Managing Information systems

Table of Contents

Table of Contents.................................................................................................................1 Abstract................................................................................................................................2 Introduction..........................................................................................................................2 Review of Literature............................................................................................................3 Why Do Companies Use Information Systems?.................................................................4 How Management Information System Helps Amazon......................................................6 Managing the Financial Information...................................................................................7 Managing the Human Resource Information.......................................................................7 Managing the Supply Chain Management Information.......................................................7 Managing the IT Infrastructure Information........................................................................8 Customer Relationship Management...................................................................................9 Conclusion...........................................................................................................................9 Recommendations................................................................................................................9 References..........................................................................................................................14

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Managing Information systems Abstract

In this report, I attempt to find out how the management information systems (MIS) help a company in their day to day business activities. For the analysis purpose, an online retailing and ecommerce company, Amazon, has been selected. The report analyzes how this organization uses the information system to gain competitive advantage in the market it operates. This report discusses the theoretical aspects of the information systems. The theoretical analysis provides a strong foundation for this report. This report also provides the benefits of using the information systems in a company.

Introduction
Effective communication and the effective knowledge management in a company play an important role in the long term success of the company. The internal communication among the employees (cross departmental) and the external communication with their customers are very vital for the growth of any company. The business knowledge is the most valuable intangible asset of any company which must be protected. Also, as the information in any organization is a flow between more than one person and it takes between important stakeholders, it is important to streamline this flow of information. By streamlining the flow of information in a company in a structural manner, the company can gain competitive advantage by re-using the information for the strategic business purpose ( Macionis, J.J and Gerber ,L.M , 2007). In a time where the technology dominates in all the industries, companies are trying to compete each other using technology as the differentiator. The information technology can be used effetely to leverage the knowledge/ information flow in a company.

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Managing Information systems

This report analyses how companies use the management information systems (MIS) to optimize their growth prospects and to increase productivity of their employees. As a case study to this report, Amazon has been selected to analyze how the management information systems are used in real time. AMAZON is US headquartered ecommerce company specializing in the online sales of books, DVDs, Music, etc. The growth of AMAZON has been incomparable with sustained growth for years of their business operations. As this company takes care of the end to end life cycle of their projects, a large quantity of information flows through each stage of their project. The company has implemented several information systems to assist them in speedy implementation of their projects and to improve their business knowledge.

Review of Literature
According to Griffin, R.W (2006), the information systems implemented in any organization helps them to monitor and control the flow of the information at every stage and level of the organizational structure. The information input by the employees, including the managers is used by the company to prepare business strategies and to make business decisions. The information gathered by any information systems can be further divided into small modules for further analysis and processing. In this way, the information systems work as the foundation on which companies build their business strategies, apart from using it to run their day to day activities. According to David F.R (2006), the information systems are more strategic in nature in the context of business. The information / data from the information systems are used by the top to middle management for taking more accurate business decisions and business predictions. In this way, the information systems play a crucial role in driving the businesses into their future growth and deciding their future. Therefore, it is very important that the information that is input into the information systems maintain high quality. The quality information input into the information systems will help a company to process it effectively to make reliable business strategies. For example, if the 3|Page

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employees or the users of the information system inputs wrong data into the system, the system will produce wrong information which will ultimately lead to managers taking wrong decisions. Therefore, the information system in itself will not be as usual if the users of the information system are not using it properly. However, todays information systems comes with intelligent design with features that eliminate the incorrect information from the systems.

Why Do Companies Use Information Systems?

