Information Management of P&G and Microsoft - Case Study Example

Case Studies: P&G and Microsoft Table of Contents Procter & Gamble Case: Analytics for Adding Value to Management Decision Making 3 Microsoft Case: Advantages and Disadvantages Associated with Saas, IaaS and Paas 5 Reference List 7 Procter & Gamble Case: Analytics for Adding Value to Management Decision Making Akin to most FMCG corporate of present world, P&G also has aligned its strategies in order to cater to the customer centric business approach. The traditional modes of marketing have now become focused towards needs of customers, thereby making this the most powerful unit. The leadership of P&G has managed challenges associated with managing huge amounts of data owing to its remarkable size. Data becomes a political matter while controlling of the same becomes extremely important for converting it into knowledge and using this information for decision making purposes. P&G has about 127,000 employees, about 300 brands and is established in over 180 countries (Davenport, 2013). The company makes transactions of about 4 billion on a daily basis (Davenport, 2013). The company has now moved on to a digitalization strategy, where entire end-to-end processes have undergone digitalization. The company is in the process of building a team for analytics so as to speed up decision making process. On the other hand, the company is also cutting costs in manufacturing as well as non-manufacturing areas. The new system requires collaboration with use of video mode, along with availability of real time data that facilitates decisions based on real time statistics. The video system develops instant argument in the conference room over the decision, which helps to analyze the best possible solution through application of different minds of the company across the globe (Shaw, 2002). The video platform also allows more and more people to join the system so that all sales and marketing data are visible to those present in the conference room. This shall allow each one to come up with their views and enable a decision that is best for the company. The system of crowd sourcing empowers employees to have access to dashboards that present relevant data in a graphical and pictorial format, which is easy to comprehend for decision making. This allows easy decision making at lower levels so that task progress is maintained and monitored on a real time basis. Efficiency at lower levels allows for higher efficiency at higher tasks as well as attainment of the larger goals more effectively. The dashboards provided to employees also present common data so that cause and effect relationship can be established by the manger himself and lesser time is spent in coordinating and inquiring other departments for any deviations. It is believed that if such discussions on seeking answers from concerned parties are eliminated to the highest extent possible, decision making process shall become faster (Turban, et al., 2008). Data visuals that show specific information quickly, as that of a dip in sales figures of a country, can be appropriately recorded through live data where sales figures can help in spotting the problem area. The focus of decision making then becomes specific to the problem area, rather than hovering over generalized attempts towards increasing sales. The case also presents with key characteristics of leaders in the data market. Here, data is believed to be the core asset, which helps in enhancing customer service through channelizing operational activities towards end consumer. Additionally, technology is the tool for achieving results and therefore, it is considered that data can contribute towards providing additional leverage to product, corporate, customer and channel. Business sphere technology assists in technology integration and enabling information and visualizations, which in turn helps in instilling the information down to real time level. There are 50,000 decision cockpit users in P&G and they use the real time data to make decisions and predictions for the coming year. This also allows for checking the progress of business down to the lowest level possible. It is believed that with problems being resolved at the point of discussion as well as at the lowest possible level, postponement of decision making is avoided. Through video and data collaboration, the role of business analysts is enhanced and all questions need to be answered immediately. P&G promotes the fact that it is possible for senior managers to refrain from investing excessive time in discussing correctness of data or judge the choice or suitability of the data frameworks or ways to display the same. The analytics enablement within the organization allows for more time to managers in addressing issues and problems and also defining and tapping opportunities (House and Price, 2009). This plays a key role in determining business success. Microsoft Case: Advantages and Disadvantages Associated with Saas, IaaS and Paas Saas or Software as Services is one of the more popular forms of cloud computing among the three (Saas, IaaS and Paas) owing to ease of use that it offers. The Saas makes use of the Web to provide applications to clients where the interface is restricted to the client while management is done by a third party vendor. The