HI5019 Strategic Information Systems Essay.

1. Identification and discussion of the company’s structure, products and services under consideration

It is stated by Arumugam (2016) that an organizational structure helps in defining different activities such as task allocation, coordination and supervision which are directed toward the achievement of organizational aims. Organizations need to be efficient, flexible, innovative and caring in order to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. The organizational structure of Billabong is provided below:

Figure 1: Organizational Structure

(Source: Billabongbiz.com 2017, pp.1)

The company “Billabong” is one of the clothing retailers in Australia. It is identified that the companies utilizes proper as well as appropriate business strategies that would be helpful in meeting the needs as well as requirements of the customers at reasonable price (Billabongbiz.com 2017). Billabong helps in providing diverse product categories that include apparel, accessories, footwear, sunglasses, watches and board sports hardware including surfboards, skateboards and wetsuits. The most popular products include t-shirts, board shorts, backpacks and swimwear.

Online services: Billabong assists in providing online services to the consumers so that they can easily shop different types of apparel, accessories, footwear, sunglasses, watches and board as well as sports hardware (Feigin 2016).

Home delivery services: The Company assists in giving home delivery services to the customers so that the consumers can easily shop that not only saves time but also assists in giving them excellent experience value (Turban et al. 2015).

Catering needs as requirements of customers: The needs as well as requirements of the customers are properly catered by providing them the facility of viewing products with the help of paying capacity.

The company “Billabong” utilizes ERP system for managing the different operations of the business.  It is identified that with the utilization of ERP system the availability of information before the company increases and by utilizing that, Billabong can make proper decisions regarding the organization (Kilic, Zaim and Delen 2014). In addition to this, it is analyzed that ERP system are one of the powerful tool that helps in processing as well as organizing different types of financial data which helps in improving the development of various commercial activities in long term as well as short term activity. ERP system helps in providing opportunity of integrating each of the procedure of business so that the quality of several areas can be improved easily.

Billabong manages its various operations as well as business functions with the help of ERP system. It is identified that in spite of the advantages there are number of problems that the company faces due to the utilization of ERP system (Nwankpa and Roumani 2014). The first and the most important problem that that company is facing is that they are not able to meet various requirements as well as demands of the customers. The company is also facing huge competition from other retailers in Australia (Shen, Chen and Wang 2016). Additionally, Billabong is not able to manage its supply chain, inventory as well as customer management.

In order to resolve the issues of the company, proper cloud based ERP system must be implemented. The issues that will be fixed by the new system are as follows:

Improper management of supply chain and inventory: It is identified by Tenhiala and Helkio (2015) that by utilizing cloud based ERP, the problem that exists in the inventory system as well as supply chain management system can be resolved quite easily as cloud based ERP helps in managing the operations as well as functions of supply chain system as well as inventory system quite effectively.

Unable to meet customer requirements: The problem that Billabong is facing due to the unavailability of meeting requirements  of the customers can be easily solved as with the help of cloud based ERP, the needs as well as requirements of the customers can be easily categorized for providing proper service.

Huge competition: It is stated by Efe (2016) that with the implementation of cloud based ERP; the company can easily compete with other competitors as with the help of cloud based ERP, the different operations as well as business functions of the company are properly arranged.

The criterion which proves that the proposed cloud based ERP system is helpful in meeting the requirements of the company are as follows:

Inventory management: With the utilization of cloud based ERP, the company ca easily manages the operation as well as functions of the inventory system so that proper products as well as services can be delivered to the customers.

Customer management:  According to Kilic, Zaim and Delen (2014), the utilization of cloud based ERP assists in capturing the preferences, activities as well as customer data for enhancing the sales of the company that assists in reducing competition from other retailers.

Demand forecasting: It is stated by Efe (2016) that the demands of the customers can be easily tracked with the help of the cloud based ERP in order to meet the requirements as well as needs of the customers.

