Strategic Information Systems Assignment on Foodland SA
Question
TaskIn groups of three or four, you will be required to conduct research on Information Systems for your client. Your team is required to pick a case company in one of the areas mentioned below (not limited to). Develop a proposal for a new information system for your client (NOT more than 3,500 words) detailing the requirements listed below. The proposal will help your client to make informed decision for investment in information system and to take their business to the next level.
Identify the company’s critical success factors and primary objectives. What types of information might be helpful in evaluating these objectives? Create a mission statement that would be appropriate for your client business
Develop a formal organizational chart based on the information given.
Analyse the current system and identify specific control weaknesses that must be addressed by a new, improved system. As part of your analysis, prepare a document flowchart and a data flow diagram of the current system
Describe the primary features of this new system and explain why this is the best solution for your client to pursue. Discuss the relevance of such advanced technologies as MRP, MRPII, and EDI as information system options.
The proposal should also contain the following items:
- A description of the technology platform for the system.
- A list of financial and nonfinancial data attributes for each entity in the ER diagram.
- Four user views, which can be source documents or management reports. At least one view should support the needs of a non-accounting user.
- Examine potential security risks, data breaches and provide discussion of the appropriate accounting controls for the new system.
Answer
Introduction
Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP) is crucial in helping organizations to identify the areas of improvement through strategic applications and thereby, align the organizational strategy with an effective Information System in order to achieve the company’s objectives. Strategic information system planning is an integral part of an organization’s success in business. In this context, IT (Information Technology) plays a major role in developing the organization’s strategy. In the modern technology-driven world, organizations are in more and more pressure to leverage technology assets (Robson, 2015). As a result, the importance of SISP in integrating the long-range use of applications has become the most essential aspect of organizational strategy.
In this Strategic Information Systems Assignment, a particular organization will be chosen in order to assess the information systems used by that company presently. Thereby, this Strategic Information Systems Assignment will focus on the specific weaknesses of the present information system and recommend a strategic information system that helps to overcome the identified issues. This Strategic Information Systems Assignment will propose a new and improved information system for this purpose, which in turn will allow the chosen organization in making better-informed decisions to take their business to the next level.
In order to conduct the research following the above-mentioned approach, the Australian company Foodland SA has been chosen. Foodland SA is an Australian supermarket brand that mainly sells groceries, food, and drinks. It has stores in over 120 locations, each of which are independently owned and operated. Founded in 1962, Foodland SA is headquartered in Flinders Park in South Australia. The company focuses on selling local products to support the local community in South Australia. The major operators of the brand are Drake Supermarkets and Romeo’s Retail Group.
Critical success factors of Foodland SA: The critical success factors of Foodland SA are as follows:
Marketing and distribution channel: The Company’s market policy and strategy plays a major role in attracting customers and providing good conveniences. Innovative marketing and merchandising help retain customer loyalty. Other supporting facilities helping the business to move closer to the customers is another key success factor.
Range of choice: The range and availability of products is one of the key drivers in retail markets. Offering innovative merchandise at reasonable prices is a critical success factor for Foodland SA.
High customer satisfaction: Foodland SA focuses on high customer satisfaction by introducing various measures to improve customer experience and services.
Primary objectives of Foodland SA
The primary objective of Foodland is to provide fresh and local food and grocery products to the customers in South Australia. The company mainly focuses on serving the local community with variety of foods and personalized services. The main distinguishable characteristic of Foodland SA is to produce food in the home state of South Australia and not include imports.
Recommended Information System for Foodland SA
Foodland SA can upgrade their information system to include an online web-based grocery store. By implementing a web-based platform to sell fresh foods and groceries to the local community, Foodland will ensure greater competitive advantage in the market place. The web-based information system can further improve customer satisfaction with 24x7 hours of availability of services, customer support, and care. It can significantly save the time and efforts of the customers in searching for products. Moreover, it will increase the customer base by attracting more customers to shop for grocery online (Stallings et al. 2012). It will be helpful in building trust relationship with the customer with state of the art and advanced customer support available online. It will automate the basic purchase and selling operations. Manual processes will be automated, thus, reducing the cost and time of operations. This, the web-based information system will increase Foodland’s competitive advantage and take the business to the next level. The information system will allow customers to register as a member in order to order foods, drinks, and groceries from the web-based platform. Then, the order products will be delivered at the given address within few hours. The information system will have administration functionalities for managing the products and categories. A virtual shopping cart and a payment gateway will be implemented within the system offering alternative methods of purchasing online such as credit card or debit card payments, net banking, cash on delivery, e-wallet etc.
