Impact of Information Communication Technology on Business Firms

In this report information and communications technology, we will analyse These suppliers are eventually specialized in the popular, useful and attractive items for all the vehicle owners. We will discuss  each and every activity of the management and business administrative like the marketing, customer services, warehousing, purchasing, and sales and staff payroll are easily carried out with extremely little utilization of ICT or information and communications technology.

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Auto Accessories Case Study
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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1. Introduction
AA or Auto Accessories is a specific small organization that is responsible for
distributing as well as selling various accessories for vehicle from various overseas suppliers.
These suppliers are eventually specialized in the popular, useful and attractive items for all
the vehicle owners. These could either be cameras for recording traffic, camera view of the
parking assistance and many more (Bhattacharyya 2015). This particular organization has
eventually experienced a specific growth of business in the last two years. Recently, each and
every activity of the management and business administrative like the marketing, customer
services, warehousing, purchasing, and sales and staff payroll are easily carried out with
extremely little utilization of ICT or information and communications technology. This
organization is suffering from few issues and thus they have appointed a business analyst.
The following e portfolio outlines a brief discussion on the case study of Auto
Accessories or AA. The business case will be properly mentioned here with the business
problem, various opportunities for improvement and a significant solution for it. Moreover,
the stakeholder analysis will also be done with relevant data and identification of
stakeholders. The business context and the business processes will be provided here.
Furthermore, a specific system solution is suggested for them to solve all the problems.
2. Business Case
The organization of Auto Accessories or AA sells and distributes various vehicle
accessories from overseas suppliers who are specialized in attractive and famous items for
various owners of vehicles (Fleisher and Bensoussan 2015). The items are mainly colourful
decorative car stickers, traffic recording camera, parking assistance camera viewer and many
more. This particular organization has subsequently experienced a sharp growth in business

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in last two years and recently and they are involved in several activities like warehousing,
purchasing, customer service, marketing, staff payroll and sales. This is done with the
incorporation of information and communication technology (Zott and Amit 2013). The
administrators have noticed the importance; however finds it extremely tough in marketing
the products online when all the same kind of business has started. In the present days, a
specific price tag is being put on every product for sales purpose on shelves with isles. Any
customer requires help in locating the products. Excessive time is taken for staff members in
helping the customers regarding their requests. This is the main problem for this business.
The moment any product is sold, it is being recorded on the journal roll at the sales
terminal. The receipt is printed for the customer and the stocktaking or reorder is done
properly. The reordering items are to be ordered. All the customers want to know the
availability of any item, and for this they have to come to the store (Hilton and Platt 2013).
They require an effective utilization and as well as management of information technology.
The owners of the organization consider the requirement for staying competitive for the
business growth for properly retaining the new as well as the regular customers. A proper
technological solution is required here for solving the problems.
The above mentioned business problem could be easily solved with the help of an
information and communication technology for the improvement of their technology (Van
Der Aalst, La Rosa and Santoro 2016). It is the responsibility of the business analyst to
properly analyse all the problems of the business and thus to execute the business processes
effectively. They have taken up information and communication technology for their
business. Although, the utilization of information and communication technology is
extremely less in the business, they still are enjoying various benefits of this technology.
They have an opportunity to improve subsequently and thus the advantages of the

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information and communication technology are present (Dumas et al. 2013). The most
significant advantages of the ICT for any specific business are as follows:
i) Better Decision Making: The first and the foremost advantage of information and
communication technology within the business of Auto Accessories is better decision
making. The systems of ICT would eventually allow them for storing, processing, analyzing
and finally sharing of huge amount of data (Zur Muehlen and Recker 2013). The information
that is eventually available from the corporate data helps to enable all the employees or
managers in taking decisions accurately and quickly for managing the operations effectively
and efficiently. Moreover, the response time is very less for any type of business threat or
opportunities. The network for communication allows the various decision makers in various
locations for working together easily and promptly for the purpose of taking joint decisions.
ii) Increasing Manufacturing Productivity: When the business processes would be
automated completely, the organization of Auto Accessories or AA would be able to increase
their manufacturing productivity (Rosemann and vom Brocke 2015). Since this organization
is responsible for manufacturing various automobile parts, they should increase their
productivity. With the solution of information and communication technology within the
production line of this organization, the computer sided design would be able to help the
company in successfully reducing the set up times and thus improving the accuracy of
manufacturing products. The employees would be able to spend extremely lesser time on
remanufacturing or reworking the products (Hammer 2015). The access to the manufacturing
information would help the managers in planning the production more efficiently and hence
making good use of all resources or diminishing the lead times.
iii) Improving Customer Service: The main problem that they are facing is the
dealing with the customer services. The quality of the customer service is the most significant

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factor for any business. The organizations thus utilize the solutions of information and
communication technology for offering fast response for high standards to the customers
(Van Dongen, Dijkman and Mendling 2013). Auto Accessories or AA being a manufacturing
company, would be able to provide excellent services to the customer. The customers can
easily know about the available products and services and they do not need to ask the
customer agents in this scenario. The product databases could be easily updated with the help
of smart phones with safe and secured Internet connectivity.
iv) Great Collaboration: Information and communication technology also helps to
collaborate efficiently and effectively (Van der Aalst 2013). Since, the organization or AA
comprises of various departments, a proper collaboration should be present for them to
subsequently maintain progress on various vital projects. The organization could be able to
diminish the total time of the project and hence get the newer products in the market quite
fast. The organization is supposed to get a better competitive advantage for this scenario
(Harmon 2014). Thus, the organization should implement information and communication
technology within their business.
The above mentioned advantages clearly define the important aspects of this
technology for the organization and thus financial performance would be improvised for Auto
Accessories.
3. Stakeholder Analysis with Data Collection and Knowledge Source
Stakeholder can be defined as any person, organization or group, which comprises of
various interests or concerns within the organization (Laguna and Marklund 2013). The
stakeholders could affect or could be affected by the various actions, policies and objectives
of the specific organization. The most significant examples of the major stakeholders for any
business are employees, creditors, employees, government, directors, owners or community