3. Constituents of Information System strategy and explanation of the need of the strategy for the overall organizational strategy

• It mainly considers the type of data or information that is generally needed at tactical, strategic as well as operational levels of the organization in order to meet the objectives (Mendelberg 2017).
• It mainly includes the interconnections that are generally present in different activities of the organization in order to provide, obtain as well as process various types of important data (Grinblatt and Titman 2016).
• Various types of information sources are used by the information strategy in order to develop proper business opportunities.

It is identified that the strategy is generally required as the part of entire organizational strategy due to number of reasons which are provided below:

Create database for improved marketing:  It is stated by Peppard and Ward (2016) that utilization of information system within companies helps them in improving their business strategies in context to sales and market and thus it further helps in improving the market condition of the company.

Minimizing product cost: The utilization of information system within the companies assists in minimizing the internal cost which further allows them to deliver products as well as services at a very much reasonable price.

Creating obstacles in the competitor’s entry: Proper utilization of information system assists in providing unique services to the customers which is very much difficult for other retailers to duplicate (Grinblatt and Titman 2016)

4. Reasons due to which the organization experience difficulties in developing an information system strategy

The problems or issues that “Billabong” faces in developing the strategy of information system are provided below:

Technical issues: According to Grant (2016), technical challenges are mainly related with the software as well as hardware aspect of information technology. It is analyzed that the barriers which are generally associated with telecommunication are also considered difficult in implementing proper information system strategies.

Time related problems: Improper time analysis is considered as one of the biggest challenge for the organization in order to develop information system strategy. It is stated by Mendelberg (2017) that extension of time planning can cause obstruction in developing strategies of information system.

Management related problems: The organizations management faces lot of issues in aligning the information system with the strategies of business (Grinblatt and Titman 2016).  It is identified that in order to identify the current position of the company it is quite important to analyze the IS gap. Moreover, the company’s management faces lot of issues which includes lack of appropriate communication channels, improper support from the higher authorities as well as absence of proper strategies.

Human challenges: The human related challenges that the organization faces in developing information system strategy mainly includes improper employment, inappropriate process of recruitment, lack of proper resources as well as presence of improper computer skill (Slack 2015).

The challenges or problems that the company is facing in developing the information system strategies can be resolved by utilizing steps that are elaborated below:

Proper employee participation: It is identified that proper employee participation is needed in order to implement proper information strategies within the company (Grinblatt and Titman 2016)

Proper support from executive management: It is identified that proper executive management is generally needed in order to implement as well as create proper system for achieving the goals of the organization.

Providing proper information: According to Peppard and Ward (2016), proper as well as appropriate information must be conveyed to the organizational employees so that they can participate well in order to support the development of information system strategy.

Robust relationship between staff and top management: Creating appropriate relationship with the organizational staff as well as top management of the organization is required for properly implementing the information system strategies.

The problems that can arise in the project of information system are as follows:

Change management: Appropriate amount of investment in the change management is generally required due to the implementation of new cloud based ERP.

User on training and boarding: Ineffective facility of training is considered as one of the issues for the newly implemented cloud based ERP (Beaulieu et al. 2014) It is identified that improper investment in training is considered as one of the fatal mistake that can create number of issues for the company.

Customization: The organizations faces difficulties in moving the existing customization to the new deployment due to the implementation of cloud based ERP system (Sudhendra, Ranganath and Nandan 2016). It is found that change in the processes of business generally needs to fit with the corset of standard software which is found to be one of the significant challenges.

According to Duan, Fesak and Stuart (2013), due to high availability over the cloud for cloud services the security risks increase as well. Handling security issues for could ERP is a challenging and complex process. In addition to this, it is identified that over the cloud, the clients and CSPs are separated geographically from each other and connected to each other via the internet connection (Navaneethakrishnan 2013). Network failures and many other connection problems could happen over the cloud that will be reflected directly in the cloud ERP performance. Moreover, it is analyzed that for moving to cloud ERP, the company needs to move its activities from IT department to the ERP provider. It is identified that the result of moving ERP into cloud can be considered as one of the IT competencies from the IT department of the organization.

