Strategic Information System of Woolworths-Samples for Students

Question: Discuss about the Strategic Information System Woolworths Limited. Answer: Figure 1: Current organizational structure of Woolworths Limited (Source: Arli et al. 2013, pp-23) The operational problems the company is facing due to this structure Due to the organizational structure currently the company is facing a major challenge that is affecting the revenue model of the company. With the help of new cloud contact centre and platform the company is willing to change and develop their existing organizational structure. The main operation level challenge that Woolworths Limited is facing is improper digital business platform (Wang and Tan 2015). The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) approach that Woolworths Limited utilizing is not at all appreciable from both the consumers and business perspectives. The customers of Woolworths fail to interact with their owners due to improper CRM (Rose, Hawryszkiewycz and Kang 2015). On the other hand, the company do not use open communication approaches and for this reason the employees do not feel free to interact with the higher authority to share their point of views. Again due to the external environmental condition the growth strategy of Woolworths Limited is getting highly affected by their competitors. For promoting and giving competition to some companies Woolworths has raise some of the product prices (Bailey 2017). The growth of Woolworths Limited is affecting due to the governmental intervention. The company failed to adopt proper protection data storage mechanisms and for lack of security, they are losing many consumers throughout Australia. The most likely system acquisition method used by Woolworths Limited In order to reduce the identified issues different issue mitigation technologies and mechanisms are available in the market however based on the type of business the management authority is required to adopt the most suitable application (Klettner, Clarke and Boersma 2014). The identifies options are commercial software, customer software and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) However the company has implemented SAP ERP for managing huge amount of data with a higher security mechanism. Though, besides the ERP, for establishing accurate interaction between the consumers and service providers for Woolworths Limited it is necessary to adopt the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. After analyzing the current market situation of Woolworth Limited it has been found that the company is facing major challenges due to lack of proper managerial operation. As day by day the numbers of consumers are increasing thus it is becoming very difficult to manage large set of information manually (Mertens, et al. 2016). In order to mitigate the traditional data management issues the company has adopted ERP system. With SAP ERP it has gained huge and secured information storage. The SAP ERP helps to increase the flexibility and application suitable customer solution for their consumers. Not only will this but also for the industry specific modules the users be able to gain highly integrated solution. The overall cost for sales processing got diminished after the adoption of SAP ERP. Even the time for calculating the selling price also reduced and the onetime event in terms of increased cash flow is another advantage that the company has gained after the adoption of SAP ERP. The order delivery time and the invoice processing time are also reduced for the ERP (Das Nair and Dube 2017). The timely information processing reduces the payment processing time. Even the huge array module with large spectrum of functionalities fails to provide other ERP application but this SAP software is able to provide all the application requirements. Description and preparation of system flowchart of the sales procedure of the company Figure 2: System flowchart for Woolworths Limited (Source: created by author) According to the above diagram, the sales processing approach of Woolworths Limited is maintaining every general factor. The process starts with consumer data gathering and ends up with either successful or unsuccessful sales (Bailey 2017). If the sales opportunities are utilized properly then the sale will be unsuccessful which is not even beneficial to the consumers and not even profitable to the business owners. However in order to gain measurable success from the competitive market it is necessary to understand every individual aspects of the sales flowchart developed for Woolworth Limited. Identification of the control problem of the system It has been found that different kinds of challenges risks are associated in the system and those might face possible frauds. Due to fraud the revenue model of the company will also be affected. Though ERP is one of the most widely used technical solution for any business organization but proper management and control of the system is needed to achieve the accurate outcome (Yigitbasioglu, Mackenzie and Low 2013). The components those are associated to ERP solution include business intelligence, CRM, financial management, manufacturing and distribution. Due to negative outcome of the company the revenue structure of the company will be affected very badly (Madurapperuma 2015). The ERP systems are basically resides over multiple numbers of computers thus challenges might occur regarding optimum coordination between the systems. Improper online reporting could negatively impact the data reliability and availability. Another technical complexity of the system is incorrect configuration. In order to combat this issue proper cross field checking and alternative data viewing approaches are required to be adopted and at the same time certain data storage security mechanism should be adopted to minimize the rate of data hacking (Ma 2015). Again, through online data processing the data transaction will be done in a balanced manner and at the same time the demand for data validation could be served properly. Development and adoption of accounting software package Data management is referred to as one of the most frequently raised issues that are continuously affecting the revenue model of any business organization. In order to mitigate the data management oriented issues it is necessary to adopt proper accounting software package considering the business type (Ma 2015). It