Essay: Strategic Information System For Grill'd Company - An Analysis." (70 Characters)

Overview of the Company

An information system that is created for corporate business initiatives is known as Strategic Information System. They help organizations in attaining the competitive advantage. If the organization will use information systems then they will be able to produce products at low cost. In the information technology industry strategic information management act as a silent feature (Mehdi, 2006). In the organization, strategic information management helps in storing, classifying, and transferring of information which is created and received within the business. It also provides different tools to businesses for applying metrics and analytical tools into the information sources, which help them in analyzing growth opportunities and ways to enhance operational efficiency. This report will help in identifying how strategic information system guide business to realize an arrangement between the business strategic goals and the present and future business IT infrastructure. Therefore, to continue with the report Grill’d Company has been chosen, it is an Australian based food chain. The report will provide a brief introduction of the company along with its current process and the gaps in the process of working. Further, the report will analyze an issue that business is facing. Information system strategies will be explained and the need for those strategies. The difficulties that an organization can face in the development of information system strategy and in the end of the report suggestion will be provided in order to face those difficulties. 

Source [https://www.grilld.com.au/]

Grill’d is an Australian based food chain which was founded in 2004 by Simon Crowe in Hawthorn, Melbourne. Their specialization is in burgers. In the end of 2015, the company has five restaurants, in 2010 they have 35 restaurants and in 2016 they have 125 restaurants (Grill’d, 2017). Each restaurant of Grill'd donate $ 500 in order to fulfill its corporate social responsibilities. The amount of donation is distributed to 3 of the community groups. The company offers different varieties of the burgers which includes vegetarian and non-vegetarian burgers too. They use good quality of ingredients that are 100% free from hormones and antibiotics products. The Grill’d Company have their own farm and they use beef from that same farm which is located in Victoria. The main product of the company is their burgers. Along with this, they offer salads, hot chips, Alcoholic beverages and soft drinks.

Limited Offerings- Grill’d Company offers good quality of burgers, chips, and soft drinks which is not enough to capture the large market share.

Franchising- The company has fewer branches as compared to other businesses which have a strong position in the market and have their franchises at international level. Therefore, they give strong competition to Grill’d Company.

The process through which a business integrates and manage its operations is known as Enterprise resource planning or ERP. The areas that are integrated with the help of enterprise resource planning are inventory, finance, planning, and human resources, marketing, purchasing, and sales. In the context of software, ERP is the first priority of every business (Nawaz, 2013). This system is developed so that large businesses can use them to examine and modify the information to manage deployment and upgrades. ERP works as a glue that joins different computer systems for the big organization. Normally, all the departments in the business would have their own system enhanced for the particular task of the division. But with the help of ERP, all the departments still have own system, but all of them can transfer and communicate information easily with other departments of with rest of the company (Tenkorang and Helo, 2011).

Operations and Functionality

The ERP system works as a central nervous system of a business. It gathers information or data from one part of business about a task and transfers the information in other parts of the business. The real-time information is added by the user by the ERP (Beal, 2017). Any user who has permission or is an authorized user can access the network with a password for accessing the system anytime. ERP look like the human central nervous system. Its ability exceeds the collective capability of the separate parts to make what is known as awareness. It helps a business to become self-aware by connecting information about finance, human resource, production, and distribution. ERP links various technologies used by every separate part of a business, removing identical and mismatched technology that is expensive to the business. This includes integrating accounts payable, customer databases, and order-monitoring and stock-control systems into one system.

ERP helps in managing the activities of each department or segment of the business. The business can expand its size by introducing new products, but they face problems in managing the burden of extended work. ERP is a system helps in maintaining all the important information and transferring them to the different departments of the business. It helps in reducing the burden of the business and protects from duplicity (Njihia and Mwirigi, 2014).