Web browser is the most common portal for use of SaaS and it generally does not require the client to download or install any additional tools. SaaS helps an organization to easily streamline its support services and maintenance features, where the third party oversees all actions involved, ranging from applications to networking and storage (Klein and Roggero, 2012). Gmail can be taken to be the most popular example of a SaaS, where Gmail is a SaaS mail supplier. Microsoft also provides a host of SaaS applications, which include Microsoft Dynamics CRM software, BPOS or Business Productivity Online Software and Office Web Apps. The models of Saas enabled within these applications allow a business to offload their entire workload on a cloud computing to a degree desired by the company. It enables customization of software as per needs of the business (Microsoft, 2009). The use of web based SaaS allows the same interface across different types of IT devices. Microsoft cloud computing software also offers close to 99% security with data over the web, thereby enabling companies to progress towards global levels of infrastructure in IT systems. This software also allow for a wider reach and a global exposure. For instance, in the case of Microsoft Dynamics, a host of other vendors can be added to the CRM services application so as to converge different aspects of the business. For Microsoft, SaaS applications have been extremely popular with enterprise resource management, CRM solutions and collaboration tools because they offer same infrastructure for management of data at a lesser cost in order to move into cloud computing. Companies wanted scalability and hybrid solutions with SaaS on realizing its advantages and Microsoft successfully delivered the same, along with serving other important needs such as, security, performance and privacy for companies. In case of IaaS, Amazon benefitted from the first mover advantage. IaaS makes delivery of computer infrastructures like, networking and storage, in an outsourced manner, rather than purchasing their likes of servers, network equipment and software. IaaS provides the infrastructure necessary for development of further platforms at lower costs. Microsoft is presently developing on its IaaS segment, considering that the company could capitalize upon portability feature of the infrastructure provided like, Hyper V (Hausman, Cook and Sampaio, 2013). IaaS systems allow business to scale their business operations without support of high infrastructure. This very feature is also assured by Microsoft Azure. As for PaaS, Windows Azure from Microsoft is popularly used for development of services related to hosting and environment management. PaaS allows companies to make use of software in order to build up on the hardware used by the third parties (Wang, et al., 2011). One of the key advantages of PaaS is that it is highly scalable. Other benefits for users of PaaS are that they do not have to face issues related to rundown of sites for maintenance purposes or any form of platform upgrades. The users of PaaS have their prime motive directed towards development of organizational effectiveness and interaction among large numbers of employees. It is critically employed by large corporations. Through automated updates and automatic scaling of services availed through PaaS, the cost of operations is significantly lowered. The platform of Windows Azure provides scalability on demand to customers and reduces time taken for marketing applications. The PaaS framework also allows for customization of applications and simplifies deployment, testing and development of these applications. PaaS might be the most complex of the three systems, but it eliminates any need associated with buying of underlying software or hardware. Here, users only manage the data and application; whereas all other tasks associated with runtime, virtualization, storage, operating systems and servers are managed by the third party venders. The prime barriers faced by Microsoft in PaaS implementation is that PaaS applications were not entirely compatible with applications based on Windows Server. Additionally, there are numerous expenses related to cost involved in establishment of data centers and its scalability and management. Reference List Davenport, T., 2013. How P&G Presents Data to Decision-Makers. [online] Available at: < http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/04/how-p-and-g-presents-data/ >. [Accesses 10 June 2014]. Hausman, K. K., Cook, S. L. and Sampaio, T., 2013. Cloud Essential. London: John Wiley & Sons. House, C. and Price, R., 2009. The HP Phenomenon: Innovation and Business Transformation. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Klein, S. and Roggero, H., 2012. Pro SQL Database for Windows Azure: SQL Server in the Cloud. California: Apress. Microsoft, 2009. Cloud Services. [pdf] Microsoft. Available at: . [Accesses 10 June 2014]. Shaw, M., 2002. E-Business Management: Integration of Web Technologies with Business Models. London: Springer. Turban, E., Leidner, D., Mclean, E. and Wetherbe, J., 2008. Information technology for Management. London: John Wiley and Sons. Wang, L., Ranjan, R., Chen, J. and Benatallah, B., 2011. Cloud Computing: Methodology, Systems, and Applications. Berlin: CRC Press. Read More