Information System Management

Introduction

Critical appraisal

In the present world, IT/IS solutions are continually changing the manner in which businesses organize their processes, communicate efficiently with their customers, as well as potential customers and also deliver their services. Essentially, a key factor that ensures the success of a business is in the manner in which it effectively and efficiently aligns its IT/IS support systems to its business strategies, as well as processes. Of importance to note is the fact that the necessity, and desirability of aligning various business needs with IT/IS capabilities have been examined, and as such, its significance has been well recognized.

An alternative IT/IS solution that works for the benefit of business needs is the use of Enterprise 2.0, which is a social software that is significantly utilized in an “enterprise” context. Notably, Mcafee (2006) points out that Enterprise 2.0 provides a wave of various business communication tools that include wikis, group messaging software, as well as blogs, which purpose to create more spontaneous and a knowledge-based collaboration. Of essence, mobile phones do absorb all forms of ICT, as well as computing tools that easily facilitate mobile collaboration in a mobile space and also time (Castells et al., 2006). In this regard, heeks (2002) and (2008) make it clear that businesses are incorporating different stakeholders, in order to assist them developing new collaboration forms and also create a significant gradual innovation in the sector of collaboration technology whilst narrowing down the design-actuality gap.

A specific form of Enterprise 2.0 is branchless banking. Examples of branchless banking include M-PESA in Kenya, EKO in India, and SMART Money in Philippines. For instance in Kenya, a total of 75 per cent of the population is unbanked. M-PESA is technology that uses a mobile phone-based form of money transfer service. The key provider of M-PESA is Vodafon (Safaricom) and it is evident that for the past 5 years, Safaricom is non-Bank led and has received a total of 15M customers (Youtube, 2010). On the other hand, EKO in India serves a total of 67 per cent of the unbanked population. It entails a mobile phone-based form of dialing and it is bank-led. The key provider of EKO is the HDFC Banks, which is a state bank based in India, and also the ICICI Bank. For the past 2 years, EKO has served a total of 20,000 customers in India. Notably, branchless banking by use of mobile banking has enabled customers in any developing country where banks are scarce, to purchase goods whilst the businesses can easily reach the pockets of their customers at any time and profitably by use of enterprise 2.0 technology (Mas, 2011).

Overall, the aims of branchless banking, which business adopt, which in turn aid in providing alternative IT/IS solutions against business needs, thus aiding in bridging potential gaps in business and also aligning IT strategically include the following: First, it pushing the banking system to individuals that are unbanked. Second, it pushes the unbanked individuals to the banking system. Third, it creates a form of a collaborative enterprise and finally, it marshals the web, as well as other ICT applications to the financial-inclusion industry.

Critical evaluation (Effectiveness)

Notably, business requirements entail two perspectives and these include the functional perspective and the business process perspective. In this regard, the functional perspective is concerned with the discrete functions in business and these include accounting, sales, and production among others. All the functional areas of a business determine their core competencies and focus on what they do best. On the other hand, the process perspective is concerned with the manner in which a business organizes and coordinates its works, thus, focuses on the production of a valuable service or product. Notably, the process perspective transcends the boundary between marketing, manufacturing, research, as well as development. For instance, an order-to-cash process that is used in Amazon Company involves the following process accordingly: creating a customer record, checking of credit, creating the order, allocating the stock, picking, packing and shipping of the order, preparing and sending the involve and finally collecting the payment.

The effectiveness of the business requirements are as follows: First, they aid in enhancing effective and efficient organization. In this regard, functionally oriented business are organized into organizational units, to perform particular functions. Notably, the integration of such functions is often undertaken one-level higher in a given organization, and that is away from the required work to be done and this consequently results into good performance. On the other hand, businesses that are process-oriented allow interactions between various functions, for instance in matrix businesses. Owing to the fact that the focus is based on activities that make up a given process, these kind of businesses have a good performance, especially in achieving targets based on the work they have done.

Secondly, business requirements enhance efficient coordination between different departments, especially in a functionally oriented business. This is owing to the fact that the management of departments ought to coordinate the output of all activities that are required of a department. On the other hand, business oriented businesses prioritize coordination of various activities over various organizational functions. This consequently leads to streamlined, as well as efficient workflow. Thirdly, business requirements enhance optimization, in that in an instance where a functionally oriented business optimizes its work, each department in return, optimizes its functions independently and appropriately. This implies that sales do maximize orders that are received whilst production may not manufacture whatever has been ordered, owing to the fact that optimization may have a different outcome. Of importance to note, is the fact that sales and production, when they work together, they purpose to maximize the volume of given orders that are processed via the system. Consequentially, this results into better performance of the business.

Designs and integration techniques involved in business include the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Notably, the ERP evolved in the 1990s from manufacturing requirements planning packages. Integration in this case, is the integration of information flows throughout the business. Integration is linked to ERP, owing to the fact that integration integrates data into integrate applications such as ERP. Putting into consideration the central information repository, the ERP often replace the stand-alone applications. Moreover, on the best practices-based software, it is evident that most ERP vendors purposes to build best practices into the ERP systems by identifying the significant processes that need change, and also provides future updates, which may turn out to be smoother in an instance where the business change their processes to be able to fit with the ERP systems.

ERP installation, specifically the vanilla version is a significant technique, as it contains features, as well as modules that assist the enterprise system. In this regard, businesses are able to rent them from the cloud, yet other processes may not be supported. Moreover, customization is a version that contains the additional software or changes to the vanilla version. Examples of businesses that have been able to use the technique of ERP installation are ExxonMobil, which consolidated 300 different types of IS through implementing SAP R/3. Moreover, Rolls Roys also implemented the ERP, to enable RR to be able to lower its IT costs and to deliver customized cars to customers on time.

Overall, the effectiveness of designs and techniques are that first, they enhance technology improvements by providing common interfaces across various systems, and provide uniform maintenance. Secondly, they aid in enhancing managerial benefits, as they ensure standardizations of various processes thus enhancing better control, and improve financial management, as well as customer services. Thirdly, they bring forth operational benefits, and this has to do with faster transactions by use of common data, and reduction in time and costs. Finally, they enhance organizational benefits as they facilitate organizational communications, and provide an effective use of various organizational databases.

Reflection

Although referred to as systems, it is worth noting that IS in businesses are regarded as tools, which ‘users’ use. The success of IS is often gauged as if it were about acceptance and also usage of a given tool. Essentially, system development is conceived as a conceptualized tool, which purposes to satisfy the information requirements, especially of idealized business processes. Notably, the disappointments experienced in IS, as well as occasional failures are attributed to inadequate involvement of the user and it is evident that the users involved in such projects usually admit difficulty with regards to fully contributing to such kind of technicalities. The balance between systems and systems thinking in IS practice is concerned with tool thinking. In this regard, significant progress in this direction fully recognizes the socio-technical nature of various systems in businesses, thus encouraging richer kinds of systems thinking rather than it is possible in practice. A longer-term effort towards the facilitation of richer systems thinking, especially in the IS field attempts to make a development of a working system method, which is a method of system analysis that business professionals use. Presently, this effort has significantly generated great innovations that have valuable implications for the systems analysis, the IS pedagogy, as well as the development of a knowledge in the field of IS.

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Evaluation

Legal and ethical implications (arising from new technologies in a business setting)

Current research and emerging trends

Critical appraisal of contemporary models and evaluation of methodologies and practices of business process modelling and knowledge management in the context of current research and emerging trends

Conclusion

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References