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Abstract 摘要
在一个高竞争性和全球化的商业环境中，开发企业信息系统（BIS）是必要的任何一家公司，以提高其在市场营销能力。公司理查德·肖企业（RSE）在这份报告中分析作为研究案例。我们分析了RSE PLC业务并发现了一些存在的问题。举例来说，其市场部未能吸引海外客户;其人力资源管理部门的信息不一致。针对这些问题，我们建议开发一种新的BIS系统的新战略，我们希望现有的商业化软件EPR合并成国际结算银行。此外，我们提供此战略的实施方法。后来，它的优点和局限性也进行了评估。尽管这种策略，在一定程度上，会增加运行成本的公司，它会增加生产效率，并降低它的维护成本，从而提高了公司在市场竞争力。
In a high-competitive and globalized business environment, developing a Business Information System (BIS) is necessary for any company to improve its competence in marketing. In this report the company Richard Shaw Enterprises (RSE) is analyzed as a case study. We analyzed RSE plc business and found some existing problems. For instance, its Marketing Division failed to attract overseas customers; its HR department information is inconsistent. Aiming for these problems, we propose a new strategy to develop a new BIS system and we would like to combine the available commercialized EPR software into this BIS. Moreover, we provide the implementation methods for this strategy. Later on, its benefits and limitations also are evaluated. Although this strategy, to some extent, will increase the cost of the operation for the company, it will increase the productivity and reduce its maintenance costs, thereby improving the company’s competence in the marketing.
Chapter 1: Introduction 介绍
Nowadays globalization and collaboration in business have become new driving forces in the competitive arena. To remain competence, companies are investing in modern information systems like Business Information System (BIS) software to integrate the different functional areas of the business and provide consistent real-time data for fast decision making. BIS is a system to collect, storage, process, and disseminate the business information and data (Bocij and Hickie 2008; Curtis and Cobham 2008). As an important commercial bridge between business demands and information technology, it has been a key role to promote the company’s global competence by leveraging the capabilities of modern information and communication technologies (ICT). Companies can use a BIS to provide the highest quality products and services at affordable price and top-rated customer services, and help to enter new markets through e-commerce. Fig.1 depicts the relationship between information systems and technology, organization and management in a business. It can be seen from Fig.1 that the information system is located the center of these components and it interacts with other components.
Chapter 2: Problem Analysis for Richard Shaw Enterprises 问题分析理查德·肖企业
In this report, we are aimed to propose a new BIS strategy for Richard Shaw Enterprises (RSE). Established in 1994 by Mr. Richard Shaw, RSE plc has an honorable history. In 2000, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) awarded the owner Richard Shaw Businessman of the Year. This company went the list of UK Stock Exchange in 2006. Currently RSE plc totally has four offices, respectively at Maidstone (Kent), Rome, Paris and Lagos, Nigeria. To promote the RSE plc business, people suggested expanding its business organization by targeting overseas customers. However, after carefully investigating the scenarios from the Intelligence Report, we find several problems as follows in this company:
1. The Marketing Division failed to attract overseas customers and target a suitable level of customers and to meet its performance standards. They even did not clearly know what these performance standards were.
2. The existing hierarchical organization structure in the company made the heads of the divisions to undertake few responsibilities, thereby making the management less effective.
3. Currently two main trading methods in RSE plc are overlapped in certain areas: one includes the buying, selling and fitting of shop fixtures and fittings, while another involves the auctioning of bankrupt office equipment and fixtures in Kent.
4. The computerization level in RSE plc business is relative low. Its computerized system only is limited to some areas and has not been integrated fully in the organization. Most areas of the organization do not benefit from the ICT and still rely on old manual systems and procedures. These manual processes may lead to human errors and has low efficiency.
5. The employees’ usage and understanding of ICT within the business organization is limited. They cannot completely utilize current information system.
6. The establishment of an organizational newsletter was proposed to help to integrate all international divisions and inform its overall business strategy within RSE plc. But the RSE plc has not decided the details on this news letter. For example, RSE plc has many questions regard to the following items:
Delivery dates and times for overseas divisions.
Work scheduling details.
Staff scheduling and task changes.
Reporting structures.
7. The Human Resources System in RSE plc is not completely united. HR mangers often find the dissemination of information among branch offices. Moreover, the major applications of information systems that support human resource management shall include but be not limited to: record and track human resources in the company, train and develop employees, analyze and plan the compensation for employees, establish a liaison with the government.