Mission Statement for Foodland SA
The mission statement recommended for Foodland in perspective of the proposed web-based information system (WIS) is to eliminate the drudgery of shopping, and facilitating a relaxed, and easy way to the customers to browse through and shop for their desired products. In addition, the mission statement should include best quality products, on-time delivery, and high-level customer support mechanisms.
Organizational chart of Foodland SA
The organization chart for the proposed information system will include four actors or roles, such as, system administrators, the moderators, the vendors, and the users. The administrator is usually the super user who has admin access to the application. The head can see every current mediator as a rundown. In the event that there is number of mediators and administrator need to discover one of them, the administrator can scan for an arbitrator by name.
Figure 1: Organizational chart for the proposed WIS
(Source: Created by the learner)
Framework examination or study is an essential period of any framework improvement process. The framework is seen overall, the data sources are distinguished and the framework is subjected to close investigation to recognize the issue zones (Galliers & Leidner, 2014). The arrangements are given as a proposition. The proposition is explored on client ask for an appropriate changes are made. This circle closes when the client is happy with the proposition.
Analysis of the present system
In the current system used by the Foodland SA Company, customers manually visit the supermarket stores and physically search and browse the products available in the store. They carry a cart or basket and accumulate the products chosen for purchasing purpose. Then, the customers need to stand in the queue in the payment counter carrying the bag of products in order to buy them. Finally, the customer manually pays for the products in the store counter and receives a bill in the form of a paper. This whole process is significantly time consuming and requires extensive effort. Moreover, the company potentially needs to invest a significant amount in labor, material, human resource, and store operations management, as the entire process is manual. Customers need to wait in line and deal with crowds in order to purchase items. In addition, price comparison is significantly difficult (Hemmatfar, Salehi & Bayat, 2010). There are several other weakness of this system such as it is less user friendly, offers limited description of the products, distant users finds it hard to reach the stores, and it is difficult to identify the required product from the supermarket.
Proposed system solution
In the proposed web based information system, the customers are no more required to go to the stores physically. They can view, search, browse, order, and buy any products through the online platform. All the customers need to have is an email address or mobile phone. The online information system will also be accessible from smart phone devices. With the proposed system, the customers can shop at any time, as the online store will be open 24x7. Moreover, the need to wait in lines will be over. The information system will facilitate strong customer support features where customers can reach out to the assistants at any point of time. Moreover, the system will offer an effective means to compare prices of different products in a significantly easier and quicker way. The proposed solution essentially allows more variety, better convenience, easy purchasing options (Stair & Reynolds, 2013). The proposed information system will help Foodland SA to deliver better quality in less time and with improve customer service. Hence, it will attract more customers as well as build strong customer relationship. As a result, the improved rate of customer satisfaction will bring competitive advantage in the Australian retail market.
Document flowchart
Figure 2: Document flowchart for the proposed online WIS
(Source: Created by the learner)
Data flow diagram
Figure 3: Data flow diagram for admin
(Source: Created by the learner)
Figure 4: Data flow diagram for moderators
(Source: Created by the learner)
Figure 5: Data flow diagram for user
(Source: Created by the learner)
Primary features of the proposed system
The information system includes the following modules such as, customer module, order module, system admin, product, and moderators’ module. The proposed system will include the administrator module where admin users can login to manage the user accounts, products, and orders. The admin is able to add, remove, search, and block moderators, as well as products. The user accounts are managed by the system admin. Managing order includes viewing and deleting orders. The functionality of users are mainly to search for products, purchase products, edit profile.
A shopping cart will be implemented to store the selected products. The cart can be viewed any time by clicking on the cart icon. The customer needs to submit the card at the time of checkout. The application will be divided into two parts (Luo, Ba & Zhang, 2012). A web application that is accessible via web browsers such as Chrome, Opera and Explorer, and an Android application, which will be accessible through smart phones.
The functional requirements of this information system are as follows:
User login: this feature will let a customer register and login to the system. The system will provide a unique user name and a password to the user, which will be used for authentication purpose. The password will be hidden while typing. At the time of registering new user, specific details about the user will be required such as mobile number, address, postal code, name etc.