The design of the information systems has undergone vast change based on the use of the information systems by the companies. Initially, the companies started using the information systems in order to reduce their production and operations cost. By using the information systems, companies got deep insight into their production methods and their accurate results. This gave the companies to alter and enhance their production methods which resulted in huge cost savings. However, organizations expected more from the information systems and also, they found that the information contained in the management information systems can be used for more activities than just to improve their production and operations. Accordingly, the information systems underwent changes to help the companies to use the information to increase their competitiveness in the market. So, in the second phase of the improvements in the information systems, the MIS gained a strategic role in organizations and companies started to invest on the MIS to improve their competitiveness. In the third stage of improvements in the MIS, companies use it to increase the productivity of each and every department in the company. Currently, the MIS systems come with integrated modules on Human Resource, Finance, Recruitment, etc. that covers all the parts of the business and collect data from all the stakeholders. Currently, the management information systems have become more sophisticated with more features and collect raw data and transform it into more useful information (Laudon K.C, Laudon, J.P, 2007).

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Managing Information systems

Laudon, J.P and Laudon, K.C (2007) consider management information systems as tools that are used by the top management to get useful business knowledge from the employees. In this aspect, the management information systems collect the data from the employees and deliver it to the top management for decision making. However, the flow of information in the management information systems are not just one way, that is from the employees to the top level management; but two way. The top level management also uses the information systems to disseminate the information to their employees. Therefore, the information systems keep their basic use of being a communication channel among all the stakeholders in an organization, both internal and external. Business strategy functions as the roadmap for a company to enable it to be focused on achieving the organizational objectives. Therefore, formulating the business strategy is one of the most important activities of the top level management. An effective business strategy can be arrived by promoting free flow of information / knowledge among the key participants. Any business strategy that is formulated without proper insight into the various stakeholders of the company will not be effective. Nobody can predict how the market will behave for a long term. Therefore, it is important to analyze the business information before formulating the business strategy. A company that operates in a volatile market must have access to the market information. The online retailing industry is very volatile worldwide. As the ecommerce industry undergoes many phases in each project, it generated lots of information during these phases. The example of these phases are advertising the products and services, selecting partners, selecting suppliers, planning marketing campaigns, inventory location planning, etc. In all these phases, many stakeholders will be involved and lots of communication is required for the success of each project. Therefore, proper communication channel plays a major role in the success of the any projects (Reynolds, G, 2009). The communication among the various departments in a typical retailing and ecommerce company is very complex. The engineers develop the project designs and consult it with the manufacturing team. Once the design is prepared, the legal team takes it and analyzes it for the compliance purpose and to get appropriate licenses. During all these processes, 5|Page

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there will be multiple iterations like changes, enhancements and modifications. As these processes / phases involve mission critical items, it is important for the entire team to work as a single team with single focus. This means that the various departments must communicate each other without any confusion. Any miscommunication or communication gap can prove fatal to the entire project. It is here the role of the information systems become very vital. The information systems can work as the bridge between the various departments and can monitor and control the flow of data among various departments (Clough R.H , Sears G.A , Sears ,S.K , 2000). The ecommerce and online marketing companies, such as AMAZON employ thousands of employees in multiple geographical locations. Managing huge human capital who are in various locations and who hail from various cultural backgrounds needs a coordinated effort. Otherwise the companies may face a huge increase in their cost of operation because of the inappropriate management of their human capital. By implementing information systems, online retailing and ecommerce companies can minimize their risks and improve their human capital management. In this aspect, the management information systems leverages the technological aspects of the company and also improves the business processes in a company ( Graham Curtis , David Cobham, 2002).

How Management Information System Helps Amazon

The AMAZON company was one of the early birds in using the management information systems. As the result of their rapid expansion of their business across the international market, they had their regional offices spread across various locations, such as US, UK, India, china, etc. Before the introduction the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems, AMAZON used an in-house developed Oracle based system for managing their communications among their all the stakeholders. However, the systems they used initially was less advanced and required lots of manual work and routine work. In order to reduce the routine work and the manual work, AMAZON has moved to more sophisticated enterprise resource planning plus customer relationship management system 6|Page

Managing Information systems

developed by Microsoft Corporation, MS Dynamics ERP. Microsofts Dynamics ERP is an end to end management information system for mid size to large enterprises. This software is a comprehensive system that takes care of the information and knowledge management in the entire departments of a company. The business intelligence that is built into the system helps the companies in the easy processing of the data and creating various data analysis outputs such as graphs and charts for easy understanding of the business data.

