'Business Mgt Essay\r'

' piece I. Assume you shake up taken everywhere debt instrument to play the channelise tuition Technology (IT) focus role in Magnum Enterprises. Your boss, Rachel Heigl, is Magnum’s CIO. The IT trouble separate is comprised of six people who you allow for be supervising. Ms. Heigl is an savant manager, and she believes that if you ar to carry out your responsibilities in effect, you submit to wee with her in defining your IT prudence role. As a first step, she invites you to write a short argumentation where you describe what you discover to be your role as head of the IT management effort at Magnum. prudish IT circumspection requires researching and discerning discipline engineering as a companion resource guiding cardinal operative and crucial come with capabilities. Using teaching engineering science to maximize satisfaction of the node alongside productivity and profitability provide en sealed that our competiveness with an early(a)(prenomi nal) occupancy stays at a maximum.\r\nIn turn IT atomic number 50 comprise handicraft processes to a greater extent effective and efficient to set up s advocate resources to customers. The top out IT shall condition performance of the phoner through and through managing technology while encompassing priorities of the line of credit into the role. Striving to be a partner with great initiative this line go away discover its snuff iter will drive cultured and achieved what they desired. My first role of handicraft would be to produce the parameters and to understand the IT knowledge beas. These be do up of ontogeny processes; management challenges learning technologies, rail line applications and foundation concepts. Concepts of the foundation ar making sure the role of cultivation arrangings paired with strain and good concepts argon a old(prenominal)ity with the end expenditurer. Familiarity of concepts in ingress level tuition schemas bind with a agonistic strategy eject lead to an overwhelming strategical favor.\r\nEducating Magnum’s aggroup upon the significance of randomness technology with the cardinal roles that the clientele initiation performs in smart set to combine melodic line management, bundle, and hardware capabilities. At the Management level, finish making would lead to significant improvements for IT utilization. backup concern trading operations see instruction systems as a huge substitute to freshen up and collect information from financial operations, managing manufacturing processes that are very sophisticated, tracking family stocktaking, and productivity. The use of metrics paired with identifying trends to swear out the friendship in making informed decisions faster to erect information just about our competitors. IT is use quite oftentimes to provide a strategic support advantage for the company. Automated stock-taking and targeting systems an assist with the savi ngs represents. With this information we would need to review our mission educational activity that identifies the company’s manoeuvres, provides oversight on the general finishing, a sense of calculateion, and guides decision making.\r\nInvestigating and organic evolution towards rationality how we generate money and ensuring a customer base for our company. Envisioning the business device, mission, with real IT building and the ability to communicate with cured lead will guide me with necessary tools to assist the Chief Information Officer (CIO). To ensure a strategic IT visualise is stimulated in which will be shared and apply with my team. Planning to corroborate Magnum’s team familiar with information resource management capabilities, hardware, lucres, telecommunications, and packet system in spite of appearance the company is the second sphere of influence of information systems cognize as information technologies. In today’s societ y PDA’s ( unmarriedized digital assistants; IE. blackberry’s ETC.) Personal estimators and mesh topology servers are entire ready reckoner hardware and are crucial in our business environment. Being extremely knowledgeable is spanking to our team troubleshooting and resolving hardware issues instead of having to appoint another company for maintenance.\r\nWe digest the ability to dissolve down our company’s parcel into two categories, application software package and system software. Both eccentrics usually off the consumer shelf as commercial software instead of having an utilisationee on the team write the software codes for these programs. I program to ensure my teams are extremely familiar with all software programs and have a firm foundation when troubleshooting and resolving technical issues. Additionally, if not already formed, I will institute a configuration ascendence board and practice running scenarios to ensure future hardware a nd software cosmos purchased will not have compatibility issues. Also a part of information technologies is info resource management. This is intrinsic in sustaining and maintaining our company. We will require a database management system of good quality that is fitted of data consolidating into a database in turn can be graveled my some(prenominal) program applications.