This example of the Introduction Section of the Business Report is provided as a guide to the writing standard and style

required. This introduction would receive a high pass level mark.

Please note that students may not copy this work but must write their own. Except for Stair and Reynolds these
references are not the most common so it is expected that students will do their own research for the literature review.

Business Report

1: Introduction:
This business report discusses the use of information systems within the decision making
processes of ABC Pizza Store, located in Blacktown, Sydney. This research investigates the
gathering of data, the processing of this data into useful information and the use of this
information in the short and long-term decisions of the business. These decisions dictate
the business processes, the quality of the product and the performance of staff which, in
turn, affect competitive advantage in an industry which is well populated and aggressive in
marketplace rivalry. An analysis of the information system findings will lead to
recommendations for changes to the system which may improve the performance of the
system with resultant impact on information quality and availability, further assisting in
improved decision making. This, in turn, may lead to enhanced competitive advantage for
the organisation.

1.1 Information Systems: Literature Review

Information systems (IS) are defined by UKASIS as “the means by which people and
organisations, utilising technologies, gather, process, store, use and disseminate
information” (1999, p1). Within the business environment this is often aligned closely with
computer technology with the term ‘computer based information systems’ (CBIS) used in
both research and business fields (Khazanchi and Bjorn, 2000). IS can be both manual; with
people undertaking all or most of the actions, or automated; where technology works
primarily independent of human involvement (Stair and Reynolds, 2010). They highlight
that in most organisations the IS is a mixture of these with some activities highly automated,
such as those in stock control using a Transaction Processing System and barcode scanning,
while others remain primarily people focused, such as staff individually counting shelf items
in a manual stock-take. Bruno identified these two ends of the spectrum stating that
“business purposes are achieved through coordinated work to be carried out by means of two kinds
of activities: user tasks and automatic procedures” (2009, p17). Stair and Reynolds (2010) and
Hunter (2010) identify that although IS usually include considerable amounts of automated
computer technology the development processes of the IS and decision making using the
resultant information must include management level input.

The effectiveness of IS within an organisation is dependant not only of the currency and
efficiency of the technology but, more importantly, on how the technology supports and
enhances the goals and objectives of the business ( Stair and Reynolds, 2010; Ormanidhi and
Stringa, 2008). Bruno (2009) emphasises that people’s understandings and involvement and
the business strategic direction are the main factors in successful enterprise IS and that a
successful IS is a major component in organisational success.
1.3 Methodology

This research was undertaken over a period of nine weeks and involved site visits to ABC
Pizza Store, interviews with the owner, manager and two senior staff, as well as observation
of the processes of the business operation. The interviews with the manager occurred over
a three week period and questions were developed based on observation and on the
responses to previous discussions.

As part of the visit some of the generated reports from the organisation’s IS were viewed
and will be discussed in the report but due to confidentiality the reports will not be
replicated in their entirety. Examples have been created with generic data to demonstrate
the processes used.

1.4 Research Site

The site of this research is ABC Pizza Store in Blacktown, Sydney. This is a small,
independent business which makes and sells pizzas and related side dishes as well as selling
brand name soft drinks. The pizzas are made on-site and customers can purchase
takeaways or home deliveries, within a ten kilometre radius of the store. The local
completion is identified as a Dominos (five km from the store), a Pizza Hut (three km), a fish
and chip store (1 in the same block as ABC Pizza Store, 3 within 8 km), Asian restaurants (3
within ten km) and take away food from the four local supermarkets. The Dominos, Pizza
Hut and supermarkets all advertise on TV and the newspapers while the other outlets
regularly undertake flyer letter box drops. ABC Pizza Store competitive advantage currently
is based on the perception of a family, independent business and the on the amount and
quality of toppings. ABC Pizza Store has one owner, two full time shift managers and 12
casual workers.

The primary business process the business undertakes are orders receiving, making and
delivering the product (pizzas, sides and drinks), receiving payment, stock replenishment
and staffing the shifts. These are demonstrated in the diagram below (figure 1). Each of
these actions create data which is captured in the IS by both manual and automated
processes and once consolidated is used for analysis of business process effectiveness. The
decisions on how each of these processes are undertaken and how they interrelate is made
by the owner and shift manager based on the outputs of the IS. This process of information
creation and use is the subject of the findings and analysis of the report.
 Figure 1: Business Process ABC Pizza Store

Order placed– data collected:

Type of pizza. sides. drinks
Take away /delivery
Date/ Time
Automatic Process
Payment style – cash/credit card
Contact Person
Contact number/address Automatic Process

Payment made – data collected:

Type payment
Problems
Order Filled– data collected:
Time beginning/end Data from every transaction entered into the
Problems organisation’s database

Order Delivered– data

Manual Process collected:
Time Manual Process
Problems
Deliverer
Automatic Process

Automatic Process

Staffing store– data collected: Stocking store– data collected:

Staff name Products - amounts KEY
Availability Date/ Time Cost
Pay rate Date/ Time
Data/Information Flow
Payment style Payment style – cash/credit card/Direct Debit
Contact details Provider
Contact person
Business process Flow
2: Findings and Analysis
This section discusses the research findings on how data is gathered from the business
processes discussed in the previous section, stored, and processed into useful information.
The format of this information is described and how it is utilised in decision making is
discussed. The effectiveness of this IS is investigated and ramifications of both the strengths
and weaknesses of the IS explored.

2.1 Research Findings

References

AKASIS; UK Academy for Information Systems, 1999, The definition of Information Systems,
http://www.turningcourse.com/ukais/isdefn.pdf, accessed 2 May 2011.

Bruno, G., 2009, People-oriented enterprise information systems. (Technical report).

International Journal of Enterprise Information Systems Vol 5.4 (Oct-Dec 2009) IGI Global.

Hunter, M. Gordon editor, 2010, Strategic information systems: concepts, methodologies,

tools, and applications, Information Science Reference; Hershey, Pa:

Khazanchi, Deepak; Bjorn Erik Munkvold, 2000, "Is information system a science? an inquiry
into the nature of the information systems discipline". ACM SIGMIS Database 31 (3): 24–42.

Ormanidhi, Orges and Stringa, Omer, 2008, Porter’s Model of Generic Competative
Strategies; an insightful and convenient approach to firm’s analysis, The Journal of Business
Economics Vol 43, Number 3July 2008 pp 55- 64.

Stair, R., and Reynolds, G., 2010, Principles of Information Systems, Cengage Learning,
Boston, USA