Professional Documents
Culture Documents
KELITON CRUZ
ii
HALMSTAD
2009
KELITON CRUZ
iii
HALMSTAD
2009
SUMMARY
1 ABSTRACT............................................................................................................................4
2 CASE STUDY BACKGROUND..........................................................................................5
3 CONCEPTS............................................................................................................................6
3.1 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY......................................................................................6
3.2 BUSINESS PROCESS.........................................................................................................7
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1 ABSTRACT
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This paper will show the role of IT in achieving the organization’s strategic
development of goals, improvements in doing business and maintain the good work-flow. It
will explain some concepts (business process, information technology, marketing information
system…), which make up Information Technology as well as enhance the company
internally and externally. With Information Technology the company will have a great
management control, all departments have great access to information, enabling them to
function more effectively and efficiently, and since projections are more accurate or now
available, management will be able to make long-term strategic plans. Based on those
concepts, a plan of Information Technology will be developed and implemented in Mr.
Parker`s company, since this is the first time that the company will have a IT department this
is going to be an amazing opportunity to expand the company, their services, products, brand
name and image towards its competitors.
Parker is a large department store with 25 departments of various types, e.g. food,
men`s clothes, women`s clothes, men`s shoes, women`s shoes, garden tools etc. The store was
founded in 1960 by Mr. John Parker, the company it is successful even though Mr. Parker has
always been very traditional limiting the use of computers and information technology. In the
year of 2008, Mr. John Parker retired and his son Mr. David Parker now was the new chief of
the company, before this happen Mr. David Parker has had some ideas about an implementing
of strategic use of technology and information system into the company, these ideas were not
approved by his father, but now he was free to implement those concepts, that will help the
company to get a new sight of the market and remaining as a big company as it is now.
Implementing new strategies it is not easy as it seems, it has to be seen very carefully
and has to have goals, objectives, acceptance of the people who work in the company, its
stakeholders etc. Based on some ideas Mr. David Parker has hired a consultant in business
information technology to help and implement strategic systems and technologies into the
company.
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3 CONCEPTS
o How information technology changes the nature of work, e.g. how and where it is
done and who with.
o Business processes.
o Architecture and infrastructure.
o Doing business on the internet.
o Ethical and legal use of information.
o How a management system impacts on an organization.
Start thinking in IT and how its work is a very good start to know how IT can really
increase the company itself, not just internally but externally as well that’s why many
companies threat IT as if was the most important part of the company, of course that is not
correct, because a company should work together in every way and that’s where IT comes,
connecting everybody in the company trying to do its best to not let the company down.
Information technology is increasingly competitive business environment (globalization,
transformation of industrial economies, transformation of the enterprise), in other words IT is
the use of computers and software to manage information, known as well as Management
Information System (MIS) and/or Information System (IS).
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The BPM infrastructure provides the run-time environment for public and private
process models. It allows users to monitor the execution of individual processes, to analyze
the overall behavior of a set of business processes, to verify their successful performance, and
to provide input for process optimization.
In other words Business Process Management integrates vision of managing the
lifecycle processes, seeking to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of the business,
combining the concept of Business process and Information technology as a means of
enhancing control changes in speed, visibility, execution and optimization through continuous
improvement. As for IT specialists, the focus on the BPM as process automation through
software tools, like: Business Process Management Suites or BPMS, including mapping of
business processes end-to-end design flows and electronic forms, workflow definition,
business rules, integrators, real-time monitoring activities and alerts. It is a powerful
management tool to ensure that procedures are being effectively implemented and modeled,
contributing for the company`s goals and objectives.
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Source: www.opermix.com/BPMS.gif
The Information System Architecture (ISA), which has a primary goal, the
Information Systems in an organization, relate to a broader universe and comprehensive list of
architectures and models for an organization, for instance: Enterprise Architecture and
Architecture of Information Systems.
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In order to model ISA key concepts the «Block» component was specialized. The key
concepts for the ISA are:
o Information Entity: Person, place, physical thing or concept that is relevant in the
business context;
o IS Block: The collection of mechanisms and operations organized in order to
manipulate organization data.
o IT Block: The infrastructure, application platform and technological/software
component that realizes (or implement) an (or several) IS Block(s). IT Block defines
three major sub-concepts:
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C2B (Consumer-to-Business)
Is an electronic business model, in which consumers offer products and
services to companies and the companies pay them, this is the reversal of B2C
(Business-to-Consumer), (An example would be the site www.priceline.com,
where you name your own price).
C2C (Consumer-to-Consumer)
Is an electronic commerce, which evolves particular users from internet. Lots
of sites (EBay, Mercado Livre), is an intermediate company, where consumer
put its products for sale with a minimum price and other consumers pay higher
offers for that product. It is commerce between final consumer and final
consumer.
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With increasing international competition and the need to efficiently introduce new
production processes, Cassiolato and Lastres (2000) argue that advances in information
technology and communications have led companies to focus their strategies on the
development of innovative capacity. This essential and ate to allow them to and participation
in flows of information and knowledge. The use of IT helps the manager to get more control
and is able to get information faster; therefore he can react fast into changes in the company
as well as getting to make decisions right away helping the company to react as fast as
possible concerning both internal and external decisions. However, as the information comes
quite fast, this could be a problem because it could be right or wrong, if the information is
``old`` or wrong, the manager may come to make wrong decisions, also could be a problem
the lack of knowledge of the manager. Intranet could be described as managements system
that cause a big impact on any company, intranet is a internal network that link all the
computers in a company it is supposed to make work better, better flow of communication,
exchange of ideas, tasks, documents. However, many companies found out that their
employees were using intranet as a sort of MSN (Messenger), talking to other friends inside
the company, they were not working efficiently as they should be, they spent most of the time
talking to friends, making appointments(pubs, night out) for later, exchanging personal stuff
(e-mail, contacts from msn, pictures), well it seems to be two ways of looking at, when it
comes to impacts on an organization, after all some companies fix this problem and some
companies does not care about it.
