Information System For Strategic Management Process

Cloud Services

Discuss about the Information System for Strategic Management Proces.
 

Business strategic management can be described as the continuous analysis, monitoring, planning as well as assessment of everything that is required for an organization in order to meet its major goals (Baltzan 2008). The strategic management technique helps the company leaders to analyze the company’s present situation, find out strategies and implement them as well as analyze the effectiveness of the strategies. This strategic management leads complete path to success to the company. This involves the specifications for the appropriate planning as well as figuring policies that are designed to attain achievement of the objectives. After that, the resources are allocated for implementation of the plans. There are many kinds of frameworks that help in designing the business strategies. These business strategies again help in strategic planning. This is done in respect to complex environments and competitive dynamics (Barney, 2014). Strategic planning is never in static nature. The strategic management process includes analyzing business decisions after implementing them. It also involves the analysis of internal and external weaknesses, formulating the action plans, executing the proposed action plans and evaluating to what extent the action plans have become successful. It also includes implementing changes when desired results have not been produced. Strategic management helps in appropriate alignment of the organizational activities with one another in order to support the selected strategy. The operational management and the strategic management depend on one another (Hill, Jones and Schilling, 2014). With the help of operational management the overall efficiency of the organization is improved as a result, the costs are controlled in order to set the strategies of the company. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is the appropriate integration of all the business processes combines the processes.

The report describes in details the case study of Dr. Rikki Wagner for the organization of Mendelssohn Technologies. The regular elaboration of Database Management System (DBMS) must be checked with Microsoft Access and Decision Support System or DSS. Dr. Wagner realized that his business has undergone many problems and all the problems needed be satisfied with the investment of considerable amount of money. The report has four sections. The section includes various steps the first include selection of hardware, networking infrastructure, hardware and cloud services (Lasserre, 2017). The steps also include various advantages of application of business intelligence and the advantages of applying customer relationship management. Customer relationship management is successful only if it is applied successfully. This report also describes all the problems regarding the application of social media. 

Systems software

Part 1: Various cloud networks are provided along with many other services. These services include auto scaling, compliance, instant provisioning, more security, self-service and many more similar features of management (Khanagha, Volberda and Oshri, 2014). Some of cloud platform providers include AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google cloud. Besides providing cloud platform, they also provide networking, storage and computing. All these cloud platform providers invest in large amount on the cloud services provided by them. They have respective parent companies in order t invest. This matures the company even more. Amazon Web Service supports Hadoop services. HDInsight is provided by Azure and Google provides Dataproc services. 

Amazon web Service (AWS) provides a wide range of services (Yan and Da Xu, 2014). There are nearly hundred types of services that are being provided by AWS. These services are developer tools, enterprise applications, database, IoT, analysis, networking, security, management tools, computing, storage and mobile.

Among all the cloud services that are useable, the three services that Mr. Rikki Wanger might use include tools of machine learning. There are many more features as well as services that include unique technology like IoT and server less computing (Willcocks and Lacity, 2016). If the business of Mr. Rikki Wanger implements one of the cloud computing services, they will be allowed to connect the cloud with various mobile applications. As a result, this would create a high performance of computing environment. This would convert the business into an e-business as well as it would satisfy all the needs of the business.

All these vendors are comparatively strong in various fields like machine learning as they can draw on deep wells of internal expertise. Amazon Machine Learning service was launched in April 2015 by AWS in order to help developers create machine-learning models.

Google offers a Cloud Machine Learning Engine. This helps machine-learning engineers to build models based on its Tensor Flow deep learning library (Willcocks and Lacity, 2016). Microsoft’s Azure Machine Learning Studio lets developers to write, test as well as implement algorithms.

All the providers take part in partnerships, allowing customers for functioning various apps and services in the cloud environments (Willcocks and Lacity, 2016). For compute, AWS’ main offering is its EC2 instances, which can be trimmed with a large number of options. 

Azure’s offering is concentrated on Virtual Machines (VMs). This is done with the help of tools such as Resource Manager and Cloud Services in order to help deploy the applications on the cloud, and its azure Auto scaling services.

Application software

Google’s compute engine delivers VMs in Google’s data centers. These engines boot quickly. They provide persistent disk storage, promise outstanding performance. The performance is highly customizable depending on the needs of the customer.

All the cloud providers support relational databases – they are Azure SQL Database, Amazon Relational Database Service, Red shift and Google Cloud SQL) – as along with NoSQL databases with Azure Documented, Amazon DynamoDB and Google Big table.