Grill’d Company is a food chain with 125 restaurants. They were established in the year of 2014, therefore their market share is also less as compared to other competitors of the company. The company offers very limited number of products such as burgers, soft drinks, and hot ships. Therefore, they should focus on expanding their business in different countries by including more products in their menu. Grill’d Company should implement ERP system in their system in order to expand their business and increase market share. ERP system will help them in managing data and information of the products which will reduce confusions and will increase the productivity of the business. Further, ERP system will help in managing different departments of their restaurants and even details of every product. This system will help them in managing the activities of all their restaurants present at different places.

A future decision- ERP is used to analyze the future position of the business in the future. What changes that company is going to see in coming future and the impact of those changes on the business (Compu Data, 2013). This technology will provide detailed information to all the employees and workers of Grill’d Company at any time on any device. Information will be modified and will anticipate the organizational needs and activities (Kupusinac and Lecic, 2013).

Eliminate implementation guesswork- The success can be achieved through ERP system but it depends on two dimensions: the time that business takes for implementing the system and the number of changes in the business and value delivered. Business will receive maximum advantage if the system is implemented fast as it will bring high strategic value. The strength of an ERP vendor should be its speed of implementing the system. The fast implementation removes uncertainty and saves a lot of time of the business (Epicor, 2017).  

Identifying Gaps

Information system strategy includes supporting the development of information system with the needs of the business. It must be demand focused and business focused. There is three level of information strategy and they are information technology strategy, information management strategy and information system strategy (Clarke, 2012).

• Information system strategy should be effective in delivering the tangible benefits to the business such as increased profit, the value of operations, etc.
• IS strategy should meet the organization demands
• These strategies help business in identifying the important information that is needed to achieve objectives of the business.
• IS strategy should be functional based.
• These strategies help in developing new strategies and supporting existing strategy.
• It helps in utilizing resources in order to generate business opportunities.
• It helps in linking different activities of the business (Explainry, 2017)

A connection between information technology and demand of organization is provided by the information system strategy, this strategy helps business to survive in the market for the long run by using IT to fulfill its altering demands with respect to the nonstop varying environment (Inspired Tech, 2017).

Manage information- The world is changing so as the business, the need for information gathering is increasing and business has to face these fast changes for this they have to maintain, response, and store to this growth. In order to survive these situations, business should form a strategy to manage information.

Communication- An information system is a very effective system in order to share data or information with other departments of the business by letting employees interact rapidly. Collaboration technologies like email are very helpful and effective but information system is more efficient in storing data or information in folders that are shared with the employees. This makes interaction or communication systematic (Markgraf, 2017).

Decisions- If Grill’d Company will make use of information system then this system will help them in making good decisions by transferring information and sharing it will the employees. A process of decision involves selecting one option from various alternatives and decision can become effective if the business will have accurate and updates information. An information system is needed in a situation when more than one alternative look appealing. This system will calculate key indicators like costs, profits, and sales for helping in examining the best alternative (Thakur, 2017).

Operations- Information system is needed at the time when the business needs information in order to make decisions. Information system helps in providing recent and complete information, which allow business to function or operate properly. Business uses information system to earn cost advantage over competitors and to represent them by providing better service to the customers.

Business faces many difficulties while developing information system strategies which can be seen at each and every step. They affect the designing, planning and implementing organization’s information system.

Management difficulty- The information system offers a framework to work with the various issues and to make aware of the aspects of information management. According to the A.L Lederer development issues is a major problem (Almalki, and Fleit, 2017). It means ones the IS strategy plan is developed, they have to encourage top management to approve or favor the provided system. But sometimes top management does not understand the purpose of it. Therefore, it is suggested that managers should inspect its duty to implementing the plan and confirm the budget and time needed to develop the ISS.

Human difficulty- Human problems are the problems connected to all the people of the company. According to Wilson, the challenges is the absence of resources to involve in user-education, incapability in employing suitable staff, and incapability to pay specialists who appropriately achieve the activities of information technology (Almalki and Fleit, 2017).

Identification of New System

The management should align its business strategy and information systems strategy in order to overcome the difficulties and challenges faced by the business. They should identify the IS gap between the present position of the business and where the business wants to be in coming future. After identifying the gaps business should do proper planning in order to eliminate those gaps. Further, to overcome the human difficulties business should implement proper training programs in order to provide knowledge about the technology and how to use that technology. Along with this business should develop some activities through which they can increase the interest of their employees for receiving positive results.

