Question

You are hired as part of a consulting team charged with helping a medium sized urban business utilize information systems; currently it does not. It relies on data kept on spreadsheets, shared among sites by fax; ordering is done by phone; purchasing is done using a user-designed Excel spreadsheet that is barely functional; managers and decision makers communicate via email and telephone.

There are multiple opportunities here for specific Information systems to help make this a new-millennium business. Tell your colleagues on the consulting team your ideas for how to utilize specific IT systems for this business.

Be specific as to the systems and their potential positive impact on the business. Don't just list technologies.

Answer 1

There are various systems which help in storing the data of a company and processing it for further analysis. Currently the company has been maintaining its data on spreadsheets and excels. The company can opt for the following systems:

• Management Information system (MIS): MIS helps in maintaining data of the system in a centralized database. The data is accessible across the company. The data extraction and processing gets facilitated. Moreover the data storage can be done on a centralized data warehouse . This way, data can be fetched and analyzed quite easily and data accuracy and integrity can be maintained.
• Cloud Computing (CC): The company can capitalize on the potentials of cloud computing. The entire data of the company can be stored on the Cloud. This helps in maintaining the accuracy and integrity of the data of the company. Moreover data hacking gets discouraged as data is usually encrypted when stored on the cloud. Data analytics and predictive analytics can be used to analyze and process the data and forecast the future demands and trends of the company.