Part 2: Computer software is used for activating computer hardware virtually. A software is required for accomplishing input, output, storage, processing and control the various activities of information system. Computer software is divided into two types. These types are as follows 

They are programs that manage resources of computer system as well as simplify applications programming. They include several softwares such as database management system, operating system, translators, networking software and software utilities (Veryard, 2014). System software include the programs that focus on managing computer itself, like the operating system, disk operating system and file management utilities. The operating system manages the hardware resources of computer as well as application and data.  

Application software helps in directing the performance of a computer for a definite use. The function of application software is to meet the needs of information processing of the end users (Wu, Rosen and Schaefer, 2015). Application software is also known as programs that boost the productivity. This is because they enable the users to complete their tasks. These tasks include creating documents, database and publications, spreadsheets, sending email, carrying out online research, designing graphics, playing games as well as running a business.

Two types of packages are available:

1. Vertical packages– Vertical packages help the end users in a specific industry (Vasconcelos, Kimble and Rocha, 2017). This package help in managing construction projects, they also help in keeping track of inventory of hospitals as well as fast food outlets.
2. Horizontal packages– Horizontal packages are able to perform a definite function. These functions include office automation or accounting for a wide variety of businesses. 

Part 1: Business Intelligence (BI) consists of strategies along with technologies. These technologies are used by various enterprises. Organizations use them for data analysis of the business information. These technologies provide current and historical business operations (Kimball, Ross and Thornthwaite, 2015). BI is a technology driven process. It is made up of various activities. These activities include BI is a technology-driven process. It consists of various activities. These activities include:

1. Mining Data
2. Analytical processing
3. Querying
4. Reporting

The advantages of BI are as follows:

• Improves decision making
• Increases operational efficiency
• Drives new revenues
• Optimizing internal business processes
• Identifies the market trends
• It spots the problems occurred in business that is necessary to solve.

The tools of Business Intelligence are data-driven Decision Support Systems (DSS). BI is also used in report and query tools as well as briefing books (Laursen and Thorlund, 2016). Taking the help of these tools organizations are allows analyzing the data on their own. They do not have to wait for IT to analyze the data and send them the reports. This access of information helps the users to backup the business decisions.

Business Intelligence

BI provides rich information resources, which helps companies in achieving their business objectives. This can be done with the help of strategic decisions. BI gathering teams help in interacting with customers in the form of chat interactions, emails and voice calls. This also takes care of the likes and dislikes of the customers, it records the reactions of customers on promotions, and it looks after the technical problems faced by the customers. It also records the experiences of customers on an online shopping site (Wixom, Ariyachandra and Douglas, 2014). This analysis can improve the rate of conversion and tackling many more problems.

Organization measures the performance of the processes executed by them with the help of reports on data that are timely as well as accurate. BI helps the organizations in decision making when some strategic issues occur. This is done by providing important data on current as well as past performances of the company (Chang, 2014). This process is carried out side by side with future trends, customer behavior and expected demands. BI teams help the organization in receiving reports in time. These reports make sure that the organization is utilizing the data for managing business.

Part 2: Mining Data for Gaining Competitive Advantages and Selection of Best Data Mining Technique

Affinity analysis helps in analyzing products as well as services that a customer has been bought. This report of analysis can be used in improving the layout of products or similar product recommendations. This is done for online retail outlets (Witten, Frank, and Hall, 2016). Basket shows the collection of products selected by a customer while shopping.

This technique assumes that the future behavior of customers can be guessed with the help of their past performers, such as the products that they prefer and purchase. This technique can be applied by not just retail stores but also by many sources such as:

• E-commerce stores are able to save data regarding credit cards of the customers for finding links, which depict fraud incidents and interest rates.
• Telephone use depicts which category of consumers reply to the telephone calls and updates on websites (Koh, Tan and Goh, 2015). This also depicts how the CTAs can be improved in order to get more people calling the particular business.

This information extracted from customer is not only used during single purchases. It can also be used to guess the customer is buying habits and preferences for long periods. This enables people to predict and draw patterns, which can be used while promoting products as well as services in future.

Sales forecasting records when a customer buys particular product and when they tend to buy them again. This strategy can be used in inventory management (Roiger, 2017). If a local based business has online presence they can make use of this strategy for online and local audience as well. This can be done by deciding how the customers can be drawn to the stores. This also helps in capital management as well as planning.