Organizations of all sizes are feeling the effect of internet-enabled customers, supply
chains and competitors. This sort of pressure is particularly in the marketing function where
information technology touches the costumer, becoming the key to creating superior customer
value. Modern marketing organizations, have their focus on internet, they create and manage
the customer interface where interactions are more virtual than face-to-face. They power lever
IT technology to integrate and coordinate with customers and business partners to rapidly
achieve measurable business results.
The emphasis in on the rapid conversion of knowledge into customer value which
depends on the ability to develop, deploy and manage powerful new marketing information
systems, the firm has to have ability to convert knowledge into customer relationships,
reduced time to market and lower costs. The business`s world is highly competitive in very
way, thus the companies need to be able to develop the marketing function and scale it up on
“Internet time” with best of class decision to support solutions for customer relationship
management, sales force automation, market research, marketing communications and
logistics. The figure below shows, how the marketing work itself. First of all, sources both
external and internal are made to identify how a product or service, are reacting towards,
clients, customers and media as well as collect customer`s profile and important data. Second
of all the information from database are collected and sorted out and finally is delivered to the
board directors, where they will make a decision whether is useful or not.
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We come to business process, a important part of the company where begins with a
customer`s need and ends with a customer fulfillment, the business process are designed to
add value for the costumer and should not include unnecessary activities. All activities in the
company has a goal, no matter whether is a small or a big process, the employees mostly have
to show that everything they do it has some value, since a normal attendance to a customer to
a new development product. Using a Business Process Modeling, the company can model
their business process, implement and execute those models, improving the process efficiency
and quality, furthermore during a corporate merger, which Mr. Parker`s company might
assume, it is important to understand the processes of both companies in detail so that
management can correctly and efficiently identify and eliminate redundancies in operations.
Enterprise architecture is the organizing logic for business process and IT infrastructure; it is
built by defining and documenting business processes are key components of a full enterprise
architecture undertaking, Mr. Parker and the board will have to identifying the opportunities
and determining how to categorize them, put them into a portfolio, prioritize them, and fit
them into the strategy-planning cycle. To show all the work that’s going to be done a
framework and a diagram will be developed, demonstrating how the organization will handle
such activities as well as organize data and puts related information close, to have sure that its
business process is going all right a diagram will be developed, in order to understand and
check whether the process is going right or wrong.
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Business on internet is a natural thing to do nowadays people can realize, sales, offers,
purchases, they may be able to buy things from shopping without even going there all this is
technology. To integrate business on internet in a company it s not that hard, simply have a
good web designer and, one person to administrate and we have an e-commerce, one tool
most used is intranet, linking everybody in the company sharing information, documents,
tasks, video conferencing and lowing the costs regarding telephones, mobiles. Well, to
become this easier to Mr. Parker a good idea would be having a Marketing information
system, that sustains ads, interaction, ecommerce, sales, customer service, customer facilities
and of course information, no forgetting about the quickly changes trade scenarios and
markets. To begin with, Marketing IS provides information about customer profiles
suggesting which ones are more profitable for the organization, as well as many other things
that is relevant for the company, the scope of starts from identifying the need of customers,
evolving product concept, designing the product, positioning and selling at appropriate price.
I order to achieve this, market research, customer survey, advertising, sales promotion,
campaign and a dealer distributor network. All the campaign can be done through the
company`s website, developing advertisements, new products, a database build up on
consumer profiles (information about, preferences, behavior, needs, spending patterns…) is
really helpful to send direct e-mail offering, discounts, products, promotions (closed door
sales) by doing this the company will aim on that customer who always buy something, even
a minor purchase and keeping them interested and up to date.
22
E-commerce gives the advantage to increase the business value, as the company aim to
sell to customers Business to consumer (B2C); e-commerce would open doors to sale to other
companies Business to Business (B2B) as well, is a great opportunity for the company extent
its business and gain a new “market”, making its products more well known inside the
marketing environment. How this would work in B2C, the company`s website would do all
the work possible, offering information about products, through multimedia clipping,
guidelines (how to purchase, register, find a specific product…), which by the way would
attract new customers and they may buy something on their first visit. Moreover in B2B, the
companies would exchange technical and commercial information through websites, to be a
bit more advanced the use of extranet which would allow client and authorized people to log
in through the web site, making a better communication between the two companies. With
such big flow of information, the use of them could be harmful if ends up in wrong hands,
that’s a big concern, yet that’s the first time that the company will be using Information
systems. One thing that could prevent is to have information Security Management System
(e.g. ISO/IEC 2700).
References
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Spewak, S., and S. Hill, Enterprise Architecture Planning: Developing a Blueprint for
Data,Applications and Technology, Wiley-QED, ISBN 0-471-599859, 1992
Kotler, P. Marketing Management: Analysis planning and control, Prentice Hall, 1988.
DeBoever, L., Enterprise Architecture Boot Camp & Best Practices: A Workshop, Meta
Group, 1997.
Garlan, D. et al., Architectural Mismatch (Why It’s Hard to Build Systems Out of
Existing Parts), Proceedings 17th International Conference on Software Engineering, Seattle,
WA, 1995.