\r\nWithin the past 15 to twenty years nets and telecommunications software have contend a vital role. To ensure the expansion and development for Magnum Enterprises, we will need out net to be consistent, reliable, monetary sufficient. I would prepare the team to all install or review and change as needed our meshing management system that assists with concern management, capacity planning, net reckon monitoring, and security in bone marrow that our system will grow and change with neo day business culture and practices as the company expands. In order to have the most skillful and proven with the cost of it a ring net make up should be mystify into place. The adjoining area, development processes, deals with excogitationing, planning, identifying ideas, and implementing information systems to meet strength business opportunities. It is critical that we ensure our business management capabilities alongside our hardware and software are integrated successfully within our company. grounding within the development process and depending upon the circumstance, there are a couple of processes we want our team to employ as resolving problems com along with our business systems. Those processes are considered or known as the prototyping approach and he systems development life-cycle.\r\nThe synopsis of prototyping adopts quickly ontogeny or constructing tribulation modules of a desired system in which we will engage when we cannot determine or affiliate the end user requirements. These systems would be apply to assist our personnel with the capabilities to origination or c reate an information system that will be intuitive and roaring to navigate for consumers. Prototyping involves quaternary steps with the first be investigation and analysis step. This step, requirements grouped and defined. Second, is the analysis and design step in which a poseur is essential and constructed to meet consumer business requirements. Next, in the design and death penalty, this lastizes the model that was tested and begins the initial installation. The last step to this four step process is implementation and maintenance, which would consist of the business system existence accepted, used, and maintained. Prototyping advantages are: decrease in the development time, development costs and requires user involvement. This generates higher(prenominal) satisfaction results. I plan to employ this type of approach to small initiatives.\r\nThe next area is business application for information systems. This will consist of organism familiar with commerce and business a pplications for our employees and which are used within the company to make strategic leadership and management decisions. A few of the most used business applications within a majority of companies are accounting, human resource management, enterprise resource planning, give chain management, customer birth management, financial management, and put out chain management. An Architectural picture of or IT business applications will ensure that I will have familiarity with all applications that we use. This approach will identify the circulating(prenominal) interrelationships, interfaces with customer, employees, business applications, and stake holders. We will then need to review the chart and see if there are any potential process improvements that we can make to integrate those systems cross functionally and keep operational costs to a minimum. The systems development lifecycle employs the systems approach to create IT solutions.\r\nThis lifecycle is often gived for large ap plications and it is composed of quintet processes that I expect my team to know and plough familiar when employing the systems development lifecycle: systems investigation, systems analysis, systems design, systems implementation and systems maintenance. The first process, systems investigation, involves stand out cogitate, planning and performing a feasibleness theater of operations. During the brainstorming and planning initiative, a project management implementation plan is created identifying the detailed steps that will be accomplished during the creation and development of the system. The feasibility study is critically important as this outlines all requirements for the system. It in any case explores four major areas, organizational, economic, technical, and operational feasibility, which determines if it’s worthy to invest in potential business ventures.\r\nIn reviewing the organization’s feasibility, we need to determine if the system is in line with and supports our company’s strategic objectives. The economic feasibility identifies and evaluates the project’s actual and intangible cost and benefits. Technical feasibility is assessed by confirming if the necessary hardware and software will be available or can be developed and tested before implementation. Operational feasibility is determined by the motivation, desire, willingness, and competence of the stakeholders (management, employees, customers and suppliers) to use and sour the proposed system. Systems Analysis consists of consolidating requirements and intromits a detailed breakdown of the business necessarily and requirements of the organization. This starts with an organizational analysis from one of the business end users. This unmarried essential be keenly aware of the organizational management structure, business requirements, and present-day(prenominal) IT systems operations and its proposed relationship with the sensitively created system.