Managing the Financial Information

The Financial management is one of the key modules in the Dynamics ERP. This module helps the company to plan their financials better. This modules comes with several tools to improve the financial planning, budgeting, financial forecasting, etc. The efficient finance management can help a company in controlling their costs and increasing their profits.

Managing the Human Resource Information

The human resource department is one of the backbone of a business organization. As the human capital is the most valuable asset of any company, managing the human capital is very crucial to the success of any company. Any information systems that aim at improving the productivity of the employees must have a specific module dedicated for the human resource management (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/erpcapabilities.aspx).

Managing the Supply Chain Management Information

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Supply Chain Management plays an important role in the retailing and ecommerce industry. As their projects are being developed simultaneously in various geographical locations, supplying the materials to all these locations efficiently requires proper management. The Supply Chain management module of the information system provides the overall insight into the various projects and helps the management team to streamline their inventory (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/erp-capabilities.aspx).

Managing the IT Infrastructure Information

As an online retailing and ecommerce company, AMAZON has numerous IT devices spread across India. Managing these IT infrastructure is a huge task. The information system they use comes in handy for them to easily monitor the utilization and movement of their IT devices. The IT Management module of the Dynamics ERP helps companies to have better control of the IT infrastructure. This greatly helps them to lower their IT costs. This feature enables the Amazons IT management team to manage all their IT devices from a single location with the help of a centralized server. The reports provided by this information systems module helps the IT team to take effective decisions on the use and deployment of their IT infrastructure (http://www.microsoft.com/enus/dynamics/erp-capabilities.aspx).

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Managing Information systems Customer Relationship Management

Amazons ecommerce business is growing rapid with newly products being introduced daily, such as Kindle and they have thousands of happy customers throughout India. It is very important to have an effective customer relationship management information system to continue their growth in this volatile industry. To enhance their customer engagement and customer support, AMAZON has integrated Microsoft Dynamics CRM into their Dynamics ERP system. Dynamics CRM is one of the leading customer relationship management systems available in the market today. This information system comes with end to end management features to deal with customer interactions in the company (http://crm.dynamics.com/en-us/).

Conclusion
The management information systems have become an effective tool to manage the end to end business functions of companies. By incorporating all the business activities into systems features, the MIS provides deep insight into the business activities, enabling the managers to take quick decisions after analyzing the information from the MIS. Therefore, we can say that management information systems are inevitable for companies that want to coordinate the activities of all their departments and make better business decisions (Reynolds, 2009).

Recommendations
The information systems help the top level management teams to take quick decisions in their day to day activities. The information systems such as Dynamics ERP provides reports and graphs with the processed data which will help the management team to get the overall idea about the market situation and the companys sales and profit statistics.

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Managing Information systems

Based on these data provided by the information systems, the management team can take management decisions for the future success of the company. Automation of the Routine Activities Another important use of the information systems is that these systems automate the routine and repetitive activities. By automating the routine activities, it can save valuable time for the company, which in turn results in productivity and cost savings. Also, these information systems come with communication means, such as emails, chats, online calls, collaboration tools. These tools help the users to easily transact information among themselves and access the process information easily. The management information systems have become inevitable tools for managing a business. The real benefits of using the management information systems are innumerable. The effective use of these information systems can bring competitive advantage to a company over its competitors. For example, the online retailing company AMAZON can gain competitive edge over its competitors by using the latest ERP systems such as Dynamics ERP through which they can gain the market knowledge. The marketing gurus are accepting the fact that in todays market environment, the market knowledge is the most valuable asset of any company. The more insight a company gets on the market, there is more chance of winning in that market. The information systems, by processing the data, provide useful business intelligence to the managers. Also, these systems work as a communication channel for all the stakeholders in a company. By offering quick charts and graphs on the market data, these systems help the managers to take better decisions on the business. Therefore, it will be suffice to say that the information systems play a strategic role in any company when it is used properly and implemented properly. Implementation of MIS across All Locations

