Leading Companies' Essay On Innovations In Information Systems.

For this assignment you will have to prepare a paper that critically discusses how organisations apply the strategic use of IS/IT to achieve IS/IT-enabled innovation (Note: you should try to focus on information systems rather than mobile apps and social media platforms & applications). Some aspects and issues you may discuss in your paper could include (but are not limited to):
• Discuss at least 4 examples of the use of IS/IT for innovation.
• Highlight some success factors or some lessons learned (i.e., what went wrong?) for your examples.

• Discuss the impacts of internal factors (e.g., organisational, individual, and management factors) and external factors (e.g., market, industry, social, economic, technological and political/policy factors) on the success (or the failure) of IS/IT enabled innovation.
• Suggest recommendations and guidelines for helping organisations succeed in their efforts to embark on using IS/IT for innovation with good explanation and discussion.

You should apply relevant knowledge discussed in your unit. You should prepare for this assignment by reviewing the literature (i.e. by using ProQuest 5000 and Science Direct databases at http://www.scu.edu.au/library/index.php/) and searching the World Wide Web (i.e. via Google). You should show evidence that you have read at least 10 references, which must be published after January 2012, in the literature (including references from academic and professional publications) to prepare this assignment. A variety of references are expected including books, refereed journals, case studies, newspapers, magazines and electronic references.

Nestle - Global Information System Team and SAP Solutions

Information systems are being implemented on a wide scale in most of the organizations in today’s world. There are different kinds of information systems such as knowledge management systems, transaction-processing systems that are used in most of the companies. The information systems are mainly helpful in reducing the human work pressure as well as automating complex tasks therefore increasing organizational bandwidth of the human employees. Information systems are being incorporated by most of the industries in today’s world.

The following report will highlight the innovations in information systems in four of the leading companies of the world today, which are name Nestle, Cognizant, Accenture as well as Ferrari. The different aspects associated to the implementation of these recent technologies will be discussed in details and recommendations will be provided by the end of the report for the organizations to further improve on their organizational business structure.

Discussion:

Application of Information system and information technology in innovative strategies:

Example 1 – Nestle

Nestle has a global information system/information technology team that helps in providing the overall business of Nestle in form of a single standardized system platform which enables the company to function efficiently across all the branches in the world. This team of experts of information systems effectively handles all critical business functions and complexities in business functions ranging from human resources, logistics to the end stage in manufacturing, finance, marketing as well as sales (J.X and Quaddus 2013).

The IT infrastructure as well as the innovations work together to fulfill the common goal of the organization and the latest state of the art technologies are used as required for specific organizational tasks to be performed. Secure and compliance oriented technologies, processes as well as data systems, enable new models of business as well as design digital platforms for the customers such as online communities using the information systems and customer relationship management solutions (Li et al. 2013). Nestle makes use of SAP solutions in order to design such complex and critical solutions using information systems in order to aid its own  business operations as well as the benefit of the customers.

Nestle always looks forward to developing newer IT solutions as well as innovative business models that are cost effective and streamlines and can also be effectively designed and managed by the IT team of experts (O'Brien and Maracas 2011). Nestle has the most prominent vendors that provide services to them such as SAP, Google and Facebook.

Accenture - Tools for Overcoming Technological Challenges

Success factors:

• Incorporation of a leading innovation from SAP known as continuous performance management or CPM. CPM helps Nestle to hire as well retain some of the best employees and helps in effective communication of feedbacks between the managers and the other employees (Hess et al. 2014). Critical human resource as well as management operations were automated using this solution.
• The solution has helped Nestle to reach to other parts of the world and expand its business in countries where it did not have factories in the past (Pearson and Saunders 2013). This was again a major success factor for the company.

Lessons learnt. 

• Nestle has faced issues in Singapore regarding the management of water resources since much of products large amounts of water in the process of their manufacturing. This had to be addressed.
• Stiff competition and rapid emergence of innovative ideas in product lines as well as business model s and technologies form companies like coca cola and Pepsi has caused issues for Nestle in the recent past. This also had to be addressed by the organization.

Recommendations for Nestle:

• Nestle should start focusing on coming up with innovative resource management systems in order to ensure that the water and other resources are effectively used by the company.
• Nestle should also ensure that it comes up with newer lines of products in order to counterattack its market competitors. For this, it would need innovations in products and further improvements in the existing information systems as well as the innovations in the field of technology (Hashem et al. 2015). The company should also ensure that the employees are well trained and remain updated with the latest trends in nutrition technology in the market.

