Background of the Company

Pine Lanka Pvt Ltd is a subsidiary company of Pine International Inc which is a global market
leader in Pineapple product. The company is responsible for inward investment of 40 Million
USD to Sri Lanka’s Agriculture sector. Pine Lanka Pvt Ltd carries out Pineapple cultivation in
Gampaha district in 900 Acres land for export purposes.

The company’s corporate office is located in Dubai from where Chaiman, CEO, Senior Vice
president of Agriculture, Human Resource, Sales and Marketing & Legal departments operate.
Guided by the corporate office, Sri Lankan operation is managed by a team comprising five
senior positions, namely General Manger, Senior Managers of Finance, Human Resource,
Supply Chain, Legal, Agriculture Research & Development. General Manager is the head of
Sri Lankan operation, other senior managers are reporting to him. General Manager is reporting
to CEO in Corporate office of Dubai. General Manager is from a foreign country hence lacks
familiarity with local customs and knowledge in local languages (Sinhalese & Tamil)
Agriculture production team is the key operation team of the business, responsible for
producing fresh pine apple as per market requirement. Pine Lanka exports its products mainly
to the Middle East. Agriculture operation team is headed by Senior Manager Agriculture, who
manages three farms in different locations of Gampaha district. Altogether 35 executive staff
comprise the supporting team in the executive level and officer level staff assist the managers.

Each farm location is managed by a farm management team. Farm Management team consists
of Farm manager and three production supervisors. Farm Location A consists of 300 regular
workers, Farm Location B 400 Laborers, Farm Location 500 laborers, - a total of 1200 labor
force. This workforce is not directly managed by Pine Lanka, they have a labor supplier
manpower company to manage their labor issues. HR, Legal, Supply chain senior managers
are there to support the agriculture team on respective areas.

Department structure

Pine Lanka have five departments namely Agriculture operations, Human Resource, Legal,
Supply chain and finance. Other than Legal department all other departments have its
functional divisions as depicted in the organizational chart (Figure 01).

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In the next section, we will analyze the information structure of the company.

GM

Agriculture
Operation
HR Supply Chain Legal Finance

Local Shipping
Labor Staffs Farm Purchasing International Management Financial
R&D Engineering from farm to
Management Management Management Division Shiping Accounting Accounting
port

Supervisors

Workers

Agriculture production process of Pineapple:

Pineapple cultivars: Smooth Cayene (hawaiian) is the most favored cultivars for canning and
fresh fruit consumption. It matures in 18 months and yields 25,000 fruits per hectare. It is a
new veracity introduce to Sri Lanka from Hawai.

Soil and climatic requirements. Pineapple requires and mild (24oC to 30oC) and relatively
uniform temperature throughout the year. It also requires evenly distributed rainfall during its
growing period. Pineapple grows best at elevations of 150 to 240 meters in well-drained soil
with a pH of 4.5 to 5.5 .

Based on above condition land will be selected for agriculture production.

Planting materials: Slips and suckers are the most suitable planting materials. Slips bear fruits
in 18 to 20 months. They should be obtained six to eight weeks after harvesting.

Choose planting materials similar in size and type to drained uniform flowering and fruiting.
Cure the similar by exposing them to sunlight for one week or more depending on the weather
conditions. Curing prevents infection and rooting of plant materials.

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Soil preparation and planting: In small-scale operations, planting time is between March and
August. Plant slips and suckers 8 to 10 cm deep, 25 or 30 cm in row and 80 to 100 cm between
rows. These spacing give population density of 33,000 to 50,000 plants per hectare. Planting
in double rows also gives the population per hectare. This method requires distance of 25 to 30
cm in a row, 50 cm within a double row and 100 cm between double rows. This will result in
about 44,000 to 53,000 plants per hectare.

Weed control. Hand pulling and hoeing with the aid of suitable implements are the most
common methods of weed control. Weeds can be used as mulch (soil covering) to conserve
moisture and add organic matter to the soil. Do not use herbicides that may be toxic to the
crop’s crown and the environment.

Fertilizer use. Adequate nitrogen fertilizer makes plants grow vigorously and produce large
fruits. Potassium, on the other hand, increase fruit size and sweetness. Pineapple will require
little phosphorus since our soil have generally sufficient phosphorus.