This strategy aims at creating groups of certain products that are able to sell themselves. This is done with the help of careful analysis of customer buying habits and demographics (Gupta, 2014). The data received regarding customer buying habits are very helpful for online as well as offline purposes. This database must be continuously updated for ensuring that they reflect the latest position of market.

Inventory planning is important for a company, which sells products or consumable services. This helps online businesses to maximize the value from the inventory warehousing decisions.

Loyalty of customers is very important for elastic markets. In these kinds of markets, a small price change can lead the customers to shift their loyalty to another company, which offers products or services in lower price (Gupta, 2014). With the help of the knowledge of the change in buying habits of customers, organizations can present a social media campaign for minimizing the churn of consumers. 

By meaningfully attracting and engaging with consumers, organization can build a sense of relationship with the brand, so that customers cannot simply bow out in the face of a few shillings’ price difference given by a new competitor in the market. A few programs that could be implemented are as follows:

• Engagement of employees—asking the employees, who are first contact point with customers, for giving ideas regarding how engagement of customers can be improved based on their own consumer interactions, including product selection and development questions as well as future growth opportunities.
• Facebook – use data from your customer clusters on Facebook in order to determine the needs of various clusters and come up with ways to address their engagement needs.

Part 3: Types of Business Intelligence Tools for the Business’s Current Needs

Suspense is one of the leaders in BI market. It can simplify data analysis that is complex; it can also make big data insights accessible for small companies as well as startups. It can collect data from various sources without any preparation on pricey matters (Sang and de Vrieze, 2016). Users enjoy the in-chip technology, which is very efficient. This technology is able to process data ten times faster compared to traditional systems. Sisense works with the unique ElasticCube technology (He, Wu and Yan, 2015). This means it is able to import large amount of data as well as it can work with any CPU layout. This is done without the compromise of the quality of result.

Hjbnn BIRT project is a flexible as well as an open source. It is a pure Java reporting tool, which helps in building and publishing reports for data sources. This source ranges from business relational database to XML data sources (Zhang, Pei and Vasarhelyi, 2017). The Eclipse Foundation rates BIRT as a top-level project. With the help of BIRT, the developers of all the levels can insert powerful reporting into Java, J2EE as well as Eclipse-based applications.

icCube is a SaaS BI platform. It is specialized in embedding in an application. It integrates smoothly with any application because of the authentication as well as authorization (Lapa, Bernardino and Figueiredo, 2014). It has the ability to connect as well as combine any data; it allows direct access to Java and R.

Domo’s business software brings the data, people involved in the business together. The insights users of the business need to deliver a report of what is happening in the organization. It connects all the important business data, gets visual data and collaborates with the employees. All of this is done with the help of a customizable platform.

All the mentioned BI tools are very effective as well as efficient for the organization of Mendelssohn Technologies. As a result, Dr. Rikki Wanger can utilize it without any difficulty. Compared to others Sisense is more effective for the organization Mendelssohn Technologies because it provides error free results for this company.

CRM is an approach for managing an organization’s interactions among customers as well as clients. This approach is used for data analysis regarding clients of any organization in order to improve the business relationships with the clients (Kumar and Reinartz, 2018). The focus is given to customer retention of the business and as a result increasing the growth of sales gradually. One of the most important features of customer relationship management is the way it is approached, this helps to combine the data from a particular range of communication. The basic channel for communication is the website of that particular company, telephone, social media, live chat, marketing materials and many more. With the help of CRM, the business can easily provide extra facilities to clients for fulfilling the requirements. The approach of CRM refers to different things for different people. This technique is used to increase customer loyalty as well as customer retention. Along with this organizational profit is also increased. It also allows the company to gain insights for buying behavior of clients (Eichorn, 2018). A CRM tracks the communication among the customers and the providers. This feature helps in improving the overall production of the organization by considering the feedback from the customers. Thus, the organization successfully achieves its goals and objectives.

Evolution of CRM consists of three phases named reporting, predicting and analysis. The first phase includes reporting phase. It helps in perfectly recognizing the customers in every phase. The next step is the analysis phase. It divides the segments in an organization into two types; they are best customers and worst customers. The final step is predicting phase; it provides appropriate predictions for future (Taylor and Roberts, 2015). The operational CRM deals with automation of services, sales and marketing. The other two CRM types are analytical and collaborative types. The collaborative CRM deals with emails, internet and call centers and face-to-face chats. The appropriate data analysis is done with the help of analytical CRM.

