Mkis finalfinal

8/8/2019 Mkis finalfinal

1/25

HALMSTAD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND ENGINEERING

CASE STUDY: MR. PARKER`S COMPANY

KELITON CRUZ

i


2/25

HALMSTAD

2009

KELITON CRUZ

ii


3/25

CASE STUDY: MR. PARKER`S COMPANY

Conclusion Course presented as a partial

requirement for obtaining the title of graduate in

Business, University of Halmstad, under the

guidance of teachers:

Mrs. Jo Smedley

Mr. Torben Svane

HALMSTAD

2009

SUMMARY

1 ABSTRACT............................................................................................................................4

2 CASE STUDY BACKGROUND..........................................................................................5

3 CONCEPTS............................................................................................................................6

3.1 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY......................................................................................6

3.2 BUSINESS PROCESS.........................................................................................................7

iii


4/25

3.3 ARCHITECTURE AND INFRASTRUCTURE...............................................................8

3.3.1 Enterprise Architecture......................................................................................................9

3.3.2 Information System Architecture.....................................................................................10

3.4 DOING BUSINESS ON THE INTERNET........................................................................14

3.5 ETHICAL AND LEGAL USE OF INFORMATION........................................................16

3.6 HOW MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IMPACTS ON AN ORGANIZATION.....................16

4 MARKETING INFORMATION SYSTEM......................................................................17

17

5 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS...............................................................19

iv


5/25

1 ABSTRACT

4


6/25

This paper will show the role of IT in achieving the organizations 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.

2 CASE STUDY BACKGROUND

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.

5


7/25


8/25

The IT department is responsible for storing information, protecting information,

processing the information, transmitting the information as necessary and later retrieving

information as necessary. IT department would use computer, servers, database management

systems, would be made up of system administrators, database administrators and one

information technology manager, all that it will be reported to the CIO (Chief Information

Officer).

3.2 BUSINESS PROCESS

According to Leymann, Roller, and Schimidt (2002):

Business process management (BPM) is all about transferring the

results of business process re-engineering into production. BPM

technology provides not only the tools and infrastructure to define,

simulate, and analyze business process models, but also the tools to

implement business processes in such a way that the execution of

the resulting software artifacts can be managed from a business

process perspective.

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.

7


9/25

Source: www.opermix.com/BPMS.gif

3.3 ARCHITECTURE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Information systems, despite the major technological developments, it appears that

many organizations do not respond effectively to rapid changes imposed on business

processes, causing a misalignment between business and information systems and ultimately,

reducing the competitiveness of the organization, following this to obtain a full support by the

technology, it is essential to construction Architecture of Information Systems. This

architectural level, the main result of Planning Information Systems, organizations must be in

the map that leads the technological growth and orderly oriented business support.

According to Zachman (1997):

The Information System Architecture is considered a key factor onthe success of the organizations, the subject of the century.

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.

8


10/25


11/25

Source: GEAO (Global Enterprise Architecture Organization).

3.3.2 Information System Architecture

Garlan, D. et al (1995) and Maes et al. (2000):

Information System Architecture (ISA) is to represent thestructure of the components of information systems, their

relationships, principles and guidelines, with the main propose ofsupporting business.

10


12/25

Information System Architecture usually distinguishes three aspects, defining three

sub architectures (Spewak et al. 1992):

o Informational Architecture, or Data Architecture, represents the main data types that

support business (Spewak et al.1992), (DeBoever, 1997).

o Application Architecture, defines applications needed for data management and

business support.

o Technological Architecture, represents the main technologies used in application

Implementation and the infrastructures that provide an environment for IS deployment as

Network, communication, distributed computation, etc. (Spewak et al. 1992), (Open, 2003)

ISA description is a key step in ensuring that IT provides access to data when, where

and how is required at business level (Spewak et. al. 1992).

The CEO Framework aims at providing a formal way of describing business goals,

processes, resources and information systems and the dependencies between them. It is

composed of three separate levels, each of which provides adequate forms of representing the

notions about the layer being described (Vasconcelos et al. 2001).

The modelling language used to implement the CEO Framework was UML (Unified

Modelling Language) for further reading, refer to Vasconcelos et al. (2001). Figure 2

presents the UML Metamodel defined for the CEO Framework.

11


13/25

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:

12


14/25

IT Infrastructure Block represents the physical and infra-structural concepts

existing in an ISA: the computational nodes (as servers, personal computers or

mobile devices) and the non-computational nodes (as printers, network, etc.)

that support application platforms.

IT Platform Block stands for the implementation of the services used in the

IT application deployment.

IT Application Block, the technological implementation of an IS Block.

