Advantages of Information Systems for Animal After Hour Services
In order to help AAHS management, define what information systems are and briefly explain how information systems are important to future operations at AAHS. While answering this question, explore the different kinds of information systems that could be beneficial to any small business.
An information system is basically a software program that assists individuals and businesses to organize and make a good analysis of data. Information systems bring about the possibility to get answers to questions and solve any problem that is related to the mission of the business (Laudon and Laudon, 2016).
Utilizing Information systems will definitely bring about many advantages to Animal After Hour Services as opposed to disadvantages. Several kinds of information systems exist for any kind of small business. One example is the Management Information System that is mainly concerned with the internal sources of data in the business. First this MIS is able to perfectly organize data. The excellent arrangement of information is crucial for any business that is trying to succeed. Having a good information system, the management of Animal After Hour Services will be well organized, present quick solutions and make faster decisions under any circumstances. Dr Terry King will be able to manage all their information and improve the execution of their business processes (Chatterjee et al., 2016). The information will be stored in a central database available all around the branches of AAHS.
Having an Information System also Brings about a positive perspective on the future of the business. Any entrepreneur who aspires to improve must establish a broader perspective using an excellent management information system. This is well achieved by two types of information systems; the Decision Support System and Knowledge management System. Businesses all the world over can hardly compete with other successful businesses without a well-designed and coordinated information system.
By utilizing an information system, the latest trend follow up in the business will be possible. This is a perfect way to accelerate the business progress. One will not have to spend a great deal of time and finances on activities that are otherwise unnecessary, but one will be able to focus on the sole objective.
Using Information systems also makes it pretty convenient to keeping data a business will need in a few or many years to come. A good instance is how successful newspapers store their pictures in a secure data archive. This data archive is then accessed later to find the pictures whenever there is a need. This is also true for Animal data. All the records in every branch will be kept for use in the future. This is perfectly achieved by the Management Information Systems (Pearlson Saunders and Galletta, 2016).
Business Issues Faced by Animal After Hour Services
From the case study, Animal After Hour Services is being faced by a couple of business and system issues especially because of its expansion into Jindalee and Carrara. One of the business issues faced by AAHS is the fact that Dr. Terry is not sure how he is going to implement a software product that will enable him and his nephew to effectively manage the entire business processes in all branches without any unnecessary duplication. This is not a good position in business since the sole proprietor is not sure what costs they will incur in order to solve the problem at hand. Another problem faced by the enterprise is the issue of having common data across all the branches. Currently, all the branches utilize stand-alone systems that do not communicate with each other; in that, every branch has different patient treatment records. When a patient is taken in on one branch during a certain time, their data is only kept in that branch alone. This does not provide the ability for the veterinarians and other clinical staff to go through the patient historical records in order to come up with the right medication for the patients.
The data across all the sites is also not secured since they are not currently utilizing the latest security technologies. Furthermore, considering the fact that Dr. Terry has now employed more than 50 workers for his enterprise, he currently does not have an efficient system for rolling out payments for his employees. This position may sometimes bring about omissions or wrong salary calculations in the enterprise’s payroll. One more issue faced by AAHS is the lack of an efficient communication platform with its customers. Currently, the customers do not have a way of viewing their past records or even update their personal details (Stair and Reynolds, 2017).
The key information requirements for AAHS comprise of customer data, supplier information, animal data and employee information. These are the four major information requirements that a new information System will need in order to solve all of the current issues faced by the enterprise. Customer data includes personal data of its customers, their location etc; this will be utilized by the information system to track the behavior of AAHS customers. This will also be utilized by for creation of an online portal for the customers to view their bills, status and many other useful information provided by AAHS. This will surely bring competition to any other similar business around AAHS. Supplier information is also important for perfect analysis of supplier bills by the business (Simkin, Norman and Rose, 2014.). This helps in the final run of financial reports by the Information system. Moreover, in order to ensure quality services for all the animals admitted at AAHS, the records of the animals (animal data) is very important. This will help in analyzing the perfect and most efficient treatment techniques for various animals and also find out what is the best treatment after making consideration of the past medical history of the animals. This strategy or information requirement will definitely improve service since there will be total customer satisfaction due to a consistent problem solving history.