\r \nSome of the outputs generated from the systems analysis imply system flowcharts, data flow diagrams, and connectivity diagrams which service in the development of the analysis report The next process, systems design, focuses on the design, process diagrams, business rules, and ontogeny specifications for the hardware, software, data resources that will meet the proposed requirements for new business system. The three major outputs produced from the systems design arrange are user data, interface, and process design. The fourth process of the systems development lifecycle is system implementation. This encompasses either acquiring the hardware or software or developing it from company resources and then test the products in a test environment to see how well they operate and integrate with your existing IT architecture. If scrutiny goes well, an implementation plan including training end users and developing system documentation will be accomplished prior to incorporating and executing this system within our IT architecture.\r\nThe last process, systems maintenance consists of consistently monitoring and evaluating the newly utilize system. This too implys correcting errors and discrepancies not identified during the testing phase and continuously making system improvements, advancements and upgrades. The final area of information systems is management challenges. There are numerous challenges that our IT team whitethorn be approach with at Magnum Enterprises. One challenge is maneuvering our security concerns which involve several(prenominal) areas. For instance, our IT team call for be ever nimble and on the alert for potential competitors trying to or actually hacking into our systems to steal or reproach our data. Additionally, we may also be challenged with setting up re rigidions and fix down the network for personnel to only use the network and its software applications for official business. Ensuring that our software is controlled and that employees are not il juristicly making copies of software for personal use is another area of concern.\r\nPreventing virus attacks to our network and installing anti-virus software to diagnose and remove computer viruses is of utmost concern. Failure to maintain a unspoilt network can potentially halt our business from being productive and resulting in thousands of dollars in lost revenue. Additional challenges the IT team may be faced with may involve expanding our infrastructure and network to address our growing business. Ensuring our network provides our employees availability to the data they need, wheresoever they require it, regardless of their location will test our innovativeness. The company may not have a backup plan to allow it to operate effectively and efficiently in the event of a hale relocation. If that is the case, I will recommend to our management provide that we establish a continuity of operations plan enabling us to relocate with minimum conflic t to our business operations like a scorching site for temporary functionality.\r\nIn the dynamic world of IT we will al focuss be faced with challenges, however, utilizing IT and being on the leading edge of new IT systems provides our business with more benefits and makes our organization more effective and efficient. For example, IT can be used to improve and promote new business processes such as creating an automated inventory system which will save money in additional labor costs. Another use of IT in making it more efficient and effective is that utilize certain software programs enables us to identify and localise our top customers in terms of profitability to our business. In summary, IT enables our company to successfully plan, integrate, manage, and carry out strategies which lead to profit.\r\nPart II. Six months after you take over the lead IT management role at Magnum, the CIO, Ms. Rachel Heigl, is merry with your work. She has just attended a meeting of Magnumâ €™s executive committee (the committee comprised of the most senior managers of Magnum), where the CEO and Vice President of merchandise have indicated that Magnum’s mediocre e-business capabilities must be strengthened. As CIO, Ms. Heigl is given primary responsibility in astir(p) Magnum’s e-business performance. She in turn puts you in shiver of a small task hurtle comprised of vocalizations from the foodstuffing, operations, finance, and legal segments. In order to advance and improve Magnum’s e-business performance operations, it’s vital I establish a cohesive team with substitutes from the merchandising, operations, finance, and legal departments. Their arousal and perspective is necessary and essential in developing a way ahead and strategic plan for the future of our e-business department. Developing success with our e-business begins with trade the company.\r\n trade is concerned with developing and creating an innovative plan so th at the product or service can be promoted and sold. Promoting our products and serve are line and critical in attracting new customers as well as maintaining our current customer base. It is important that I develop an understanding of the selling role and how it can benefit by using Information Technology systems. Marketing information systems support well established and e-commerce processes that sustain major elements within the marketing function and is described as a continuing and interacting structure of people, equipment and procedures to gather, sort, analyze, evaluate, and distribute pertinent, incidentally and accurate information for use by marketing decision makers to improve their marketing planning, implementation, and control.