Intercropping. The usual intercropping practice is to plant pineapple under coconut or papaya.
Returns from intercropping can be greatly increased by supplying the fertilizer requirements of
all crops.

Disease & Pest: Heart rot is a disease affecting pineapple. It is the result of extensive rotting
of the tissues at or near the central (heart) base of the plant. An early symptom of this disease
is when “heart” leaves change their color from yellow to light brown with a reddish tinge.
Pineapples produce a pungent smell caused by the rotting leaf bases. As a control measure,
avoid contaminating the central base of the plant with disease- infected soil especially during
the hilling-up operation. If polyethylene mulch is more practical and economical, use it on
raised beds.

Harvesting, handling and picking: When harvesting, remove pieces of the leaves from the base
of the fruit. Place harvesting boxes at the end of the plantation rows. See to it that the boxes
are free from any sharp or rough projections inside. Also, fruits for the fresh fruit market should
not be piled in jeeps and trucks without being place in the containers.

For export marketing, pack in fruit cases with wood wool or protective materials between each
fruit and under the butt of the fruit where it touches the case. For export packs, you will need
about 1 to 1.5kg of wood wool per case.

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When harvesting, the following shell colors of Smooth Cayenne are generally used in
determining the various stages of pineapple’s maturity.

Business processes of the organization

Agriculture production/new farm starting process can be conceptualize as below flow

diagram :

Done by R&D division Land Selection according to criteria Soil Quality

Decision by GM and Top Mgt Project Starts Production and return on Investment

Legal check on Land ownership Correct ownership

Done by Legal dept.

Done by Finance Dept Investment proposal and Financial Planning Financial plan, monitoring

Supply chain and Marketing planning Packaging prince,

Done by SC dept
Market information

Labor force planning

Done by HR Dept Human resource Information

Done by Ag Op dept & SC Plant material Selection Plant selection Information

Done by Engineering division Land Preparation and planting Land Preparation Information

Done by AO Depnt. Crop management – disease, fertilizer, irrigation

Crop Management
Information
Done by AO Dept. Yield and Harvesting

Done by AO Packing and quality check Quality and Supply Chain

Information

Done by SC deptm Shipping and export Done by R&D division

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Existing information systems of the company
Every department have ther own requirment of information which are tabulated here below:
Department Information Type of System available
Finance Buddget, expenditures, Excel file and manual
costs, day to day sales, invoices
salaries, etc
HR Employee profile, Leave Proper HR information
management, officer system
attendence management,
performance evaluation
system
Legal Land information Manual files
Suppy chain Purchasing orders, Payment Manual files
invoice
Agriculture Operations Crop data Excel files and Manual files
Irrigation data
Fertilizer data
Pesticide data
Harvesting data
Packing data

Only HR department having the proper IS, all other departments having basic data base, not
information, which is processed data.
In company meeting always reported, their was lack of information for critical decisions. For
example there is no proper land information system, due to this aspect rejected lands are
returning frequently. If proper information system is available of land then with less cost at the
first step we can identify from experience.
Key weakness identified in Pine Lanka was
Management Challenges

1. Lack of top management commitment to the strategy implementation.

2. Weak management roles in implementation.
3. Lack of top management support in creation and implementation of the system.
4. Changes / replace senior management.
5. Poor coordination and sharing of responsibilities.
6. Lack of communication.

Human Challenges

1. Failure in employ professional persons

2. Difficulties in employing suitable staff.
3. Lack of resources to participate in user education.

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 4. Changing needs of users.
5. System inability to fulfill the expectations of users.
6. Lack of knowledge of the people (employee) on the system

Technical Challenges

1. Difficulties in transforming and reconfiguring business process to suit with IT system.

2. Technical difficulties.
3. Lack of requirement for information system
4. Upgrading previous systems is a major challenge

Other Challenges

1. Difficulties in alignment between business strategy

2. Inability to implement the system strategy on time.
3. Difficulties of measuring benefits.
4. Expenses for changing to the new system
5. Lack of software and hardware budget

Discussion
As per the assessment, it is highly recommended to implement Information system strategies
(ISS) in Pine Lanka. Because major gap found is information connectivity among the
department for effective and efficient business decision making. ISS play a major role to
connect the business environment. The functions of Information system strategies are
responding to the business requirements by offering the appropriate information systems for
all activities in business and ensuring the effectiveness of planning, and control of projects.
Also, the successful implementation of Information system strategies provides a competitive
advantage which leads to improving the outcomes, decrease the mistake, increase efficiency,
and reduce unnecessary costs. In a today business environment with increasing internal and
external changing, the business environment may face difficulties and challenges such as
human or technical barriers which lead to misalignment or differences in performance between
the business and information system strategies, and then this may cause a negative effect on
the business.

