ERP systems

• They are enterprise wide
• Integrate primary value chain activities with human resources and accounting
• Track customers
• Process orders
• Manage inventory
• Pay employees
• Other accounting functions
• Is a cross functional system

Benefits

• Provides cross functional view of organisation
• Has formal approach based on formal business models
• Maintains data in centralised database

Problems

• Is difficult
• Has many challenges
• Slow to implement
• Very expensive

• All examples in case study show disjointed process, data inconsistency, limited information and lack of integrated information.
• This leads to
• Isolated decisions
• Organisational efficiencies
• Increased expense
• An ERP would integrate all the info from an org into one system, eliminating all of current problems typical of functional IS

®    i.e. data duplication

®    disjointed business processes

®    limited information 

Information systems can create competitive advantage through product or providing support to a product

• Product implementations:
• Create new product / service
• Enhance new product / service
• Differentiate new product / service
• Process implementations:
• Lock in customers, buyers & suppliers 
• Can do this by making it difficult or expensive to switch to another organisation
• Raise barriers to market entry
• Make it difficult and expensive for new competition to enter the market
• Establish alliances
• This can establish standards, promote product awareness, develop market size & reduce purchasing costs
• Reduce costs
• This can increase prices and therefore potentially increase profitability

NZPM should enhance an existing system

• They could create an online system where customers can check the status of all their transactions
• This would support the existing service
• Would help create switching costs for the customer
• i.e. If the customer were to switch to another org, they would not have all of their transactions, this makes it easier to stay with NZPM
• They could develop a scheduling app that makes it easy for customers to book a  plumber in their area
• This would raise barriers to entry
• Any other business wanting to enter the market would have to meet this requirement from customers, in order to compete effectively

Communication

• Asynchronous
• team members meet different time, different place
• i.e. discussion forum, email, team survey

®    Mindlink uses discussion forum / blogs / wikis

• Synchronous
• team members meet same time, different place
• i.e. face to face, video conference, conference call

Content Management

• No control
• i.e. email, shared file server
• some may not receive or ignore, difficult to manage attachments, does not accommodate concurrent work
• Version management
• Tracks changes to documents & accommodates concurrent work
• i.e. wiki (Mindlink uses), is a shared knowledge base useful for KM and Google docs
• Version control
• Provides more limits / more control over changes
• Users are given permissions that limit what they can do with the document
• Users must check-out and check-in documents

®    Would be more beneficial for Mindlink as would prevent potential problems caused by UGC

In this article MindLink was launched as a collaboration system. Briefly discuss the effectiveness of MindLink in terms of communication and content management.

Mindlink is extremely effective in that it is using the right forms of communication and as they seem to be successful, must be using the appropriate content management methods.

• Already using asynchronous communication
• Allows users to communicate at different times, from different places
• i.e. virtual meetings, in particular, their discussion forum

®    this allows for elements of content management and workflow

• Already have version management
• Currently tracks changes and accommodates concurrent work, could be enhanced to version control, just to double security & increase posting authenticity
• Assumption: higher up, more permissions

®    Good idea as incorporates and harnesses knowledge management

User Generated Content

• When users (employees) contribute words, facts & experiences for promotion of a business or its products / services

Benefits

• Employees more likely to trust other employees’ opinions over their superiors
• Increases loyalty to company, product & brand
• Employees more likely to feel a sense of belonging and create ties with company
• More motivated & dedicated workers
• Discussion groups provide advice and assistance

Risks

• Inappropriate or incorrect / false content from ex-employees or rogue employees can be harmful and should be deleted
• Dependency on social network vendor
• Privacy or use restrictions may limit content production or protection
• These all suggest that the company will have to be vigilant in order to protect themselves
• This may increase costs as it could require an employee to constantly manage and maintain the site

As a BRANZ business analyst, use the customer life cycle to explain how a CRM system can address the problem that BRANZ had in relation to its customer service.

The customer life cycle involves the processes of

• Solicitation - attracting the customer (CRM will help to target appropriate customers)
• Lead Tracking – selling (CRM will help to prospect)
• Relationship Management – this needs to be their main area of focus in order to improve their customer service
• Currently they are not able to identify their most valuable customers and are losing out on customer retention
• They need to focus on the loss/churn area in order to differentiate the high-low value customers, win back the high value ones and support and resell to them

As a BRANZ business analyst, you suggest that BRANZ needs to deploy a business intelligence (BI) system. Explain what a BI system is and what each of the various BI tools may contribute to BRANZ’s operations.