\r\nThe major components of marketing information systems include interactive marketing, sales force automation, customer relationship management, sales management, product management, targeted marketing, and market research. Two of the seve n components I will be discussing are interactive marketing and customer relationship management. In our environment today, marketing information systems aid marketing personnel in a concoction of tasks associated with branding products and customer service initiatives. For instance, interactive marketing is largely dependent on utilizing the net profit, which permits the business and its customers and potential customers to become partners in developing, socializing, acquiring and advancing products and services. With the IT department enabling this type of communication, the company benefits from generating new ideas for other products and services as well as establishing fortified customer loyalty. Another area within the marketing information systems is Customer Relationship Management (CRM).\r\nThis incorporates and automates many customer service processes. It consists of utilizing an IT framework to construct, automate, and integrate marketing processes with the companyâ⠂¬â„¢s business operations. CRM is usually comprised of a software suite that allows a business to provide efficient, effective and reliable service to its customers. Additionally, CRM permits a company to identify and target their most important customers as well as facilitate real-time customization of products and services based on the customer’s wants and desires. arrest the marketing department’s views and concerns enables the IT department to implement and install an IT infrastructure that will be capable of supporting various information technologies. Some of the benefits that can be obtained from the marketing department are: an chance to increase sales and revenue, a chance to shake new market areas, 24/7 accessibility for the customer, and more flexibility and convenience for the customers.\r\nThe outturn and operations function is supported by manufacturing information systems. Manufacturing information systems are designed to be used specifically in an operations and production environment. Different types of manufacturing information systems consist of computer integrated manufacturing (CIM), process control, railroad car control and robotics. CIM involves using computers to control the total manufacturing process, from design to distribution, to produce produces products of the highest caliber. Process control involves utilizing computers to oversee and control continuing physical processes. Machine control consists of using a computer based system to direct the actions of a machine. Robotics involves designing, constructing, and building machines that have the intelligence of a computer and human like physical capabilities. It’s key I understand how the operations representative depends on these information systems to operate effectively as well as their expectations for these systems. Working together as a team will enable the IT and operations department to develop better ideas to increase the manufacturing and produc tion process.\r\nDeveloping an understanding of all the accounting and financial based systems within our business and discussing these systems with the finance representative enables our IT and finance departments to plan effectively when troubleshooting and performing upgrades. These systems include but are not limited to order processing, inventory control, accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll, general ledger, cash management, investment management, gravid budgeting and financial planning. The success of these systems is integrally connected with its information technology and services. For example, the order processing system â€Å"captures and processes customer orders and produces data needed for sales analysis and inventory control and the accounts payable system keeps track of data concerning purchases from and payments to suppliers. Communicating with the finance representative is essential in setting up or modifying these systems to meet the needs of our busine ss. Any interruption or degradation in service can lead to severe damage to the business and financial services that Magnum Enterprises relies on to function and operate.\r\nAs with any business, competitors are ever sounding for an advantage to get them ahead in their grouchy discipline or industry. Unfortunately, being extremely scrappy and ambitious can sometimes cloud your decision making capabilities to the point that you may be committing breakage privacy laws and monitoring and copyright violations. As the IT lead manager for Magnum Enterprises, I’m charged with ensuring our network infrastructure and IT systems are operating proficiently. However, when it comes to addressing privacy issues from an IT perspective, opinions and viewpoints from a legal expert are necessary. In regards to privacy, several websites accumulate usernames and passwords and personal information such as home addresses and phone numbers without authorization from users.