8. Telecommunications between international branch offices of RSE plc is neither smooth nor easy. RSE plc has three branch locations in Europe and one in African. Its central office in Maidstone has only 35 members of staff and all the other staff (500 at present) working in the various sites around the world. The information communication among these offices is poor. For example, the personnel office currently finds it very difficult to arrange meetings with other groups as the central office did not normally keep information about holidays and the exception of breaks of other offices.
9. At present RSE plc has no e-business system to promote its product sales and marketing.
Hence, they cannot obtain the customers’ information and help product managers plan and control the performances of specific products, product lines, and brands. Therefore, a customer relationship management (CRM) system needs to establish to promote the customer satisfaction for RSE plc products.
The problems 3-9 come from the current unproductive BIS in RSE plc directly and can be resolved by establishing or optimizing a BIS in the company. Here the BIS includes a variety of information systems such as transaction processing systems, management information systems #p#分页标题#e#and decision support systems. The question 1 and 2 are not directly related to the BIS, but can be also resolved with the help of the results obtained from a new BIS.
Chapter 3: New Strategy of RSE plc BIS RSE PLC双新战略
In the Mcfarlan’s Strategic Grid, the strategic has high strategic importance of planned IS and strategic importance of current IS, so we should focus on the strategy (Cash 1998). In the light of the aforementioned analysis, we will propose a new strategy of BIS to promote the RSE plc’s business.
3.1 Objective
The objective of the new strategy is to develop a new BIS in RSE plc to effectively and
efficiently process, retrieve and store the company’s transactions and inventory information for better management for the company. With the new BIS, we want to improve productivity of the RSE plc operation.
3.2 Proposed New Strategy
Fig. 3 Structure of the production process and the BIS
First, from the previous problem description, we find that the main problem for RSE plc lies in its unproductive BIS within the company. We propose a BIS shown in Fig.3. The BIS
should be located the center of all operations of the company. The RSE plc’s operations include the Research & Development, production, marketing and sales and customer service. The input for the operation may be some ideas, and raw materials for manufacturing process, but the output is the products. In the whole process, each step shall keep exchanging the information to other divisions such as company infrastructure, material management, and human resources via the BIS. Therefore, the BIS is the center of this structure in this organization. Once a product is sold to the customers, the customer services division can get feedback from customers or customers can directly submit their suggestions to BIS system. The response from the customers can be analyzed and further be distributed to other divisions in RSE plc.
Especially, in the design of the BIS strategies we focus on
Building up a new whole BIS system to implement information communication in the company.
Providing training on IT technology for all employees and let them know how to use the new information system.
Fig. 4 The Functions of CRM (Yeung 2013)
Second, we would like to combine the available commercialized CRM software into this BIS (Balaram and Adhikari 2010, Piskar & Faganel 2009,Timothy 2006, Zeng,2003)
Shown in Fig. 3, a CRM system cycle includes nine steps: sales automation, marketing automation, customers support, employee support, defect tracking, knowledge management, API and Web services, CRM portals, order processing. But it should be noted that ERP concentrates on the operation of the interior environment of the enterprise, while our BIS has a broader application range which contains the outside environment such as the market data analysis.
Third, we want to add a feedback loop to connect the low level employees and customers with the high end executives to promote the information flow and enhance the response speed for the fast change market. This part can be combined into the CRM system.
3.4 Implementation
To achieve our goal, following the strategies addressed in the previous graph, we want to propose some implementation methods as follows
The IT division will firstly investigate the current hardware status within the company, including desktops, servers, laptops, and smart phones. We will collect this information and decide to how to update all hardware if possible.
For BIS system, we use Nolan’s growth model to describe the process of BIS system proposed in this paper (Nonna 1973; Nonna 1979; Gottschalk 2003). This producer includes several steps as below:
(1) Initiation. First, use some applications within an organisation.
(2)Contagion. At this phase, broadly use applications.
(3)Control. At this stage, introduce plan, methodologies and expenditure control.
(4)Integration. At this step, use database, and enterprise resource planning system, and control to improve this stage.
(5)Data administration. At this step, introduce the database and documents to help data administration.
(6)Maturity. At this step, information systems are put in place that reflects the real information needs of the organisation.
For CRM system, we would choose Microsoft Dynamics CRM system. This CRM system is developed by Microsoft. It is .Net based platform, and can be used in the RSE plc.
In addition to the CRM system, PEC shall establish an e-business system (Sheilds 2005).
This e-business system will provide the information about our products on the web pages and payment for customers. Once customers are satisfied with some products online, theycan buy them online. The system can get the payment information automatically and forward to the delivery divisions immediately and customer service divisions. Moreover, this system should have three versions, IOS, Android and webpage respectively corresponding to mobile phone and PC systems.