The problems which are faced by the company can be easily resolved by implementing proper strategies that are as follows:

Proper customization: The procedure of customization must be done in conjunction with the architectural model (Nguyen, Nguyen and Misra 2014).  It is found that proper RFP process must include appropriate customization for listing suppliers that generally responds to each of the functional needs of the organization.

Proper training: Appropriate budget must be spent on training for providing proper facility of training to the employees. It is analyzed that proper amount of investment in durable on boarding as well as training toolsets generally assists in ensuring that proper facility of training is preserved.

Appropriate change management: Proper change management for the organization must be properly developed before the migration of ERP for making the change management process successful (Beaulieu et al. 2014).  It is found that appropriate messages needs to be developed in order to engage users within the change management plan.

Arumugam, S., 2016. Moral business practice arrives-part 1: feature-corporate citizenship. HR Future, 2(Feb 2016), pp.20-23.

Beaulieu, T., Martin, T.C., Sarker, S. and Bjørn-Andersen, N., 2015. Confronting, Confirming, and Dispelling Myths Surrounding ERP-in-the-Cloud. Ais Transactions on Enterprise Systems, 1(1), pp.3-16.

Billabongbiz.com., 2017. Billabong Biz : Behind the Brand - Investors - Investors Home.[online] Available at: http://www.billabongbiz.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=154279&p=irol-irhome [Accessed 12 Dec. 2017].

Duan, J., Faker, P., Fesak, A. and Stuart, T., 2013. Benefits and drawbacks of cloud-based versus traditional ERP systems. Proceedings of the 2012-13 course on Advanced Resource Planning.

Efe, B., 2016. An integrated fuzzy multi criteria group decision making approach for ERP system selection. Applied Soft Computing, 38, pp.106-117.

Feigin, L.M., 2016. The effects of protests and boycotts on a brand and its reputation: a case study on Woolworths and boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) (Doctoral dissertation, The IIE).

Grant, R.M., 2016. Contemporary Strategy Analysis Text Only. John Wiley & Sons.

Grinblatt, M. and Titman, S., 2016. Financial markets & corporate strategy.

Kilic, H.S., Zaim, S. and Delen, D., 2014. Development of a hybrid methodology for ERP system selection: The case of Turkish Airlines. Decision Support Systems, 66, pp.82-92

Mendelberg, T., 2017. The race card: Campaign strategy, implicit messages, and the norm of equality. Princeton University Press.

Navaneethakrishnan, C.M., 2013. A Comparative Study of Cloud based ERP systems with Traditional ERP and Analysis of Cloud ERP implementation. International Journal of Engineering and Computer Science, 2(9), pp.2866-2869.

Nguyen, T.D., Nguyen, T.T. and Misra, S., 2014. Cloud-based ERP solution for modern education in Vietnam. In Future Data and Security Engineering (pp. 234-247). Springer, Cham.

Nwankpa, J. and Roumani, Y., 2014. Understanding the link between organizational learning capability and ERP system usage: An empirical examination. Computers in Human Behavior, 33, pp.224-234.

Peppard, J. and Ward, J., 2016. The strategic management of information systems: Building a digital strategy. John Wiley & Sons.

Shen, Y.C., Chen, P.S. and Wang, C.H., 2016. A study of enterprise resource planning (ERP) system performance measurement using the quantitative balanced scorecard approach. Computers in Industry, 75, pp.127-139.

Slack, N., 2015. Operations strategy. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Sudhendra, A.S., Ranganath, C.P. and Nandan, G.T., 2016. Web Based Application for Cashew Industry on Cloud. Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research, 2(4).

Tenhiälä, A. and Helkiö, P., 2015. Performance effects of using an ERP system for manufacturing planning and control under dynamic market requirements. Journal of Operations Management, 36, pp.147-164.

Turban, E., King, D., Lee, J.K., Liang, T.P. and Turban, D.C., 2015. Retailing in electronic commerce: Products and services. In Electronic Commerce (pp. 103-159). Springer International Publishing.