Service is an aggregation of a set of operations provided by an architectural block. A

generalization of the web service notion (W3C, 2002). We consider three distinct services in

an ISA:

Business Service, collection of operations provided by IS Blocks that support

business processes.

IS Service, set of operations provided by an IS Block to others IS Blocks.

IT Service, technological services provided by application platforms (Open 2001).

Operation, the abstract description of an action supported by a service (the minor

level concept in an ISA). Figure 3 describes how these high-level primitives are related, in a

UML profile for ISA. For further detail refer to Vasconcelos et al (2003).

13


15/25

3.4 DOING BUSINESS ON THE INTERNET

Information and networking technologies are transforming the dynamics of business,

economics, education, government, and even international relations. Many long-held rules

and models are eroding. Traditional business strategies are losing out to new unconventional

tactics. Relationships among customers, suppliers, employees, and competitors are changing.

New businesses are popping up on the net, as a framework for assessing how doing

business on the Internet differs from industria Era business practice, its important to

recognize the major forces driving the new economy. Although viewpoints vary from sourceto source, there appears to be substantial concurrence on several factors.

Faster, cheaper, more ubiquitous information technology.

Internet technology is creating a universal technology platform at an affordable price.

Whereas proprietary systems were limited to the big and wealthy, the Internet delivers

connectivity all the way to the mom and pop business. Individuals and enterprises worldwide

are becoming electronically linked.

According to Lai, Vincent S. (2001):

When it comes to intranets, smaller organizations can compete oneven terms with their larger counterparts.

Common information standards.

Even more important than universal connectivity is the emergence of common technical

standards for communication. As long as connectivity remained proprietary, it was difficult if not

impossible to communicate among different enterprises (Evans, Philip and Wurster, Thomas S.

Blown, 2000).

According to, the U. S. Department of Commerce, Digital Economy the benefits of

information technology are quickly spreading across the board, and eventually will touch every

business, from the smallest mom-and pop shop to the biggest Fortune 100. As it can be seen, do

business on the internet is more popular now than ever, everything (since pay bill, arrangements,

customer needs, suppliers contacts, feedbacks and promotions) can be settled through cables,

mailbox, msn, intranet or any other way of online contact, thus electronic commerce( e-

commerce) has reached the most notorious place in business.

14


16/25

Ecommerce (e-commerce) or electronic commerce is the purchasing selling, and

exchanging of goods and services over the computer networks, which transactions and terms of

sale are performed electronically. In fact, ecommerce is not just on the web it was alive and well

in business transactions, via EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), through VaNs (Value-Added

Networks). Ecommerce can be divided into four main categories: B2B, B2C, C2B and C2C.

B2B (Business- to- Business)

Applies to business-to-business, where the customers are other businesses,

such as such as between a manufacturer and a wholesaler, or between a

wholesaler and a retailer (Paypal is linked to almost every website which

purchase sale, an example would be Ebay).

B2C ( Business-to- Customer)

Applies to any business or organization that sells its products or services to

consumers over the internet for their own use, a transaction would be a person

buying a pair of shoes from a retailer (An example is the website

www.amazon.com).

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.

15
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wholesalerhttp://www.priceline.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wholesalerhttp://www.priceline.com/


17/25

3.5 ETHICAL AND LEGAL USE OF INFORMATION

The use of information in a company is a very important concern nowadays since

organizations have rules and laws that should be obeyed by its employees. Information is

being more and more secured by companies; they cannot afford to get their data base of sales,

customers, suppliers, financial and employees profile or any other information, if this

information is stolen by others can be very harmful, this should have strict rules concerning

the protection of this information. The IT department has the objective to protect and guard

that kind of information; usually the IT department has a guy, who has access to each other

department, one mistake and all the information from all the departments can end up the

wrong hands, easily.

According to Martha Smith, (2001):

Ethics of information regarding the moral dilemmas and conflictethical arising in interaction between humans and the information

(creation, organization, dissemination and use), technology

information, communication (ICT) and information systems.

3.6 HOW MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IMPACTS ON AN ORGANIZATION.

16


18/25

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.

4 MARKETING INFORMATION SYSTEM

To begin with, Marketing Information System (MkIS), a computerized system that

provides an organized flow of information to enable and support the marketing activities of an

organization. The internet is rapidly changing the way business views marketing information

system. New business models present challenges and opportunities as organizations seek to

adopt e-business methodologies in the search for competitive advantage.

Marketing glossary (2007), says:

An organizational section or entity whose purpose is to gather,

organize, store, retrieve and analyze data relevant to a firm`s past, present and future operations on an on-going basis in order to

provide support for management`s marketing decisions.

