Perks of using Information System

Question: Discuss about the Perks of using Information System. Answer: Introduction Woolworths is an Australian based super market which has been running smoothly for over many years. In this course of time, the organization has seen many ups and downs and with passing time, the company has also managed to adapt to the new technologies in order to stay in the market and reduce any competition. Also the company has installed many forms of information system which has really helped the company to analyze the market as well as the customers so that they can work accordingly. Understanding the market can help them in making better decisions and analyzing the customer can help in keeping the right products for the right prices so that customers come every time. The following report discusses about the perks of using information system and how they can help an organization (Woolworths) to rise in the market and keep up to the expectation of the customers. 1. Industry and company profile a) Background of Woolworths Woolworths was in the year 1942. Previously it was named as Wallworths Bazaar Ltd. After few days the company again changed its name to Woolworths Ltd. The company generally gained attention when it showcased its Bargain Basement for the first time in Imperial Arcade. Due to its less popularity, many shareholders did not want to invest their money on this company speculating about its future. However with every passing day, the trading continued and the company started to gain from it ("Woolworths Supermarket - Buy Groceries Online", 2017). After seeing this gain, the shareholders started to bring more capital and the companys dividends paid by the company jumped from five percent to w whooping fifty percent after its third year of operation. Consumers started to recognize the company short after it started to open more branches of the store across Australia. It started selling variety of goods and claimed that they got the cheapest prices of all the market around. In the year 1926, it set a landmark when it installed the first receipt printing cash register as it was a first variety store to install such a thing. Nearly after twenty years in the market, it finally succeeded to launch store in every state of Australia ("Woolworths Supermarket - Buy Groceries Online", 2017). After expanding their business to nearly every state, the company started to keep a stock of fresh fruits and vegetables and also has a large range of foods. In the year 2017, approximately all the supermarkets under Woolworths changed their logo to green apple but there are still some supermarkets that still uses the old logo. b) Business Strategies used by Woolworths currently In order to stay in the business, the organization provided many lucrative offers such as it provided many loyalty schemes under which the user will be rewarded based on their purchase which includes petrol stations where the user will get a discount on purchase (Navimipour et al., 2015). Also it provided rewards to the users who made their transactions using Woolworths Rewards cards. This allowed users to use these cards in order to get rewards point which can be used for various purposes. 2. Information Technology Information Technology or IT is basically the use of any system for storage of data, networking and other physical devices and which helps in exchanging of data in the form of electronic data. Information Technology is very much important for any firm or organization as this can provide security, unlimited storage and also helps a company to analyze the market more properly so that they can know what strategies to made in order to counterpart their competitors. a) IT strategy and its advantages for the Woolworth Woolworths used the information system in order to get the things in their favor. Initially they used the social media platform so that they can promote their company. Many people visited this site and by this they got a lot of attention (Peteraf, Gamble Thompson Jr, 2014). Strategies included a making of dedicated facebook page on behalf of the company where people could post their queries and it would get answered by the officials. This also helped the company to build the customer relationships stronger (Paul, 2014). Keeping in touch with the customers really helped them to grow their user base. Also they made the website very much interactive and are full of information which invited more and more people to shop (George, Haas Pentland, 2014). Another strategy that can apply is that they launched a dedicated application for shopping which even made the shopping easier as it included more security. Advantages of using the information system is that they can analyze all their customers and based on their interest the application can recommend them based on their recent searches. Another advantage of using the information system is that it can help in saving all the credentials of the users so that they can log in back to the application. Also using the information system can help the company to analyze the market and make much better decisions (George, Haas Pentland, 2014). Also with the help of information system they are providing top of the class security to their users b) In depth analysis of the Information System used by Woolworths Woolworths is using the Big Data technology to control the overall. There are many advantages of using Big Data. With the help of Big Data, the company can store huge amount of data in their database and analyze them at a time which makes the processing time much less and saves the time too. The security that is offered by Big Data is also quit strong and cannot be easily breached which helps in securing the data (Gollenia, 2016). With the help of Big Data, the information that is stored is not contiguous rather it is scattered which also ensures the safety of the information that everything will not get lost and this also gives the facility to retrieve the data anytime the organization need. Beside Big Data, the organization also use CRM or Customer Relationship Model which aims in analyzing the customer based on their interactions and data throughput of the customers (Hashem et al., 2015). It also helps in improving the business relationships with the customers and also helps in gr owing the sales growth. CRM also helps in storing the personal information, their purchase history; recommendation based on their buying preferences and also counts their concerns. With the help of Big Data, the company can operate its daily business process as with big data, information can be stored and analyzed on the daily basis. This can also help the company to gain competitive advantages over other as better decisions can be made with the help of Big Data which will definitely help the company grow more (Gollenia, 2016). In their application, artificial intelligence is also incorporated as without the help of artificial intelligence, it would be difficult to track every individuals personal preference and give recommendations to them. Beside all these, the company also uses the Accounting Information System, Management Information System, Marketing Information System, Human Resource Management System and many others (Hashem et al., 2015). c) Information System used in each level of Woolworths The company has installed many forms of information system which helps it to work smoothly all around and help in doing everyday tasks without any problems. The four main areas of the company that uses the information system are listed below. The Human Resource Department or HR uses the Human Resource Management System (HRMS). It is basically an amalgam of two different types of software namely human resource and information technology through HR software (Helo et al., 2014). With the help of this application, activities in HR occur electronically. In case of