by Information Systems to optimize the reusable resources in the most beneficial manner. At the final stage Information Systems helps ASL to adapt the most effective methodology to expand its market demand and grab more number of consumers with the help of an optimal marketing strategy. Conclusion Information management has become both, an indispensable division and a valuable asset to any business across the globe. As businesses enter global market facing diverse customer needs, their dependence on Information Systems has increased. To cope up with the fast-growing customer demands and to keep up with the intense competition in the global market, businesses are making use of all services that Information Systems can provide. It is important that businesses integrate their needs with the strategies of the information systems to achieve their goals. Care should be taken to not only address the business needs but also the critical issues effecting the development of the information systems provision infrastructure. Thus, information systems provision has become a crucial solution to bridge the gap between the customer and the business environment. References 1) Govindaraj. T (2001), Article on: “Evolution of information systems”. Found at: http://www2.isye.gatech.edu/~tg/publications/ecology/eolss/node7.html 2) WARBOYS, B., P. KAWALEK, I. ROBERTSON and M. GREENWOOD (1999, “Business Information Systems - a process approach”. McGraw-Hill, Maidenhead. 3) KaasbØll, J. J. (1997). "How Evolution of Information Systems May Fail: Many Improvements Adding Up to Negative Effects." European Journal of Information Systems 6(3): 172-180. 4) WALSHAM, G. (1993), “Interpreting Information Systems in Organizations”. Wiley, Chichester. 5) Brancheau, J. C., B. D. Janz and J. C. Wetherbe (1996). "Key Issues in Information Systems Management: 1994-95 SIM Delphi Results." Management Information Systems Quarterly 20(2): 225-242. 6) IBM (2007), “IT Optimization to meet business goals”. Part of the CIO implication series. 7) Gary Stoneburner, Clark Hayden, and Alexis Feringa (2004), “Computer Security- Engineering principles for Information Technology Security”. 8) Robson, W. (1997). “Strategic Management and Information Systems”. London, Pitman Publishing. 9) Xiaodong Lu; Yi Zhou; Arfaoui, H.; Mori, K, (2003), “Autonomous integration and provision of heterogeneous information services in distributed information systems”. Autonomous Decentralized Systems, ISADS. The Sixth International Symposium pp: 225 – 231 Digital Object Identifier. 10) I Beeson, S Green, J Sa, A Sully (nd), “Linking Business Processes and Information Systems Provision in a Dynamic Environment”. University of West of England of Bristol.   Read More