The different divisions of an organization while they can work properly regarding their
objectives they are not working toward the aims of the organization due to the loss of
collaboration between divisions, and sometimes the divisions objectives are going against the

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organization’s objectives. The organization sometimes have to allocate their major resources,
basically for the new property development, product, and machines development. Information
systems require a costly hardware also acquire design expense; not all these processes require
largely resource allocation, which is can happen unless there is a unified orientation – a future
strategy. The organization is responsible for the owners who may be the shareholders or the
public, the clients and employees. the groups mentioned previously have a distinct benefit in
the strategy of the organization either by producing the benefits they require or by the degree
the strategy has in taking their interests into account and the organization success toward in
reaching their benefits.

The challenges of implementing ISS are discussed below:

A. Management Challenges : if plan of IS strategy was developed, that need to convince

top management to approve the suggested systems development. Sometimes senior
management may lack to understand the purpose or may not trust of the IS strategies
capability to carry it out. Therefore, recommends that executives should examine its
responsibility to implementing the plan before also confirm the time and budget
required to develop the system.
B. Human Challenges: second challenge is lack of resources to engage in user-education,
inability in recruiting appropriate staff, and Inability to employ experts who can
accomplish the information technology activities, the most reasons that caused IS
implementation failed. Lack of computer skill was equally identified as a key challenge
and major difficulty to the development of IS. There is a lack of general computer skill
amongst the employee of the organization
C. Technical Challenges: infrastructures (hardware and software), also the difficulties of
the migration from old to the new system or upgrading previous systems is a major
challenge.
D. Organizational environment: less visible and uncontrollable environmental factors such
as organizational culture, change, behavior, inadequate capabilities, poor coordination
and distribution of responsibilities, competing for activities and unaligned
organizational systems and resources

Recommended Information System for Pine Lanka

Recommended model of IS will be integrated information system. Because the whole

business process need to coordinated among the team and the all department heads

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should know what is happening around other department and understand proactively
what they need to do to enhance and achieve business objectives.
 Making a healthy relationship between top management and staff along with
expressing the importance of successful implementation of IS particularly in
relation to collaboration will help to solve the problems of the weak
management role in implementation as identified above.
 Major factor identifies was "poor coordination and sharing of responsibilities."
The recommendation is to Participation of employees in information system
strategies, making a relation among employees and information specialists,
participation and using interoperation teams in performing information system
will help to overcome the challenges.
 It is suggested that Improving office design in the organizations to allow
interaction with top management and communication between employees
which may have an effect on the turnover of the employees.
 There is a lack of communication. Therefore, the recommendation is the
departments should strengthen confidence between staff through establishes
social events and informal discussions occasionally; this will motivate the staff
to contribute more to the growth of the organization and implementation of
organizational culture.
 Each department should allocate enough budget and should not begin the
project unless all the resources are available to be able to perform the objectives.
 Most suitable information system for pine Lanka is Agriculture Decision
Support system integrated with all the department information.
 Sprague (1980)[2] defines a properly termed DSS as follows:
i. DSS tends to be aimed at the less well structured, underspecified
problem that upper level managers typically face;
ii. DSS attempts to combine the use of models or analytic techniques with
traditional data access and retrieval functions;
iii. DSS specifically focuses on features which make them easy to use by
non-computer-proficient people in an interactive mode; and
iv. DSS emphasizes flexibility and adaptability to accommodate changes in
the environment and the decision making approach of the user.

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 Pine Lanka need crop management decisions, investment decision, Land and
soil quality decision, climate and crop production decision, labor planning
decision, etc.
 Their for DSS is the suitable information system for Pine Lanka Pvt Lts to
achieve its business objectives.