Example 2 – Accenture

Accenture’s innovations in information provides solution for the clients that has the capability of overcoming the challenges with the innovations in information technology from the competitors in the market. Accenture believes in coming up with tools that understand the disruptions in the fir led of information technology and help the clients to gain agility and efficiency in their business operations (Learn.scu.edu.au 2018).

Accenture completely do not replace their existing solutions but make changes to them to form a completely new information system that immensely help in automating the tasks as well as other business operations. Their technology solutions work end to end and range from strategic decision-making systems to architectural data storage frameworks that they offer to their clients (Fang et al.  2014). Their innovations in information systems provide transformational results, which are based on the future digitalization of the markets.

Accenture success factors:

• Accenture offers unique products and services which mixes the traditional IT strategies along with the disruptive nature of technology in order to make them future proof. Accenture incorporates new digital technologies using SAP, Oracle as well as Salesforce automated solutions and frameworks in order to come up with their own innovations in the field of information systems and information technology.
• Accenture has also seen immense success in the recent past by being the only company y that builds a complete information technology solution using the capabilities of information technology as a service (Coccia, Falavigna and Manello 2015). It provides cloud solutions, ERP implementation in the development of applications as well as developing a high-velocity, decomposed as well as digitized platform for offering cloud services to its clients.

Lessons learnt:

• Accenture has only focused on coming up with innovations in information systems that are ready for the dynamic change of the markets in the future. However, other important issues such as employee job satisfaction within the organization or their proper training and development has been missed out.
• The company has also faced data security related issues in the past for which not only the organization itself but also its clients has suffered immensely in the past.

Recommendations for Accenture:

• Accenture should focus more on employee job satisfaction as well as the satisfaction of the customers. This will need further innovation and investments in resource planning as well as advanced solution of customer relationship management solutions.
• Accenture should also address the issues of server secure their in its data centers across the world due to increased illegal activities form the hackers and spammers across the internet. The hackers use advanced tools to hack into the organizational networks, hack their privacy, and steal the organizational data to perform tax frauds as well as other unethical activities (Laudon and Laudon 2015). Accenture should look forward to innovate its security information systems to ensure better data security.

Example 3 – Cognizant:

Cognizant is yet another example that has successfully implemented innovations in artificial intelligence in the recent past using automated tools and artificial intelligence. Cognizant has been able to use artificial intelligence to provide cost effective cloud storage to its clients and has been a significant contributor in this digital era in the field of multiple technological innovations. The information systems that are being developed by Cognizant aims to meet the cultural as well as other organizational regulations by innovating the knowledge management techniques using advanced tools and strategies (Carter 2014).

The information systems help in the consolidation of the data centers thereby generating agility and flexibility in the business decisions. They also improve the rate of participation in the different technology exhibitions using the features of the advanced resource management tools within the organizations. The management information systems used in Cognizant also keeps a track of the GDPR compliance within the organization which helps it to be at a better position  in regards to the competitive advantage in the IT market across the world.

Advanced Data Management techniques ranging from data collection to reporting as well as automation are performed by the information systems (Burns, Bush and Sinha 2014). Data mining makes use of cross tabs as well as data pulls and excel and PowerPoint charts using big data analytics (Stair and Reynolds 2017). Support in the analytics division is also performed using quantitative as well as qualitative research, forecasting as well as segmentation of data.

Cognizant - Innovations in Artificial Intelligence

Cognizant success factors:

• Cognizant recently tied up with SAP and came up with a Human Capital Management (HCM) cloud architecture that adds more importance and efficiency to the existing cloud solutions of Cognizant (Cirani et al. 2014). This proved to be an immense success for the company.
• Cognizant also has a specialized human resource outsourcing solution known as the human resource outsourcing or HRO BPaaS, which is integrated with advanced SP information system solution to make the company the leading human resource management organization in the world.

Lessons learnt:

• Cognizant is a technology-oriented company that only focusses on the different technological advancements and products for its clients. However, in this process, the employee job satisfaction is often missed out especially when a complex project with limited time and budget is being assigned to a particular project manager. In these cases, the organization often find difficulties in handling the complex projects and completing them on time.
• Cognizant should start delivering services for the different other industries such as the healthcare, tourism etc. There is greater scope for the organization to come up with innovative ideas in technology as well as information systems for many other industry segments since they still remain untapped and are seeking for proper technological guidance.

Recommendations for Cognizant:

• Flexible information systems should be developed by the team of experts within the organization   to come up with more flexible and efficient service delivery to the clients, which in turn can also improve the client satisfaction for the company.
• IT bottleneck conditions should also be prevented by keeping updated with the latest trends in the IT market using advanced knowledge management system and the knowledge should be efficiently communicated and shared with the employees.