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The effectiveness of the management information systems depends upon the quality inputs from its users. The output information will be very useful if most of the stakeholders use the information system. Therefore, Amazon must implement the Dynamics ERP information system in all their offices across the world in order to get better business knowledge. Centralized Control of the MIS Instead controlling the flow of data in the management information system, it would be better of Amazon deploys a central server to control and monitor the flow of information from a single point. This will help the top level management team to get the optimum view of the business environment. Automation of the Routine Processes As Amazon is into the online retailing, most of the activities in the ecommerce are same always. For example, product uploading, product selection, product buying, payment options, delivering the product, etc. If Amazon automates these activities in the Dynamics ERP, Amazon can gain cost savings and time savings.

Real Time Tracking of Products Delivery The Dynamics ERP provides an option for the real time tracking of the products being delivered and the supply chain management using GPS. Amazon can optimize this feature to monitor and control the movement of products. The real time automatic notifications enable the management team to take complete control of the effective 11 | P a g e

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supply of their material with optimally reduced costs. This will help the AMAZON sales to be completed on time and increase the customer satisfaction. AMAZON optimizes the supply chain management module of the Dynamic ERP to develop and build a healthy partnership with their suppliers and customers Improve Customer Relationship Management AMAZON focuses its customer interactions in three fields: sales, marketing and service support. These are the key areas where the Amazons employees interact with their customers. The information system has integrated modules to enhance the productivity of the sales, marketing and support teams. The customer relationship management module provides AMAZON with immense information collected from their customers. This module works as a requirement gathering tools from the customers, so that the managers at AMAZON can work towards proving services that meets and exceeds the requirements of their customers. The customer relationship management is very crucial in the future growth of any company. Therefore, any investment on improving the customer relationship management is worth. The use of Dynamics CRM and integrating it with the Dynamics ERP will help AMAZON to increase the customer satisfaction and their services. Customize the Human resource Module The Human resource management module of the Dynamics ERP system enables each employees to self manage their information on the system. It works as a mediator between the HR team and the employees. By automating most of the routine activities, this module makes human resource management a bit easy. The customizability feature of this information system allows the company to customize the features based on the business requirement. This module helps AMAZON to make its project specific needs to be cared fast and quicken its recruitment process. It also minimizes the costs related to the payroll management, recruitment processes, administration, and performance

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management. This module can be further customized to suit the specific needs of Amazon. Optimize the Finance Management The finance of a company plays a crucial role in keeping a company afloat. By implementing and customizing the management information systems, companies, such as AMAZON can get better control of their financials. This module is mainly used by the finance department of the Amazon, but the information in this module should be made accessible by the management team to get better insight into the financial transactions so that they can take calculated business decisions.

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Managing Information systems References

1. David, F.R (2006) Strategic Management Concepts and cases (10th Edition) Pearson Education, China. 2. Griffin, R.W (2006) Management (9th Edition) South-Western College Pub, USA. 3. Reynolds (2009) Information Systems for Business Managers (1st Edition) South Western College,USA. 4. Laudon K.C.,Laudon J.P. (2007) Management Information Systems,(9th Edition) US ,Prentice Hall. 5. Philip Kotler (1994). Marketing Management, Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control. New York: Prentice Hall. 127. 6. Toffler, A. (1980). Third Wave. 3rd ed. U S A. 7. Somerville G.(2000), A holistic Approach to Structural Durability Design Taylor and Francis Group USA and Canada. 8. Steven Alter (1999). Information Systems: A Management Perspective. 3rd ed. United States: Addison Wesley. 9. Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/erp-capabilities.aspx 10. DLF: http://dlf.in/dlf/wcm/connect/DLF_Common/DLF_SITE/HOME

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