The system will verify and validate the inputs provided by the user. The passwords will be encrypted. After logging into the system, the user can browse the online store and add desired products into the shopping cart. Shopping cart can be viewed any time. The system will provide options to remove products from shopping cart. The delivery address will be mandatory in order to complete a purchase order (Bélanger & Crossler, 2011). The system is responsible for verifying that only a registered customer is able to purchase products.
There will be a secure payment gateway to allow users to pay online. The different methods available for payment will include debit or credit cards, net banking, e wallet system or cash on delivery (COD). The system will implement an e-wallet that will allow customer to store money in the digital wallet and the balance will be deducted after a payment is made.
The non-functional requirements of the system are as follows:
The shopping cart implementation will be efficient so that the customer can purchase a product efficiently. The system is designed to produce a reliable environment to the users. All the errors, bugs, and defects should be addressed properly. The application will be user friendly and easy to use. The implementation requirement will necessitate appropriate database connectivity to avoid any error or ambiguity. The delivery of products should be proper with best quality and shortest time (Laudon & Laudon, 2016).
Relevance of such advanced technologies as MRP, MRPII, and EDI as information system options
MRP (Material Requirements Planning): This information system mainly focuses on inventory control and production planning. It facilitates production scheduling as well as ensures availability of materials and products for customer delivery. Apart from that, this type of information system helps in systematic planning of manufacturing activities and purchasing activities. The basic steps of an MRP system includes establishing the gross requirements, then determining the net requirements by means of subtracting on hand inventory and the receipts from the gross requirements. After that, the net requirements are time phased and lastly, determination of the planned order releases takes place. Hence, it is a useful information system to improve the supply chain and inventory management procedures of an organization. MRP effectively ensures that products and materials are available at the time of need in the production process (Wiemer et al. 2013). In addition, the job of MRP also involves ensuring that manufacturing activities take place in a timely manner.
MRPII (Manufacturing Resource Planning): The extra elements of MRP II incorporate gauging, request administration, harsh cut scope quantification (RCCP), and limit necessity arranging (CRP), booking dispatching principles, and information/yield control. Manufacturing Resource Planning addresses the specific shortcomings of MRP by including certain additional procedures. It encompasses purchasing management, capacity requirements planning, production resources data as well as cost control and reporting. The vision of this information system is to integrate and centralize the business information so that it can effective improve the decisions taken regarding product management as well as increase the production efficiency (Farley et al. 2012). MRP II endeavors to be a coordinated assembling framework by bringing together other utilitarian regions, for example, displaying, and fund. MRP II works inside a chain of importance that partitions arranging into long-extend arranging, medium range arranging, and here and now control.
EDI (Electronic Data Exchange): EDI mainly contains business or commercial information in electronic or digital formats. It replaces the paper based business documents with soft copies in order to increase the processing speed, reduce the costs, reduce errors as well as improve the partner relationships with other business, vendors or third parties. These are any of the records that are ordinarily traded between organizations. However, there are many, numerous others, for example, bill of filling, traditions archives, stock records, shipping status reports and installment report. The most well-known archives traded by means of EDI are buy requests, solicitations and propel dispatch takes note (Von Solms & Van Niekerk, 2013). However, there are many, numerous others, for example, bill of filling, traditions archives, stock records, shipping status reports and installment report.
Technology platform for the system
The technology platform chosen for developing this particular information system includes Java, JSP (Java Server Pages), and MySQL database operations. The main purpose of the system is to facilitate a user friendly, easy to operate, simple, and systematic web based interface where customers of Foodland SA can order food and groceries online. The technology used in developing this project will implement a set of features and functionalities for the users, moderators, and system administrator. The primary technologies used in developing this information system project are as follows:
HTML: The layouts of the web-based application pages will be designed using HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). This technology will be used as the building block of the web pages in the online supermarket website for Foodland SA.
CSS: The design of the page attributes such as menus, list, web forms etc. will be done using CSS (Cascading Style Sheet).
JavaScript: JavaScript will be used to perform the basic validation tasks in the login and registration forms for the customers. The customers will need to register with a unique email address or phone number and a password in order to order products online from the web-based service. After a customer registers to the information system, he or she needs to provide the email address or phone number and password each time he tries to log in the application. This validation is done with JavaScript. Apart from that, the pin code and the address provided by the customer as the delivery address will further be validated to check the availability of cash on delivery (Laudon & Traver, 2013). In addition, the basic animations included in the web application will use JavaScript.
