Management Information System: The Apple Company - Case Study Example

Management Information System Overview of the Apple Company The Apple scenario offers an example of how an organization incorporated technology to enhance its competitive advantage. Apple is a company with a wide array of services and products, which offers its consumers satisfaction due to the company’s ability to merge technology, entertainment, and business. In the contemporary business world, information tends to be a vital strategic asset as, without information, an entity cannot operate. Apple utilizes essential business strategies associated with information to ensure competitiveness in the market. Apple started its operation in 1977, with two proponents including Steve Wozniak and Steve jobs, by inventing the first computer, Apple 1. These inventions resulted in the Apple Company, an entity developed with the aim of providing computers to the ordinary individuals. After the invention of Apple Macintosh and Apple 2, Wozniack left the company while Steve Jobs elevated the company further by introducing custom and quality inventions with the launch of Apple Macintosh and later the iMac. Today, Apple is a renowned entity with numerous inventions and the successful utilization of technology. This clearly indicates how it is imperative for every worker associated with an organization must acknowledge the essentialism of information technology. Explain how Organization’s achieved business success with information, information technology, and people. It is essential for organizations to acknowledge the imperative relationship in an organization between information, people, and information technology. This is because the combination of these three aspects provides success and competitive advantage to an entity when utilized with efficacy. Information technology tends to be ineffective when an organization lacks the right workers. Therefore, it is imperative for the right personnel with the relevant knowledge of managing and utilizing information technology characterize an organization. Experts posit that the three elements, people, information, and IT are inextricably connected in manners that if a single element fails then they all tend to fail (Baltzan and Phillips 5). The case of Apple Company provides an essential lesson on how a company can utilize the three aspects to deliver success. Apple enhanced its success by the utilization of information in all the prevalent areas and departments typifying the company to ensure competitiveness. The transformation of raw data into vital information is an essential aspect in product and service development at Apple. The sharing of common information in the prevalent departments ensures that the Apple becomes more effective in its operations. Steve Jobs at the pinnacle of the company, he ensured that every department’ performance was perfect to ensure that every other area of the entity became effective as he believed that each and every department relied on each other to perform well (Baltzan and Phillips 5). Information technology assists managers to work with efficacy and competence in the entity’s function as well as providing effectiveness to the organization departments of an entity. IT is essential in the control of technological devices like computers and software. At Apple, the primary technology is an important aspect of Apple’s products and services. Steve Jobs is very obsessed in controlling the every product that the company develops, and this is the reason he wanted the songs played in iPods to be encoded by the company only. Initially, Steve Jobs had concerns over missing the MP3 bandwagon. During this time, Apple was engrossed with inventing video editing software as opposed on MP3. With the relevant information at the time, Apple utilized it to design a strategy essential in entering the MP3 market. However, the information without skilled personnel would be useless and due to this fact, the company hired the right personnel with the relevant skills on how to develop the iPod project. This included Jeff Robbin, a former personnel of Soundstep who had MP3 software, iTunes, and iPod development team. The right people, information, and essential information technology ensured Apple could complete the iPod project in approximately nine months from inception to a delivering a complete product (Baltzan and Phillips 9). Apple Company is renowned for its exceptional customer service to all company consumers. The customer service is a product of the hard work of entity’s employees, who are supportive and professional with the ability to integrate the customers into the running of the company. In the contemporary world, organizations are more than ever interested in enhancing the customer experience and satisfaction. Due to this, Apple utilizes vital information in the form of suggestions and comments from its customers associated with the products and services in the development of the new and quality devices. In this case, the company achieved success by utilizing information of technology through the process of researching statistics, which enabled the company to find out what aspects of the services and products appealed to the users. This type of information proves vital to the company workers to ensure that Apple improves its efficiency in all areas of the entity to enhance its competitive and success (Baltzan and Phillips 9). Describe the types of information staff and employees at Apple store or require Information internal and external to the organization is essential in ensuring that the company succeeds. Apple has numerous stores situated all over the globe and information relevant at the administration level is vital in every department as well as the numerous stores. The information that staff and employees require at Apple is associated with customer satisfaction. What a customer requires in terms of product or services matters significantly. Consequently, workers would want to know if a product has a problem or dissatisfies a client in order to fix the issue in a reasonable time. Customer satisfaction is an invaluable factor in the success of organizations in the contemporary world of business and thus Apple Company thrives to know if customers are happy or not. In this case, workers at all the Apple stores all work hard to have information about how customers are satisfied by Apple products and services. Moreover, staff employees look at data associated with the products such as the prices of products, how much of the stock is on sale, the worker’s day off as well as the number of hours workers put in and so on. Staff employees at Apple are also concerned with the issues of how an item is developed. The information about whether the company has enough inventories to meet the demand of the market as well as information in relation to how high or low the prices of devices are. Due to the numerous stores, which stretch all over the globe, the executive level of administration requires more information in comparison