provides effective platform to the consumers through the help of internet services with a fees on monthly or yearly basis in spite of high IT maintenance cost, IT infrastructure, purchasing expensive. The employees who are working for the organization will be able to work on the organizational content through the help of the cloud accounting using different kinds of devices (Steele, Smith and Steele 2015). Different issues might occur during the data processing period and these roadblocks could be completely eliminated with the help of accounting software package. More than 1000 companies are currently using the MYOB accounting software for managing and arranging their data in an organized manner. The users of the accounting software packages will be able to access information regardless of any location and time as well (Wang and Tan 2015). For effective financial management, also the business organizations are relied on accounting packages. It helps to automate the manual data processing with advanced design control approaches by detecting and eliminating different kinds of redundancy errors (Rose, Hawryszkiewycz and Kang 2015). A solid budget could be completely exhausted with hardware, accounting fees and operating system. The current market size It has been found that there are many accounting software package providers in Australia however, based on the business types the software are selected by the management authorities of the organizations. The effective implementation of MYOB is referred to as one of the planned processes. MYOB also serves trail version for the companies to communication and data migration (Daru 2015). MYOB is able to provide proper return to Australia security exchange. Based on initial share price, the business of MYOB is worth a more than of $2.5billion. However, just after the opening of the company it will be able to provide $3.90. MYOB claims many products and services throughout Australia to more than 1.2 million of people (Ng, Harrison and Akroyd 2013). The initial value of share price $3.65 is being increased up to $800 million over only 2 to 3 years. Identification of the leaders that gives competitive advantages There are different business organizations that are using the different accounting software packages based on their products and services. Many accounting software providers are there such as Xero, Saasu, QuickBooks etc (Madurapperuma 2015). Most of the medium and small business organizations use the accounting software packages for managing the organizational information with reduced error. However, Xero is the biggest competitor to MYOB. Factors MYOB XERO Setup and access The accounting software package services their services through online application. Xero also provides online services to their consumers and the trial version is very much helpful. Affordability The subscription charged by MYOB is between $29 and $65 and based on the operational management the subscriptions are selected by the organizations. According to the offered subscription Xero charges $19, $49 $64 per month. However, for the small and medium business, Xero offers the subscription of $49. Accessibility On the other hand, MYOB provides live account access to the users. The premium software allows more than 50 users to access the server at a time without any kind of error (Culley et al. 2017). The users of Xero allow the users to access the server through login details. Security MYOB serves proper commitment to secure data from the external attackers. None of the unauthenticated users are able to access data from the server without proper permission. No such data security issues are determined with Xero. With the help of SSL certificates each data are secured from the external attacks. It has proper encryption keys to protect data from the external attackers. Data backup MYOB provides proper data backup. It allows the users to create backup facility so that if any kind of disaster took place, the company could be able to retrieve data from the backup server. Due to the stringent backup policy no such data backup practices are available in case of Xero. However offsite backup approaches are available in Xero. Identification of current gaps and challenges encountered by e users of the accounting software After analyzing the services and practices served by MYOB it has been found that, different issues are associated to it those are completely required to be mitigated (Madurapperuma 2015). The gaps or challenges encountered by the user of MYOB accounting software packages are as follows: Security issues: Security is referred to as one of the most important factors that are strictly required to be considered by the company who are adopting accounting software package for data management (Ng, Harrison and Akroyd 2013). Sometimes the online contents are found to be vulnerable enough thus those could be accessed or hijacked by the external attackers very easily. Utilization: Another risk associated to online accounting software is its utilization. The system architecture is very much complex and due to this reason the system is not that much user friendly (Steele, Smith and Steele 2015). In order to avoid the user level complexity the users are unable to apply the functions and operation properly. Relevant recommendation In order to mitigate the challenges proper relevant recommendations are required to be served. The recommendations are as follows: Training and development: Proper training and development are required to be arranged by the management authority of the organizations. Security: Encryption and firewall should be developed to mitigate the operational and functional issues. Conclusion The chances of data fraud and theft also keep on increasing after the utilization of accounting software packages. In order to create proper relationship between the consumers and the service providers it is necessary to identify and resolve the issues. Due to high level security in terms of encryption technology, unauthorized users will not be able access information stored in the data server. A much serious competitive advantage could be gained with the help of accounting software package. The company named as Woolworths Limited uses MYOB accounting software package for managing their employee and customer data References Arli, V., Dylke, S., Burgess, R., Campus, R. and Soldo, E., 2013. 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