In addition, CRM system should have big data analysis for the customers. All customers’ information, such as their credits, contact, address, and their favored products, will be restored for intelligent system. The system can automatically send out emails to recommend for customers when there are some new products or the company is in sales season. In basis of sales information, the system can do intelligent analysis such as provide the information like what is the best popular product for this area. Even this system can predict the sales and help the product and operation division adjust their services in time.
The IT division will know the usage circumstance of the current management information system. Then, the IT division will discuss with the each division as for the requirement and roadmap of a new BIS system. The new BIS will include a telephone and message function (such as Skype) and email function for all employees in this company, illustrated in Fig. 4. Especially, the BIS has some features as follows: the interface can address the status and physical location of any employee in the company. For instance, once one employee opens the software to send one email to his colleague named Carl. When he types name Carl, he just moves his computer mouse above the name Carl, the system will display the related information of Carl, such as Carl’s location, division, and telephone number. So the employee can know whether Carl is available and what the local time he is in. It will easy for any employee to set up a meeting and the current complaint about #p#分页标题#e#difficulty of setting up a meeting will not exist.
The background information for each employee, such as personal email, employment history, will be uploaded to a united database stored in a cloud server and with different levels in management. The HR can visit the whole data base under his/her authorized level. Since all information is stored at a same data base, there is no any question for the inconsistent in the information of employee for different mangers.
Establish a hotline and email system for the all employee so that they can report to the
heads of the divisions. Publicizing related policies to let them undertake their
responsibilities, thereby making the management more effective.
Provide training courses for all employees. In light of their job duties, the company will provide them some suitable courses from using software and internet to internet security. These courses can be online or in class. The training courses will guide and let them know the BIS help them save time.
Last, in basis of obtained information, it can easy to answer the aforementioned question 1 in Chapter 2 and help Marketing Division issue the performance standards.
Chapter 4: The Benefits and Limitations of New BIS 新国际清算银行的利益和局限性
Many researchers have discussed the benefits of implementing a BIS (Milind 2009; Turban, and Wetherbe 2007; Waman 2007). According to Milind (2009:92), the integration of an information system can ensure efficiencies and effectiveness of operations and help the company identify its strengths and weaknesses. Apparently, the new strategies have some disadvantages and advantages for RSE plc:
First, as we propose in the strategy, we need to buy some hardware and software such as computers and smart phones to build the infrastructure of the BIS. This means we will increase the cost of the operation for the company.
Second, the Human Resource Managers have to recruit more technology employees and change some old staff who may not be able to learn the new system. Therefore, this will also increase the operation cost for the company.
Third, all employees have to take some training courses, which will take them some times and cost the company some money.
However, at the same time implementing the new strategy can benefit the company at the following aspects.
At the first place, the new BIS can optimize the whole operation in the business. The communication between the different offices can be smooth and easy and data can be better integrated. Therefore, it will increase the productivity of the business and reduce maintenance costs.
Second, the e-business can incite the sales of customers purchase and then the sales will increase. And online payment will bring the customers better purchase experience. For example, if we can see all of the customer's contact information and service records, product sales, financial recording and analysis. Then this information can help us to provide better services for customers.
Third, the BIS can widen the planning horizons and reduce implementation costs and inventory levels. The data from the e-business can help the company make a plan and determine their choices.
Nevertheless, since RSE plc operates in a global environment, it is important that the firm embraces new market trends in the external environment so as to remain competence in the business. This new strategy can help to manufacture better products, promote the sales of products, and increase its productivity.
Chapter 5: Conclusions 总结
In a high-competitive and globalized business environment, developing a BIS is necessary for any company to improve its competence in marketing. Currently, RSE plc has many problems in its BIS system and management.
In this report, we first analyzed the problems existing in the RSE plc. For example, its Marketing Division failed to attract overseas customers; its HR department information is inconsistent. In addition, the existing hierarchical organization structure in the company made the heads of the divisions to undertake few responsibilities, thereby making the management less effective. Aiming for these problems, we proposed a new strategy to develop a new BIS system and we would like to combine the available commercialized EPR software into this BIS. Moreover, we put forward the implementation methods for this strategy. We proposed to build an ERP system in three phases and ERP system should have big data analysis for the customers.
We also suggested update the hardware of this company and providing training courses for all employees. Later on, its benefits and limitations also are evaluated.
Although this strategy will increase the cost of the operation for the company, it will increase the productivity and reduce its maintenance costs, thereby improving the company’s competence in the marketing.
Chapter 6: References 文献
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Gottschalk, Petter (2002). "Toward a Model of Growth Stages for Knowledge Management Technology in Law Firms". Informing Science 5.
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