Technical problem- the Technical problem is related to software and hardware features of the information system. According to Ossai, updating old system to new system is the biggest problem faced by the business (Almalki and Fleit, 2017). For example- If old system is replaced with the new system it may cause a disturbance in the normal working of the company. Therefore, the system must be implemented during the periods of inactivity due to holidays or break in operations.

When the system is replaced with other the documentation files containing in the old system must be converted in phased approach where only a few old files must be converted into new files and other must be continued in the old system.

Environment problem- Environment problems are recognized as a factor which is not visible and cannot be controlled such as change, poor coordination, organizational culture, behavior. For example- Environment of the company consists of employees and other procedures to operate a business. These employees may resist adopting the new environment as they are comfortable working in the old system.  

Time problem- According to Roodsaz, the reason behind the failure of an information system is lack of time analysis. If more time will be taken for planning or implementing the system can result in canceling of the project by the client. For example- If the business will take most of its time in planning, evaluation and feasible study of the project then the client can get irritated, it will result in cancelation of the project and it might be possible that competitor grabs that opportunity.

• The implementation of the new system should be systematic and phased. So that it may not cause a disturbance in the regular operations of the business. Along with this business should create proper documentation of the task given to each employee which should involve the responsibilities and job to be done by every employee.
• The employees of the business should work in a team in order to achieve the organizational goals for this they should corporate with other employees working under the same system or guidance.
• The management should manage the project effectively by allocating the time to each of the activity involved in the project so that time should be wasted on the activities which are not necessary. Along with this employee of the business must be proactive.

Conclusion

In the conclusion, it can be said that Grill'd Company should expand its business in order to compete with its competitors who have a strong position in the market. For expanding their business they should go ahead with the Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. This system will help them in managing the data or information and will also help in sharing the important information with the other units of the business. The processing of the information in the ERP system is very fast which will give the business an advantage of taking quick decisions. The criteria behind selection ERP system is because it is future oriented. This system will improve the image and condition of the business, along with this it will also eliminate the excess time taken while implementing the system. The information system has some difficulties even which should be avoided at the maximum level by the business in order to achieve success and grab the maximum advantage from the information system.  

References

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Beal, V., 2017, ERP - enterprise resource planning, Accessed on: 20 December 2017, Accessed from: https://www.webopedia.com/TERM/E/ERP.html

Clarke, S., 2012, Information Systems Strategic Management: An Integrated Approach, Routledge.

Compu Data, 2013, 6 Selection Criteria for Choosing an ERP System, Accessed on: 20 December 2017, Accessed from: https://www.compudata.com/6-selection-criteria-for-choosing-an-erp-system/

Epicor, 2017, 12 Criteria for Selecting the Best ERP System Replacement, Accessed on: 20 December 2017, Accessed from: https://www.atc.gr/files/Brochures/Epicor_12Criteria_Best_ERP_Replacement.pdf

Explainry, 2017, Information system strategy, Accessed on: 20 December 2017, Accessed from: https://explainry.com/management/information-system-strategy/

Grill’d, 2017, About us, Accessed on: 20 December 2017, Accessed from: https://www.grilld.com.au/about

Inspired Tech, 2017, Why Information Systems are so Important to your Businesses, Accessed on: 20 December 2017, Accessed from: https://www.inspiredtechs.com.au/why-information-systems-are-so-important/

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Markgraf, B., 2017, Importance of Information Systems in an Organization, Accessed on: 20 December 2017, Accessed from: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/importance-information-systems-organization-69529.html

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Tenkorang, R.A., and Helo, P., 2011, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): A Review Literature Report, Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science, II.

Thakur, D., 2017, Information system and business strategy, Accessed on: 20 December 2017, Accessed from: https://ecomputernotes.com/mis/information-and-system-concepts/informationsystem-and-businessstrategy