to employees at the store level. This is because the corporate level requires data from all the stores while employees at a store deal with a single entity. Evaluate how organization can gain business intelligence through the implementation of a customer relationship management system. Business intelligence entails to the technique and applications utilized in identifying, getting, and analyzing the information of an organization. Enhancing and developing business intelligence necessitates the registration and collection of the right data in the correct manner through the various channels and integrating the data channels. As Apple views and treats customers as the most essential business stakeholders, it is evidently clear that the company needs to incorporate a customer relationship management system to collect the right and essential data (Baltzan and Phillips 227). Customer relationship management (CRM) entails a system for managing an organization’s interactions and relationship with customers, both future, and present. Therefore, it refers to the strategies, technologies, and practices that organizations utilize in managing, evaluating, and recording of customer interaction in order to enhance its competitive advantage as well as enrich their customer satisfaction. The system utilizes technology to synchronize and organize marketing, sales, technical support, and customer service. This process occurs throughout the client’s lifecycle with the goal of improving the customer-organization relationship, customer retention in addition to improving sales. A CRM system is developed to analyze and compile data associated with customers across numerous channels such as websites, direct mail, marketing materials, surveys, social media, telephone, and live chat. Consequently, the approach offers invaluable information about a customer regarding personal information, buying concerns and preferences, and purchase history (Baltzan and Phillips 227). In a competitive market characterized by new entrants that weaken the prevalent companies, successful implementation of a CRM system at Apple offers a strategy on how to maintain customers. A good client relationship is an essential factor in enhancing business intelligence at Apple Company. In the contemporary world, CRM is an essential approach in relationship management and building as it is becoming vital to enhance consumer lifetime value. Understanding the requirements and specifications of customers in addition to delivering value-added services is an essential factor that proponents view as a factor that can either make or break a company. CRM will assist Apple to add new customers, maintain a good relationship with them, to retain the existing customers as well as encouraging customer value and enhancing the company’s image. Exploiting the influence of CRM system enhances business intelligence to offer quality products and services. Business intelligence utilizes collected data and transforms it into meaningful information that managers can utilize to make meaningful decision-making. At Apple, formulation of a CRM will provide staff with business intelligence to understand the needs of the customers effectively and in building a beneficial friendship with the customers. CRM enables originations like Apple to foresee the effectiveness of prospects as individuals become active customers, the possibility of customers leaving, and their period of being dynamic consumers. Furthermore, the system provides the vital information to predict the changes in customer lifestyle events and customer details so that the organization may implement strategies to retain customers (Baltzan and Phillips 290). Therefore, Apple can gain business intelligence through successful implementation of CRM by extracting and analyzing data from consumers. As the marketplace has transformed to a more customer focused, Apple must collect invaluable data about customers in every interaction and transaction with CRM. The company should utilize email, catalogs, surveys and other channels to gather the information. CRM enables organizations to focus on the needs of the clients to enhance consumer loyalty. As the system tracks the behavior of consumers such as shopping and purchasing behavior, it provides the appropriate information associated with preference. Through CRM initiatives, the company can develop campaigns such as advertising to target customers individually to enable them purchase Apple products (Baltzan and Phillips 290). Formulate a strategy for how organization can use efficiency IT metrics to improve its business. Efficiency refers to the extent at which an entity utilizes its resources effectively and in an optimal manner. This approach in an organization focuses on technology and has various metrics including availability, throughout, speed, accuracy, response time, and web traffic. Apple can utilize efficiency IT metric to better its current technology. The company can create a baseline by benchmarking its applications so that to continuously measure and monitor the applications against the prevalent benchmarks so that its IT applications work appropriately. For instance, in the web applications such as iTunes, as it is vital for suppliers and customers (Baltzan and Phillips 13). Apple can use efficiency metrics to improve productivity by ensuring availability of products and services at the Apple store and web applications. The metric can be utilized to validate the availability of products at stores and web applications. The products under study are podcasts, photos, videos, contacts, games, iPods, phone among other applications and devices. The company can utilize the efficiency metrics to rate the speed, which customers take to be served and how long workers take to serve the customers. The strategy is useful in understanding the amount of traffic that the company gets in order to better deal with traffic issues at Apple stores. Consequently, in iTunes and web applications the company can ascertain how many consumers have visited the websites in a given time (Baltzan and Phillips 14). Summary The discussion has covered the importance of incorporating information and information technology in organizations, especially with the challenges experienced by entities in the contemporary world. It is apparent that without information Apple Company would fail. This report has discussed how Apple enhanced its success by utilizing information technology, people, and information. Consequently, to gain business intelligence, it is evident that Apple formulates a CRM (customer relationship management) system. The CRM is a system that is commonly used throughout the business world by organization to gain an advantage over competitors. The system is vital in gaining business intelligence to understand the needs of the customers effectively and in building a beneficial friendship with the customers. Work Cited Baltzan, Paige, and Amy Phillips. Business Driven Technology. Boston, MA: McGraw- Hill/Irwin, 2010. Print. Read More