17


19/25

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.

18


20/25

5 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The use of projects for implementing business strategies, whether to increase

profitability, broaden market share or even guarantee their survival, has been justified every

day, given the degree of competitiveness to which these companies have to achieve. Thus, to

know how projects are conducted and the ability to control their results is a factor of

relevance for the success of managing businesses, and this has increasingly been a strong

driver for the implementation of Information technology and its system that helps the

company.

To begin with, Mr. Parker`s company is a large department store with 25 department

of various types: men`s clothes, garden tools, women`s clothe and so on, it has never beenimplanted nothing that associate information technology and business, so this is all new for

the company. In order to help the company as well as the manager, a good start would be an

strategically alignment of IT and business, fully, starts with a in-depth understanding of the

firm`s business, mission, vision, strategic goals and positioning in the market environment.

It could start creating IT departments for each of the store such as: Clothes

department, Shoes department so each store has their own IT department no depending

from others department, putting together a information system (IS) as part of IT, it would link

the whole company (departments, stakeholders, board), promoting information (including

processing) whatever the use made of this information, providing flow that is more reliable

and less bureaucratic information enabling quick access to information, ensuring integrity,

accuracy of information security and access to information, including input, processing and

outputs, control and feedback, helping the company to know how its products are being

accepted or not.

19


21/25

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 thats 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.

20


22/25

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.

21


23/25

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,

thats a big concern, yet thats 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

22


24/25

http://www.bpminstitute.org/ Access 06.Dec.2009

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architect Access 06.Dec.2009

http://www.geao.org/ Access 08.Dec.2009

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_architecture Access 05.Dec.2009

http://www.digitsmith.com/ecommerce-definition.html Access 05.Dec.2009

http://www.administradores.com.br Access 09.Dec.2009

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business-to-business Access 09.Dec.2009

Maes, R., D. Rijsenbrij, O. Truijens, and H. Goedvolk, Redefining Business IT AlignmentThrough a Unified Framework, White Paper, May 2000.http://www.cs.vu.nl/~daan/

Spewak, S., and S. Hill, Enterprise Architecture Planning: Developing a Blueprint for

Data,Applications and Technology, Wiley-QED, ISBN 0-471-599859, 1992

Vasconcelos, A., A. Caetano, J. Neves, P. Sinogas, R. Mendes, e J. Tribolet, A Framework

for Modeling Strategy, Business Processes and Information Systems, 5th International

Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference EDOC, Seatle, USA, 2001.

Vasconcelos, A., P. Sousa, and J. Tribolet, Information System Architectures,

Proceedings of Business Excelence 2003, International Conference on Performance

Measures, Benchmarking and Best Practices in New Economy, Portugal, 2003.

Marketing glossary,2007. http://www.marketing.org.au/glossary/DICM.htm/. Access

09.Dec.2009

Kotler, P. Marketing Management: Analysis planning and control, Prentice Hall, 1988.

Schultheis R. & Summer M, Marketing information systems, Management information

systems, 3rd edition, 1995.

META GROUP (META). Leading Organizations Centralize Management of ProjectPortfolios. Jan/2002, http://www.metagroup.com/. Access 09. Dec.2009

ALBRECHT, Karl. Revoluo nos servios: como as empresas podem revolucionar

A maneira de tratar seus clientes. 2. ed. So Paulo: Pioneira, 1992.

REZENDE, Denis Alcides; ABREU, Aline Frana de. Tecnologia da informao

aplicada a sistemas de informao empresariais. So Paulo: Atlas, 2003.

Sharma, R.; Yetton, P. & Zmud, R, Implementation costs of IS-enabled organizational

change. Information and Organization, 2007

F. Leymann and D. Roller,Production Workflow, Prentice Hall, Inc, NJ (2000).

23


25/25

Zachman, John, Enterprise Architecture: The Issue of the Century, Database

Programming and Design, March 1997.

Tissot, Florence, and Wes Crump, An Integrated Enterprise Modeling Environment,P.Bernus, K. Mertins, G. Schmidt (Eds.), Handbook on Architectures of Information Systems,

Springer,1998.

DeBoever, L., Enterprise Architecture Boot Camp & Best Practices: A Workshop, Meta

Group, 1997.

Garlan, D. et al., Architectural Mismatch (Why Its Hard to Build Systems Out of

Existing Parts), Proceedings 17th International Conference on Software Engineering, Seattle,

WA, 1995.

24

Date post:	29-May-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	keliton-henrique-cruz
View:	220 times
Download:	0 times

Mkis finalfinal

Documents