JSP (Java Server Pages): JSP will be used to perform all the basic front-end logic developments
Java: Java will be used to write the business logic or the main codes in the programming of the application.
MySQL: MySQL database will be chosen to perform all the database related operations.
Tomcat: The Tomcat server will be used for application hosting. The entire project will be run using the Apache Tomcat server.
The supporting operating systems for this project are Android, Linux, and Windows operating system.
Financial and nonfinancial data attributes for each entity in the ER diagram
Financial and nonfinancial data attributes for each entity in the ER diagram
The non-financial and financial attributes for each entity are demonstrated below:
User: User name/ login name, User ID, address, postal code, email address, mobile phone number
Product: Product name, product ID, Description, photo, product price, product category
Admin: user name, password, user ID, role
Moderators: user name, password, user ID, role
Orders: Order ID, Order description, order date, delivery address, user ID, Product ID
Figure 5: Entity Relationship diagram for the proposed system
(Source: Created by the learner)
Four user views as source documents or management reports
User/ Customer: Customers will be able to register to the information system with few details such as name, phone number, email and address. Login to the system will require users to enter the email or phone and password. All users will be uniquely identifiable with user IDs. Users will browse and order products online using the shopping cart and payment gateway system. The overall system environment should incorporate adequate security controls.
Admin: System administrator will able to monitor the overall procedure, manage users, products and orders. The administrative privileges will include adding, modifying, and deleting products, deleting and viewing orders, supervising the payment and orders, and managing users.
Moderators: Moderators will be able to view and manage orders and purchases, manage users and shopping cart information.
Vendors: The vendors will involve mainly the local producers of foods and groceries with whom the Foodland SA will tie up.
Potential security risks, data breaches, and appropriate accounting controls for the new system
There are potential security threats that the information system needs to overcome. Appropriate cyber security measures are to be taken to avoid any security breaches. The application will involve financial transaction. The database will be used to store personal information and financial details about the registered customers. Hence, appropriate encryption, digital signature, and anonymization methods need to be implemented in order to overcome the threats. The following is the little yellow bolt image on the site's address bar, which signifies the nearness of HTTPS (Whitman & Mattord, 2011). This demonstrates the utilization of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption of information goes to and from the site. Firms that have not yet embraced SSL are losing cognizant clients, as well as putting their current clients in danger.
Hackers can gain unauthorized access to the sensitive information. Unpatched software holes will create vulnerabilities for the system. Various types of attacks such as phishing attacks, ransomware attacks, and denial of service attacks can cause trouble for the Company as well as for the customers. It is the part of digital security specialists to guarantee that channels and servers worked for information stockpiling and exchange stay ensured. Digital security experts work to render all purposes of defenselessness in a system out of reach to according to digital fear based oppressors and programmers. This is through no blame, and the fundamental factor that can be faulted for this situation is absence of mindfulness. The end user mostly does not have proper awareness on how to remain safe on the web. A cybercriminal can target end clients on their cell phones and home systems, and this can bring the disease inside the particular site that was being utilized for shopping. A straightforward activity, for example, tapping on a fly up advertisement can open the virtual door to assailants.
Conclusion
The proposed information system in this Strategic Information Systems Assignment will allow Foodland SA to facilitate an online shopping experience to the customers of South Australia. The web application will potentially help the company in building a strong customer base with improved reliability, availability, and customer support. The application platform allows ordering items by customers, administrators or moderators process the items, which are then dispatched to the address put together by them. The application can be composed into two modules initially is for the clients who wish to purchase Foodland products. Second is for the vendors who keeps up and refreshes the data relating to the articles and those of the clients. The main purpose of the system proposed in this Strategic Information Systems Assignment is to facilitate a user friendly, easy to operate, simple, and systematic web based interface where customers of Foodland SA can order food and groceries online. The end client of this item is a departmental store where the application is facilitated on the web and the chairman keeps up the database. The application which is conveyed at the client database, the subtle elements of the things are presented from the database for the client see in view of the determination through the menu and the database of the considerable number of items are refreshed toward the finish of every exchange. The technology used in developing this project will implement a set of features and functionalities for the users, moderators, and system administrator. Information passage into the application should be possible through different screens intended for different levels of clients. Once the approved faculty feed the pertinent information into the framework, a few reports could be produced according to the security. Strategic Information Systems Assignment assignments are being prepared by our Information technology assignment help experts from top universities which let us to provide you a reliable online assignment help service.
References
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