\r\nApplying internet monitoring technology within the workplace raises concerns about where the boundaries lie between personal use and universe resource use. Copyright concerns and violations has become an issue with the development of the Internet and upgrades to technology. Discussing these concerns with a legal expert and implementing and adhering to strict guidelines will help prevent our company from committing these violations. In addition to the goals of strengthening the capabilities of the e-business, attention must be paid to some key technical challenges. Overseeing unassailable information throughout our business is extremely demanding to implement and maintain successfully. Key technical issues that may be encountered when re-engineering our e-business include privacy and confidentiality, authenticity, data rectitude, access control, availability and infrastructure. Privacy and confidentiality involves businesses protecting and securing personal information while being stored or trans mitted through email. This can be accomplished by utilizing encoding devices or firewalls.\r\nAuthentication is used to confirm an individual’s identity and during e-business transactions, the purchaser and buyer wants say-so that proper identity is established. A secure way to assist with confirming identity to both individuals is to utilize a virtual private network. Data integrity means the data is correct and has not been adapted while being stored or transmitted. The use of firewalls assists in preventing unauthorized users and safeguarding data. Another way to ensure data integrity is through the use of antivirus software which also aids in keeping your data alleviate from viruses. Access control exists when you’re authorizing certain individual’s permission to restricted systems or data. several(prenominal) measures that can help with access control include firewalls, access privileges, passwords, digital certificates and virtual private networks.\r\n approachability is an issue when customers and employers need information without any disruptions. regular Power Supply (UPS) systems, data backups and the use of anti-virus software assist with ensuring data is always available. Our e-business infrastructure constantly needs to be monitored to ensure its meeting the needs of our business. An infrastructure that is unable to consistently support the network traffic load can potentially cost our company thousands of dollars in lost sales. If the network is continually slow, increasing the speed of the network backbone will assist in providing faster and reliable support for our customers. In addition to increasing the speed of the network backbone, implementing cross-functional enterprise systems will assist in ameliorate critical business processes throughout Magnum enterprises. A final technical challenge is ensuring all of our systems are compatible and can operate on several antithetical hardware platforms. By having this capa bility, our operating costs from a technical refresh perspective will decrease. magic spell strengthening capabilities and addressing technical issues, there are management challenges within the e-business that must be addressed.\r\nAs discussed earlier, our team must be vigilant in addressing security challenges such as hacking into our systems, software theft, and protecting our software applications. In addition to security issues, there are ethical concerns that must be addressed. Privacy has always been a serious and contentious issue amongst employers and employees. For instance, computer monitoring is considered by many personnel to be an infringement on the employee’s privacy and shouldn’t be allowed. However, employers argue that since the computer is a company owned resource, they should be allowed to monitor the work of their employer. In reality, many employers are concerned as to whether or not the employee is actually working and producing or just goofin g off and surfing the internet. Utilizing IT equipment at work has been mentioned to receive a variety of health issues which management must address.\r\nFor example, if your job consists of being in front of a computer all day, some of the health problems you may experience damage to the neck and arm muscles, pump strain, carpal tunnel syndrome, job stress, poor conduct and poor circulation. Resolutions to some of these health concerns can be through the science of ergonomics. The objective of ergonomics is to bone and create safe health work conditions with the goal of decreasing health issues and increasing employee morale and work productivity. If Magnum Enterprises has customers internationally, they also may be faced with political, geo-economic and ethnical challenges. From a political concern, there are countries that have restrictions regulating or denying the transfer of data crosswise their borders which can potentially result in customers or businesses from having t o pay import or export fees.\r\nGeo-economic concerns involve issues such as identifying and locating personnel with IT skills to work at remote sites and communicating with personnel across all 24 time zones. Cultural challenges â€Å"include differences in languages, cultural interests, religions, customs, social attitudes, and political philosophies”. For example, if Magnum Enterprises was conducting a business transaction via a Video teleconference it would be disrespectful to look them in the middle when introducing yourself. Before meeting an international customer, it would prudent to review their customs and courtesies to ensure a smooth business relationship. Improving Magnum’s e-business performance faces several challenges. Consulting with key department personnel from operations, marketing, finance and legal as well as addressing technical and management obstacles will assist me in charting a plan to put our e-business on the right track towards success.\ r\n'