Key Information Requirements for Animal After Hour Services
As mentioned earlier in this paper, various types of information systems can be used by AAHS to solve various business issues. In order to ease the process of making decisions, a decision support system needs to come in handy. This business support system does not operate individually. AAHS needs first to implement an Enterprise resource management information system which will have the primary concern of handling all the logic and procedures in the enterprise. An ERP system will effectively help AAHS to have a perfect interconnection in all of its departments regardless of the location. This will provide for a seamless communication and a real-time sharing of information regarding the treatment history of the animals and the progress of the medication as well. Now when an ERP system has been implemented, a decision support system will be integrated with the ERP system in order to generate true analysis of the business position and even customer satisfaction while utilizing the data stored by the ERP (Sethi, Pant and Sethi, 2017).
AAHS must make use of the internet in connecting with her customers and other stakeholders. After the ERP system has been implemented, it will be connected to an online portal to collect details from the customers and also allow customers to view their billing history and maybe make payments through online gateways such as Paypal. All these are achieved by utilizing the internet. The intranet, on the other hand, will allow for smooth communication between departments using the ERP information Management system. Extranet will definitely play a major role in allowing for communication between all the branches using the Information System Implemented (Turban et al., 2015). Most ERP Information Systems communicate in this manner. The main office may act as the server and then an extra-net connection is made so that the systems can communicate with a single database across all the branches. In the end, this will allow for the best quality of service for all the stakeholders.
In order to manage all the organizational changes that are inevitable, a perfect strategy for change management needs to be formulated. The strategy that AAHS needs to implement goes down to a number of phases(Cameron and Green, 2015). One is that AAHS needs to involve all of its stakeholders in making the System changes.All customers must be notified that a new system that would help better services is being rolled out. All employees too must be made to know of the upcoming changes and also trained way before the Information system goes live. A sense of ownership of the new system must also be crafted on the employees (Kaufman, 2017). This allows everyone to have a sense of responsibility for making any changes in every area of their influence or control.
The introduction of this new ERP system may bring about a number of security issues. When employees use insecure passwords that can be guessed by anyone, the ERP system will be compromised at some level. An intruder may guess the login details of a given employee and decide to make major changes to the system after signing in. The information system data center and servers must also be well secured. Placing the servers at a location that is not physically secured is a great risk for AAHS. Any interruption will bring down the entire business process.
Nonetheless, in order to address these security issues, the CIA (confidentiality,integrity and availability) triad principles must be achieved. Availability is achieved by ensuring that there are routine backups for the system so as to allow for recover-ability just in case there is data loss or breach of information (Bhati, Trivedi and Sarangdevot, 2016,). Confidentiality is achieved by training employees of the common security rules and the tricks used by black hats to gain access to information systems.
References
Bhati, P.S., Trivedi, M.C. and Sarangdevot, S.S., 2016, February. Security Issues in Enterprise Resource Planning. In Computational Intelligence & Communication Technology (CICT), 2016 Second International Conference on (pp. 205-208). IEEE.
Cameron, E. and Green, M., 2015. Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.
Chatterjee, M., Ledbetter, C., Son, S.H., Christopher, S.M. and Ferlan, M.J., Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC, 2016. Wearable personal information system. U.S. Patent 9,386,932.
Kaufman, H., 2017. The limits of organizational change. Routledge.
Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016. Management information system. Pearson Education India.
Pearlson, K.E., Saunders, C.S. and Galletta, D.F., 2016. Managing and Using Information Systems, Binder Ready Version: A Strategic Approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Sethi, R., Pant, S. and Sethi, A., 2017. Integrating business-to-business customers in original equipment manufacturers’ supply chains through information systems integration. European Journal of Management Studies, 22(2), pp.125-162.
Simkin, M.G., Norman, C.S. and Rose, J.M., 2014. Core concepts of accounting information systems. John Wiley & Sons
Stair, R. and Reynolds, G., 2017. Fundamentals of information systems. Cengage Learning.
Turban, E., King, D., Lee, J.K., Liang, T.P. and Turban, D.C., 2015. Implementing EC Systems: From Justification to Successful Performance. In Electronic Commerce (pp. 645-687). Springer, Cham
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