marketing, the company uses Marketing Information System which is a permanent arrangement which gives provision to the regular availability of information in a timely manner and the information that is being supplied is also reliable, relevant and adequate which helps in making better marketing decisions. With the help of Marketing Information System, changing needs of customers are also managed in a proper way (Hashem et al., 2015). This also helps in changing distribution practices and many more. For the Finance Department, the company uses the Accounting System Information or AIS that helps in accumulating and analyzing financial data so that the collected data can be used accountants or consultants or business analyst or the managers. AIS help in achieving the highest accuracy when it comes to handle big data (Tao et al., 2014). This keeps the data intact and secure as well as the person with authorization can access these data. For the System Administrator part, the company uses Management Information System which is basically a computerized database of programs which helps in producing regular reports on operations for every level of the management in the company. The work of the System Administrator is to see if all the systems are working correctly and performing up to its mark. This can also help monitoring the data of the company as a whole (Mayer-Schnberger Cukier, 2013). The information that is displayed by the MIS can help to see the actual data against the planned results. d) Information System to be installed or outsource it There are advantages and disadvantages of getting an information system installed within the company or to outsource them. Advantages of installing an information system internally is that the company will have full access control of the database and can be monitored by the company whenever possible (Helo et al., 2014). Disadvantages of installing the information system internally is that if there is any update to the system, the company need to set up the whole information from the beginning which will require time as well as all the previous installation records will be removed (Marz Warren, 2015). The advantages of outsourcing the information system is that the update will be installed by the service providers and the company need not to take any headache for it. Disadvantage of outsourcing is that the data will be out in the wild and anyone can access it (Asatiani et al., 2014). For the following mentioned reasons, the company should outsource information system as this will sav e time and it offers better security to the information too. e) Companys success due to Information System With the help of information system, the company can analyze the market and this can help them in making better decisions which will benefit the company in the long run. Also with this, the company can get to know more than their competitors and this can help them in making much better innovation (Jagadish et al., 2014). The information system can also help in providing the better security which can protect their data from any external forces. Information system also helps them in analyzing their customers behavior based on which they can make recommendations (Chen Zhang, 2014). The feature is present in the application as well as the website where after sign in up, based on the users search, the system will automatically give suggestions and recommendations to the users so that it can help them to navigate through all the products and they can also get their products nearby rather than searching manually. Big Data can also help in analyzing the customers behavior that what are they buying the most and giving discounts on that particular product which will increase the sale as well as the revenue (Larose, 2014). f) Role of CIO and the power of CIO CIO or Chief Information Officer is a job title which is basically given to a person in an enterprise who is in charge of information technology strategy and also manages the computer system that is required to support the goals for the enterprise. Nowadays the data that are collected by any firms are not processed under the department of IT professionals rather is distributed among enterprise (Provost Fawcett, 2013). Role of CIO is to point out how to make the architecture and network of the company much better and also to keep in mind that the network structure should have end-to-end encryption. CIO is responsible for overseeing IT systems and also helps in managing IT services (Swan, 2013). The task requires the ability to re-engineer business processes so that the company can take advantages of new platforms. Decisions taken by the CIO is mostly related to the information system that is what new can be done in order to analyze the market and how it can be made better. The CIO is also responsible to make necessary changes that are required by the company in order to stay ahead in the business (Paul, 2014). Authority of a CIO is to control what new systems are to be installed and how they are managed. It has also got the authority of data that who can view these data and how many other employees can view (Paul, 2014). The CIO can set up different strategies for different reasons based on the requirements. She/he is responsible to check all the systems and also check if the data is getting lost or not. He/she also manages the whole information system that what new systems can be installed in order to improve the productivity and efficiency. Using Data Mining to increase the revenues There are many advantages of using data mining and business firms are gradually getting this idea. Business firms are using data mining in order to increase the sales and revenues. Data mining can be used for sales forecasting that is with the help of data mining, business can analyze or predict the behavioral characteristics of the customers which can definitely help them in predicting the future. In this way complimentary products can be given to the customers so that they come again and buy that product. Another use data mining is that it can be used for merchandise planning that is with data mining, companies can get to know about the right stocking. This also include in selecting the right product for the right price. This is only possible through data base. Third thing is that creating Marketing strategies that is with data mining, companies can easily understand the market which can help them in making better decisions for marketing (Wu et al.,2014). Another way to boost the r evenues using data mining is by creating customer relationship management that with data mining, it can be used to analyze the customers and based on their preferences, products should be made available. Conclusion From the above report it can be concluded that information system can be very much useful as this can help a company to analyze the market more efficiently and also can help in understanding the customers need and help in maintaining good relationships with the customers. Big Data and CRM are very much useful for any company as they can offer security and processing of data is also quite fast. With the help of these technologies, companies can increase their revenues also. Having information system gives an edge over other competitors which help them to stay in the market. Human Resource Management System can help the company to manage all issues within the organization in a more effective way. Also Marketing Information System and Accounting System Information both can be used to analyze the market and make plans according to the budget that the company proposed. Also applying new strategies can help the company to make a mark for itself and it will gain more reorganization within i ts area. They can analyze the data as well as the peoples information so that they can provide the best suitable products for the people based on their interest.