Example 4 – Information systems innovation in Ferrari:

Ferrari has recently come up with innovation s in information systems. An information system known as the Infor LN has completely changed the supply chain management as well as the operations in the logistics department for the company in the recent past using concepts of 3PL or third party logistics (Allen 2013). Using the third party logistics integration with the Infor LN, Ferrari has not only been able to improve immensely in the management operations of its raw materials, but also reduced the risk of running short of raw materials anywhere in the product lines.

Another recent innovation in the information system within the organization is the Infor ION, which helps in creating simple yet robust framework to manage more than 200 interfaces in the landscape of its applications (Ahmad and Cuenca 2013). Ferrari mainly uses this innovative information system in order to carry out business-to-business decisions with the different third party logistics companies working in collaboration with the management system of the company’s warehouse.

Success factors for Ferrari:

• Ferrari has been able to come up with immense in novation s in the past in car electronics as well as engine technologies that has helped produce not only highly performing segment of sports car but also fuel economic engine tanks in order to ensure the economic benefit of a Ferrari  car.
• Another crucial success factor for Ferrari as stated recently in a press conference by Ferrari corporate is its efficient Risk Management and Control system, which is capable of collecting and analyzing data from the different data centers as well as the racing partners regarding the possible risks related to the drivers and employee safety (Van De Walle, Turoff and Hiltz 2014). The efficient risk management system by the organization that makes use of extremely capable  information systems further builds the customers trust in the brand and inculcate in them  the belief and assurance of purchasing a Ferrari car.

Lessons learnt:

• Ferrari mainly invests as well as innovates information systems needed for the design of sports cars. It should try to come up with more product innovations in automobile technologies, the field of luxury cars.
• The typical downsized Ferrari 6-cylinder engines, which are 1.6-liter full turbo-charged and has a maximum RPM of 15,less than 100 kilograms fuel consumption during a formula 1 race is often being reconsidered by the formula one drivers a well as the managing authorities sue to its engine lags and other issues faced (Venkatesh, Brown and Bala 2013). Moreover, the engines are extremely costly and overpriced at times considering the innovation that the company plans and delivers.

Recommendations for Ferrari:

• Ferrari should come up with more cost effective information system innovations that can be integrated with the latest automobile technologies for racing cars.
• Information systems can be incorporated in the GPS tracking systems of the cars in order locate a car in case of dangerous accidents or even retrace important information about the car even it is not found.

Internal analysis innovations:

Internal factors:

Employees should always remain motivated in the workplace and should be flexible adapt to any new changes within the organization. Mangers should understand and address their concerns. The management should ensure employee job satisfaction.

Individual factors:

The employees should have no self-oriented interests and should exhibit a sense of responsibility whether working independently in any tasks or even when as a part of a group (Wilkinson 2013). They should have a positive work life-personal life balance.

Management factors:

The management of the organizations should ensure that the employees a repro vided adequate training and all their concerns are met.

External analysis of innovations:

Market:

• The market trends should be followed by the organizations and regular innovations should come up based on the ever-changing needs of the customers and to keep up with the counter products launched by the market competitors.
• Industry factors:

• The industry of innovation again plays a vital role in the degree of its success. An innovation in products or services in the airline industry cannot be as flexible as an innovative strategy in the ecommerce section and there will be differences in their success as well as other factors post implementation.

Factors affecting economy and society:

• The economy as well as the society also plays an important role in the successful implementation of an innovation in the market. The society gets adversely affected when   the advent in latest technologies and electronic gadgets are often misused by the children (Jones 2014). The economy of an organization or even a country gets affected when the hacker steal the important data form the organizations and ask for ransom amounts of money. The organizational face a major economic loss at such times.

Technological factors:

• Every technology is replaceable and gets obsolete in the future. Therefore, effectively it is a technological loss for the organizations in terms of both money as well as other resources.

Political/policy factors:

• Organizational rules and guidelines related to the safety of the employees must be followed.
• Organizational guidelines related to professional ethics as well as code of conduct must be followed.
• Governmental guidelines regarding environment pollution should be followed by all the organizations.
• Government tax rules must be taken into consideration by the finance departments of the organizations.

Conclusion:

Therefore, it can be concluded form the above report that even if the organizations are well equipped with the different innovations in information systems and information technology, there are still different factors and adverse effects of these innovations that have to be considered by the organizations. The management should efficiently address the organizational internal factors such as employee motivation, job satisfaction as well as cost cutting as well as external factors like customer satisfaction etc. that will take them to newer heights in the future.

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