Business Intelligence System 

• Process, store and provide useful information to users who need it, when they need it.
• They fulfil a need within the organisation to find useful information amongst a vast sea of business data.

Reporting tools

• used for assessment, structures data into a report. Can be used to:

o   Sort

o   Group

o   Calculate

o   Filter

o   Format

They can use:

• RFM (Recently, frequently, money) to find who their most valuable customers are
• OLAP (online analytical processing ) if they have a data warehouse to create high performance reports of customers

Data mining tools – used to process data using statistical techniques, search for patterns and relationships and make predictions based on the results.

• Unsupervised
• no established model or hypothesis before running analysis
• analysis is created after to explain what was found
• Supervised
• model is developed prior to analysis

Knowledge Management

• The process of creating value from intellectual capital by sharing knowledge amongst employees, managers, customers and those who need it.
• Distinguished from the other tools as the data source is human knowledge
• KM will improve efficiency
• Needs to be recorded as they so many specialists

Phased

• Installing part of the system throughout the whole organisation
• i.e. subsystems of HRIS implemented in sequence
• recruitment system
• performance management system
• first phase big payroll system
• learning management system
• second phase payroll system
• This is best as system can be broken down into distinct separate parts

Pilot

• Install whole system on small part of organisation
• Is applicable but phased is better since bank branches in different areas still need to be highly integrated if customers want to use services in different areas and pilot would have maybe one branch on a different system.

Plunge

• Shut off one system and start the next
• Silly for a bank because if the new system fails, they’re screwed.
• Result in considerable disruption, potential loss of critical information, lose customers

Parallel

• Run both systems (old and new) at same time
• Not suitable as involves extra work and leaves more room for error with double data entry
• Slower process & increased workload

ERP systems are based on formal procedures

• If organisations do not adapt processing to the “blueprint” the system will not operate
• effectively
• correctly

• Is possible to adapt software procedures without “ERP blueprint” but is often
• Expensive
• Problematic

Justification

• In this case, bank is purchasing from a reputable & experienced vendor
• This means they should provide a good blueprint model
• If it is also widely used by other banks, then this shows it provides efficient processes
• All the bank needs to do is determine their current business process and remove any inconsistencies

Outline to the CEO the steps involved in the development of a new system. Especially justify your views of the feasibilities of this software development project.

Systems Development Life Cycle:

1. System definition
• This is where system goals and scope are defined
• Feasibilities are assessed
• Project team formed
• Project is planned
2. Requirement analysis
• Conduct user interviews
• Evaluate existing systems
• Determine new forms/reports/queries
• Identify new app features & functions
• Consider security
• Create data model
• Consider hardware, software, data, procedures and people (all 5 IS components)
3. Component design
• Determine program specifications
• Design database
• Design procedures
• Create job definitions
4. Implementation
• Build system components
• Conduct unit test
• Integrate components
• Conduct integrated test
• Convert to new system
5. System maintenance
• Record requests for change:

oFailures

oEnhancements

• Prioritise requests, fix failures:

oPatches

oService packs

oNew releases

Feasibility

• Cost
• Will initially be expensive but is outweighed by future benefits the new system will bring
• Much more profitable once implemented – will be able to manage inventory better (less storing/handling time in between transferring to customers)
• Schedule
• If new system is able to be made in time, will be beneficial in reducing time holding perishable inventory
• Must be made ASAP as Govt has just brought in new trade agreements, will be competitive advantage if they are first to the market
• Technical
• Since they are employing someone else to this technology is available, just needs to be done quickly
• Organisational
• It is acceptable, if not integral to the org
• Overall is feasible

Given the company’s lack of expertise in IS development and maintenance, put forward a case, including advantages and disadvantages, for outsourcing the software development and computing infrastructure required to implement this project.

Outsourcing

Advantages

• Not really any management advantages applicable due to company’s lack of expertise – no one in company able to do it if not outsourced
• Cost reduction
• Gain part time services
• Gain economies of scale
• Both of these are cheaper for company otherwise they’d have to employ someone fulltime for their services
• Risk reduction
• Improve quality, as opposed to no one currently at the company with the skills
• Reduce implementation risk, again no one at the company knows how to do this

Disadvantages

• Loss of control
• Vendor in driver’s seat
• Product fixes, enhancements in wrong priority
• Benefits outweighed by long term costs
• Paying for someone else’s mismanagement
• May not get what you pay for but don’t know it
• No easy exist
• Critical knowledge in minds of vendors, not employees
• Expensive and risky to change vendors
• All of these lead to the fact that vendor could do anything they want and company would have no idea if right or wrong. Because of this it would be very hard to switch or bring back in house if they wanted to change vendors.