Marketing CRM has the ability to change into the mew way of doing the business with the help of CRM. All the major tools of operational CRM that are utilized for marketing include campaign management, up selling and at last list generators. Sales customer retention is divided into three parts. The parts are opportunity management, sales management and contact management (Baltzan 2008). All the techniques mentioned above are used for boost up the overall sales of the company for everyday operation. In order to improve the customer services the three operational CRM types are contact center and web based sell services. Various kinds of CRM management types are used for the appropriate tracking of the sales, marketing and service. The CRM explains the practices, strategies and technologies, which are used by the organization for managing and analysis. This analysis is done on customer interaction or data in customer life cycle. This aims in improving the customer service relationship. This grows the sales and assists the customer retention properly. Dr. Rikki Wagner can use these different ways of using CRM systems.

Social media can be defined as different technologies that are computer based. They help in sharing ideas, interests and expressions through the virtual communities and networks. The wide range of services of social media is not available at present. Social media is an interactive web 2.0 Internet based applications. It also assures the overall development of the social networks. This is done by the connection of the profile of a user with other individuals or groups (Gerbaudo, 2018). Social media is the easiest way through which organizations can reach up to the customers or clients. The company can also promote its brand with the help of Social media. Dr. Rikki Wagner for the organization of Mendelssohn Technologies should know the fact that it is the easiest medium of communication. Social media makes marketing is very easy.

Marketing in social media makes use of various platforms of social media. It also uses websites in order to promote any product or service. Digital marketing is very popular nowadays. It can be used for researches or businesspersons. Most of the social media platforms have several data analytical tools. These tools help the companies in tracking the advertisement campaign’s progress, engagement as well as success. Various stakeholders address the organizations with the help of social media marketing. This consists of customers, potential employees, public, bloggers and journalists (Fuchs, 2017). This kind of marketing involves managing the campaign in a proper manner. The use of social media would help Dr. Rikki Wagner for obtaining advantages properly and easily. There are many other companies, which provide similar products or services as Dr. Rikki Wagner in the organization of Mendelssohn Technologies. A definite policy for this organization is mentioned below:

• Social media contents such as blogs and similar posts sometimes tend to gain media attention. Organizations should refer them to authorized spokesperson.
• Use of Social media should not clash with the responsibilities of the employees (Stelzner, 2014). Computers should be meant to be used for official purpose only. While using systems in office the use of social media for official purpose should be allowed. Personal use of social media should be discouraged and necessity steps should be taken if rules are violated.

Conclusion and Recommendations

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that business strategy can be defined as the means that helps in achieving the objectives of an organization. Business strategy can also be defined as business planning that is made for a long-term purpose. The time span of a business strategy can be of maximum 5 years. The business strategy is related with topics like raising the finance for building a factory. The scope of activities under any business can be easily understood by business strategies. Some strategies could be adopted by organizations; these strategies include globalization, retrenchment and growth. Growth is the expansion of an organization in order to develop the existing products or purchase new products. Globalization is defined as the moving operations taking place in various countries. The last strategy is retrenchment. It aims in getting the focus back to its previous business. The other advantages of business strategies include gaining competitive benefits. These advantages are very important for any business in order to obtain all the objectives of the business. These organizations can seek out for knowing its rivals. There are two methods for any business to be competitive.

Firstly all the goods should be sold out at a very lower price that its rivals. This is only possible when the business is the leader in the market and gets advantages economically. Secondly, in order to gain advantages it is important to differentiate from the rivals of the organization.

Porter’s five forces framework is the strategy, which helps in analyzing the competition among organizations. It helps in determining the intensity of competition and how attractive is the business in respect to its profits. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is an integrated management. This software is in a specific category of business management. These applications can be utilized for collecting, managing, storing and finally interpreting the information from the actions of the organization’s business. CRM helps in maintaining relationship with clients of a particular business. The business strategies mentioned above has appropriately explained the entire case study of Dr. Rikki Wagner for the organization of Mendelssohn Technologies. The four questions of five forces, enterprise resource planning, CRM. Presence of social media is answered in the report.

The recommendations that could be suitable for Dr. Rikki Wanger for his company are mentioned below:

• Maintaining a stable relationship management with customers is most important. If customers are satisfied with products and services provided by an organization they would be loyal to the organization.
• The organization should implement a perfect and well functioning cloud service with the help of that networking would be best for them.
• The implementation of social media and a good social media policy should be executed
• Proper tools of BI should be selected for providing competitive advantages. 

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