Precision Is An Established Brand In Wristwatches And Claims : Management Information System (MIS) Assignment, MUD, UAE

Case I

 

Go through the case and answer the questions that follow

Precision is an established brand in wristwatches and claims that PWL could achieve this status due to various management initiatives undertaken to make it an IT–enabled Internet-driven Enterprise. PWL has become more customers centric. In E–environment welcome to know what customer wants and what changes are taking place in the market. This is possible as we get online information in the real-time mode about the choice of the product made or expressed by the customer, rate of sale of products by location, segment, and market, and unsuccessful sale events by reason, and so on. With an established communication network PWL knows customer preferences, product movements, modifications and is able to respond faster to customer requirements and expectations.

PWL has four factories in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Malaysia. Due to networking of all work centers, sales points, dealers, distributors, and use of enterprise business process application suite.

PWL has management information daily on:–

1. Product Inventory: Brand, Model, Price, and Location

2. Product Sale: Fast Moving and Slow Moving

3. Market: Segment, Areas, and Locations

4. Customer: Preferences, Profile, and Lost Customers PWL claim that all this is possible due to the implementation of ERP package SAP.

The implementation goal of SAP ERP was to:

 

• Make information access available to all concerned.
• Provide information integrity for all users.
• Integration of complete supply chain.
• Reduce inventory of watches, and know at all sales point ‘Where is what?’

With ERP implementation, IT is an integral part of the enterprise making it an E–business enterprise. Management of PWL is able to handle efficiently dispersed, disparate, and heterogeneous customer preferences. Management is able to compete in a dynamic wristwatch market where competition from the gray market and international brands is very strong.

Using IT–enabled applications Internet technologies integration of supply chain is a challenge. To boost these strategic initiatives PWL implemented B2B solutions to leverage the Internet for order handling, configuring, tracking, and delivering. PWL is also thinking of the implementation of Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID) technology, as it believes RFID is the technology of the future and is more efficient for handling a variety of watches and high value of inventory.

PWL is convinced that strategic use of IT and the Internet has made PWL an E–business enterprise where IT and Internet are business drivers and enablers as well. Management claims that the success of the enterprise is due to user and customer participation in the E–Enterprise solution. PWL now has online Management Information systems support when weekly meetings are held for business review, operation review, and customer issues.

Questions:

1. Discuss the role of MIS for PWL in detail.

 2. Identify different Information systems at each level which PWL may be using.

3. Explain how SAP–ERP helps PWL to handle the dynamic nature of business.

4. What are the other tools of Information systems used by PWL and how are they beneficial for the company.

Case II

 

Go through the case study and answer the questions that follow.

The Lewisham Hospital NHS Trust comprises University Hospital Lewisham, The Children’s Hospital Lewisham, and Dunoran Home (a residential nursing home in Bromley). The Trust manages approximately 650 beds and currently employs around 2,500 staff. The Data Quality ChallengeThe south–east London hospitals were seen as having problems with fragmented patient records, particularly the difficulty of identifying whether a record existed for a newly–admitted patient. When patients were admitted to hospital, they were not always correctly identified as having an existing medical record, often due to a change of name or address; sometimes the patient’s state of health made it difficult to get accurate details, and sometimes it is simply a case of a clerical error in not finding the patient on the system.

New records were then opened for them and their previous history lost to their clinical team. With approximately 150 ‘new patient’ registrations each day to be compared against the 930,000 existing records in the Lewisham Hospital NHS Trust database, the search for duplicate records was a time–consuming manual task, taking more than half a day.

At one stage there was a six-month backlog. As Terry Walton, IT Manager at Lewisham Hospital points out, “This is not just about meeting government targets and overcoming fragmented patient records. There is a clinical risk if a newly–admitted patient is not identified as having an existing record with us.”Having clean, high integrity patient data is also an essential requirement for connecting to the Connecting for Health Local Service provider. In his quest to achieve a single patient view, Terry applied for funding from Connecting for Health. He organized a joint procurement for the Lewisham Hospital NHS Trust, Kings College Hospital NHS Trust, and the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust.

Questions:

1. What is your understanding are the issues that Lewisham Hospital faces?

2. What are the dangers to fragmented patient records for Hospitals providing healthcare?

3. What would be your suggestions to Lewisham hospitals as HCIS consultants to maintain their patient records safe?

4. What is the importance of data security, integrity, and privacy for a hospital such as Lewisham in Healthcare.

Case III

Case IV

Go through the case and answer the questions that follow:

A waiter takes an order at a table, and then enters it online via one of the six terminals located in the restaurant dining room. The order is routed to a printer in the appropriate preparation area: the cold item printer if it is a salad, the hot item printer if it is a hot sandwich, or the bar printer if it is a drink. A customer’s meal check–listing (bill) the items ordered and the respective prices are automatically generated. This ordering system eliminates the old three–carbon–copy guest check system as well as any problems caused by a waiter’s handwriting. When the kitchen runs out of a food item, the cooks send out an ‘out of the stock message, which will be displayed on the dining room terminals when waiters try to order that item.

This gives the waiters faster feedback, enabling them to give better service to the customers. Other system features aid management in the planning and control of their restaurant business. The system provides up–to–the–minute information on the food items ordered and breaks out percentages showing sales of each item versus total sales. This helps management plan menus according to customers’ tastes. The system also compares the weekly sales totals versus food costs, allowing planning for tighter cost controls. In addition, whenever an order is voided, the reasons for the void are keyed in. This may help later in management decisions, especially if the voids consistently related to food or service. Acceptance of the system by the users is exceptionally high since the waiters and waitresses were involved in the selection and design process. All potential users were asked to give their impressions and ideas about the various systems available before one was chosen.

Questions:

1.For this restaurant, describe the decisions to be made in strategic planning, managerial control, and operational control?

2.What information would you require to make such decisions?

3.What would make the system a more complete MIS instead of it just doing transaction processing?

4.Explain the probable effects that making the system more formal would have on the customers and the management.

Case V

Go through the case and answer the questions that follow:

ABC Corporation is a newly established company and the owner is looking for an efficient method of collecting, storing, and manipulating data. The corporation offers a variety of pet supplies and is initially a retailer that is currently selling products only online. As the corporation grows, it plans to also include physical retail locations in which to add services to the company’s offerings. As a startup business, the ABC corporation needs to implement a database management system to allow the collection and sharing of business data among the employees; thus, the database management system should allow for multiple users. The corporation is currently gathering information about database management systems and seeking a contractor to create and implement the system.

Business data will be organized in a logical manner and will be retrieved using a client–server network. In your analysis provide the ABC corporation with information on database management systems and a recommendation from a contractor’s perspective.

Information you are providing the ABC corporation should include the following:

• Provide a definition of a database management system (DBMS) and discuss the purpose(s) in business.
• Introduce the business scenario to analyze and discuss the benefits of implementing a database management system.
• Describe what business data the company would benefit from collecting and manipulating.
• Explain how a company uses a database management system to manage data collection, manipulate data, and realize benefits from the usage of database management.