You have been asked to examine user requirements and advise how else the Web site may be set up as a centre for collaboration among the animal health professionals. Justify your choice of technology in terms of the three main collaboration drivers. 

Intro

The three main collaboration drivers are communication, content management and workflow control. By determining which aspects of these three drivers are most applicable to the company (current and where they need to be), we will be able to define the user requirements for the website; thus, resulting in the best choice of technology.

Communication

There are two types of communication; synchronous and asynchronous. Synchronous communication is not applicable to the Animal health net website because it requires to parties communicating at the same time. Therefore, the company should focus on asynchronous communication (being able to communicate effectively at different times and at a single or multiple locations). The company has already made a good decision in creating a discussion forum, as this is a form of asynchronous communication. Other options, if the company wanted to increase channels, include email and surveys. Providing an email link somewhere on the discussion forum for more personal or specialist enquiries could be a beneficial addition.

Content Management

There are three types of content management, each with varying degrees of control. They are as follows; no control (least amount of control), version management (increased amount of control) and version control (high level of control). Depending on how much money the company want to spend and how much control they want to have, I would recommend the company adopt either version management or version control. While version management merely allows changes to the site to be tracked, version control allocates permissions to different users. For example, managers may be allowed to add/delete content, employees may be able to edit and customers may be allowed to ‘read-only’.

Workflow control

There are two types of workflow control, sequential and parallel. Sequential is when each worker contributes one at a time, one after the other. For example, John makes a change to the website, then Mary, then Tom. This is highly inappropriate and unrealistic for a website, as it can be a slow process. I would recommend parallel, where everyone contributes simultaneously, as this gets work done faster. However, it is integral that with parallel workflow, there must be either version management or version control applied. This is because if more than one person is making changes at a given point in time; those changes need to be recorded, in order to know who did what and when.

Conclusion

It is recommended that animal health net use asynchronous communication and version control to manage their content, in conjunction with parallel workflows. Due to these requirements, animal health net should continue to improve their appropriate use of the website (discussion forum), being mindful of these factors, in order to better their outcomes. 

Much of the communication through this veterinary Web portal is likely to be sensitive and confidential in nature. Advise Animal Health NET of likely security threats to this community and justify safeguards that should be employed for each threat you identify.

Sources

Before we analyse potential threats to the animal health net website, we must first consider the sources of these threats in order to determine the most dangerous and likely to occur threats. Sources of potential threats include; human error, malicious activity and natural disaster. The most likely of these threats to occur is human error, followed by malicious activity and then natural disaster.

Threats

Although it is likely that the majority of threats will come from human error, it is not to say that no malicious activity will occur.  While the malicious activity may not be specifically intended for or aimed directly at Animal Health NET, it is still possible for internet virus (worms), Trojan horses or usurpation to occur in the system. Usurpation would be very inconvenient and annoying to occur because it means that an unauthorised system has invaded their website and replacing legitimate parts of it with itself. These are all basic, general forms of malware that can happen to anyone, unless safeguards have been placed against them. Human error related threats are very common and include but are not limited to; procedural mistakes, incorrect procedures and simply, accidents. These can lead to incorrect data modification, faulty service and even denial of service.

Safeguards

Due to the wide variety of threats available to Animal health NET, they should apply technical, data, and human safeguards to prevent the aforementioned problems from occurring. The most important and relevant technical safeguards to put into practice would be firewalls, malware protection and for employees and users to have some sort of identification and authorisation (for when they log in to use the site). Firewalls and malware protection will prevent malicious activity such as viruses from happening. The most important data safeguard is back-up and recovery – this is vital for any IS as if any problem occurs, the site should not have to shut down / no data will be lost. Other possible data safeguards for animal health net to consider include use of passwords and physical security, depending on their budget. The biggest human safeguard in which animal health net MUST do is staff training. The most important component of an IS is the user. If the system is not used correctly, things become problematic. Correct use will prevent, if not reduce, the majority of potential human error.