Information Security Management For SWOT Analysis, ERP, And Project Management Essay.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Internal and External Project Management

Describe about the Information Security Management for SWOT Analysis.

The SWOT Analysis of Walmart.com is as follows (Hassan, Sistani & Raju, 2014).

Strengths	Weaknesses
1. Walmart enjoys good popularity because they provide good quality products at a very good price 2. The delivery service of Walmart is excellent; they deliver products directly to the homes of the customer at a very low cost. 3. Walmart’s official website is very easy to use and customer friendly.	1. One of the main weaknesses of Walmart is that some products do not match with those shown in the description picture in the website. 2. Walmart does not respond to customer complaints seriously. There have been many cases where the company has been reluctant to replace faulty products received by the customers.
Opportunities	Threats
1. Walmart has a lot of opportunities for improving its services. Walmart can sell even more varieties of products at the best price. 2. Walmart has the opportunity to promote regional and handcrafted products and this will help the small companies have a national or even global reach.	1. The main threat of Walmart is the strong competition from other e-commerce websites. These rival companies always try to provide the same products at even better offers and prices. E.g. Amazon. 2. Unwilling to respond to customer complaints can be a big threat to the company and they might lose good amount of customer base if the problems are not addressed quickly.

2. As per the case scenario, for appointing a new project manager, internal candidates as well as an external and experienced project manager is available.

Advantages of Internal Posting – The main advantage of internal posting is that the internal employees have sufficient knowledge regarding the operations and the requirements of the company (Hodgson & Paton, 2016). This helps them manage the operations and projects more efficiently compared to an external candidate.

Disadvantages of Internal Posting – The main disadvantage of internal posting is that the employees know about the loopholes and faults inside the company. Hence, they can exploit these loopholes for their personal advantages. Again, the internal employees may not have sufficient project management skills and external exposure.

Advantages of External Posting – The advantages of external posting is that an external candidate is very much accustomed to project management activities and have sufficient external exposure. Moreover, they cannot exploit the loopholes of the company as they do not know about one.

Disadvantages of External Posting ­­– An external candidate is not accustomed to the internal affairs of the company and hence, will face a very tough task as a project manager (Shafritz et al., 2015). Moreover, the team coordination might not be very good as the internal employees might become unhappy due to appointment of external candidate.

A possible solution is that appointing two people as the co-project managers – one from external and one from internal. The internal candidate can learn from the experience shared by the external candidate and the external candidate can learn more about the internal affairs of the company from the internal candidate.

3. ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning is a software that can be used by any commercial organization that wants to have a global reach. ERP system provides a simple way of data storage and management system (Leon, 2014). Mostly, ERP uses cloud computing service, a virtual storage system that can store a huge amount of data. Any commercial organization can effectively use the ERP system within a regional as well as global environment. ERP also helps in reducing required manpower and provides software monitoring system that can be used to monitor the activities of the organization branches in other countries.

The main advantage of ERP system is that it helps in reducing manpower and provides software boosted activities like monitoring of abroad branches, mathematical operations and others. The main disadvantage of the ERP system is security issue – the cloud service is very much vulnerable to external threats and cyber threats (Monk & Wagner, 2012). In case of a serious cyber attack, the company may lose large amount of confidential information as well as business data.

4. The most important feasibility for Walmart is economic feasibility. In any business organization, the operations must be economically feasible in order to run the business properly (Shao et al., 2016). Although the company should aim at providing products to customers at a low price, the prices should be economically feasible so that the company does not encounter any losses in business.

If proper analysis is not done before starting business, it will result in economic disaster of the company. Any operation within the company must be economically feasible. If an operation or business activity is not economically feasible, the company will start encountering losses (Liang et al., 2016). With time, this loss increases and at one time, the company will cease to exist.

5. The system checklist of a company contains the following five categories (Kendall et al., 2014).

The Main Advantage and Disadvantage of ERP System

Output System – Walmart can implement three different output systems for maintaining the output operational system. These systems are Web Access Monitoring System for monitoring the use of the internet by the internal employees as well as data flow through the server, Daily Reminder System that will help the management to keep track of all the business activities within the company and an Online Inventory that will store every details and numbers of the business transactions on a daily basis.

Input System – Examples of input system will be as follows.

Login Data Collection Device, through which the employee will have to swipe a card and he will be automatically logged in.

Overtime Checklist Device will help the management to keep track of the overtime duties done by the employees.

Medical Data Entry System will keep medical records of the employees and can be used in case of a medical emergency.

Process System – The examples of process system are as follows.

Warehouse Distribution System will help the employees to keep track of daily orders and create a specific pattern of product routing for delivery.

Human Resources System will help the company to keep track of the employees’ information, salary, recruitment authority and others.

Equipment Rental System will help in keeping track of the equipment rents taken by the company.

Performance System – The examples of performance system are as follows.

• Multiple User Web Support System
• System Support for 365 days
• Online Inventory System

Control System – Examples of control system are as follows.

• Logon Security System
• Restricted Access Employee Records Server
• Transaction Details Inventory

References

Hassan, S.M., Sistani, A.J. & Raju, R.S. (2014). Top Online Shopping E-companies and their Strength and Weakness (SWOT). Research Journal of Recent Sciences.

Hodgson, D.E. & Paton, S. (2016). Understanding the professional project manager: cosmopolitans, locals and identity work. International Journal of Project Management, 34(2), pp.352-364.

Kendall, K. E., Kendall, J. E., & Wasson, C. S. (2014). Systems analysis and design (Vol. 19, p. 02). Year Prentice Hall, 2011.

Leon, A. (2014). Enterprise resource planning. McGraw-Hill Education.

Liang, D., Wu, S., & Sun, G. Z. (2016). Value Chain Optimization of B2C E-Commerce Based on Cloud Computing and ITM. In Proceedings of the 6th International Asia Conference on Industrial Engineering and Management Innovation (pp. 951-961). Atlantis Press.

Monk, E., & Wagner, B. (2012). Concepts in enterprise resource planning. Cengage Learning.

Shafritz, J.M., Ott, J.S. & Jang, Y.S. (2015). Classics of organization theory. Cengage Learning.

Shao, J., Yang, H., Xing, X., & Yang, L. (2016). E-commerce and traffic congestion: An economic and policy analysis. Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 83, 91-103.