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form where the business has drawn all the resources. These stakeholders are responsible for
any type of change or important decision of the organization. The impacts can either be
positive or negative (Chang 2016). The organization is required to reduce the costs and also
plan a round of layoffs for the organization. The organization of Auto Accessories comprises
of various stakeholders. The various stakeholders of this particular organization are as
follows:
i) Customers: The first and the foremost stakeholder of this organization is customer.
They are responsible for the overall growth of the organization and they could not survive
without the help of these customers. The customers select the products and also determine the
quality of them (Harmon 2015). If they would provide a negative review for the products, the
organization would definitely suffer through various problems. However, if they would
provide good review for the product, the company would become extremely popular.
ii) Shareholders: The second type of stakeholders for Auto Accessories is
shareholder. These shareholders mainly own the organization. They have put their main
capital in the business and thus they have every right to know about all the changes or
alterations in the business (La Rosa et al. 2013). If they will not approve any change or
alteration, such changes will not be incorporated. The shareholders will be under huge profit
if the customers would be happy with the products.
iii) Employees: The next important stakeholder for the AA or Auto Accessories is
employee. The employees are those people, who eventually create as well as deliver all the
products or services, which the customers would consume (Vom Brocke et al. 2014). When
the employees would be providing their best work, the organization will be in huge success
and thus these employees are the most important stakeholder of the company.

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iv) Suppliers: The next important stakeholder is the suppliers. They are responsible
for supplying various things to the organization. If these raw materials will not be supplied to
the organization, they would be suffering in major problems from lack of raw materials.
These above mentioned stakeholders eventually focus on the various outcomes. There
are various important things that help them in deriving the data from the inputs. The first
factor is their roles (Vukšić, Bach and Popovič 2013). The role of this stakeholder is
extremely important. The second factor is the general requirement and their knowledge. The
knowledge is external for the internal or external stakeholders and is addresses within the
knowledge audit.
4. Business Context
The organization of Auto Accessories or AA is popular for selling as well as
distributing various vehicle accessories for its customers (Glykas 2013). The supplier of this
organization is from overseas. They mainly sell or distribute car stickers, camera for
recording traffic, camera viewer for parking assistance and similar products. The stocktaking
as well as the reorder of the products is done manually and thus the organization faces major
problems due to this. Moreover, when the customers wish to know about the availability of
the items, they require admin assistance and thus this become extremely time consuming
(Tang, Pee and Iijima 2013). Thus, they require a specific technology, which would be
helpful for them to solve each and every above mentioned problem and be effective.
The system solution that would be perfect for them is the incorporation of an online
system. This online system or database would be storing all the information regarding the
products and these customers will be selecting the items and thus a list would be made. This
online system would sort all the items and will also show the location of the products. When
this list will be prepared, the mode of payment would be selected (Harmon 2015). The

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incorporation of this type of technology in the business of AA, would easily solve the
problem of involvement of extra staffs and excess time. For the problem of manual
stocktaking and reorder, this database will be an important solution. Hence, the two problems
would be solved.
Figure 1: Data Management by Database
(Source: Van Der Aalst, La Rosa and Santoro 2016)
5. Business Processes
The business is the proper collection of interlinked and structured activities or actions,
which produces any specific product or service for the customers (Van der Aalst 2013). Any
specific business process is visualized or displayed as the flowchart with various interleaving
decision points. The business process can also be the process matrix of the activity sequence
that contains relevant data. The various advantages of utilizing the business processes mainly
involve higher customer satisfaction and improvised agility in reacting for the changes in
market. The process oriented companies significantly break down all the constraints of the
structural departments for avoidance of functional silos (Rosemann and vom Brocke 2015).

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Auto Accessories comprises of various important business processes within their business
and thus these processes should be a part of the system. The various business processes of the
organization of Auto Accessories or AA are given below:
i) Sales and Marketing: The first and the foremost business process of this particular
organization is sales and marketing. The sales can be defined as the activities or operations
involved included in the promotion as well as selling of the services and goods (Van Dongen,
Dijkman and Mendling 2013). The marketing of this organization refer to the procedure or
technique for promoting, distributing and selling of the services and products. The main
aspects of the sales and marketing mainly include responsibilities of every group that are
collectively linked and the marketing has the most important role of the sales.
ii) Accounting and Technology: The second important business process of this
organization of Auto Accessories is accounting and technology. Accounting eventually
operates on the technology and thus this particular process should be executed properly (Zott
and Amit 2013). The accounting process is the most important process for any business as it
deals with all types of accounting procedures and thus this process is the most vital processes
of the rest. Moreover, the technology of the organization should also be maintained properly
by proper security measures.
iii) Product Distribution: The third business process of this organization is product
distribution. AA is responsible for selling and distributing all the vehicle accessories and thus
selling and distribution of the products should be properly.
iv) Management, Human resources and Finance: The next important business
process of Auto Accessories is management, human resources and finance (Hilton and Platt
2013). The entire control of the business or human resources sector is done by the HR

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department. All the financial transactions are controlled by finance department and the
employees are managed by management department.
v) Quality and Product or Service Delivery: The final process of business of the
organization of Auto Accessories is quality delivery and products or services delivery. These
products or services are extremely important for the organization as these are responsible for
bringing out the best of the quality and success in the organization (Fleisher and Bensoussan
2015).
Figure 2: Business Process Management
(Source: Zur Muehlen and Recker 2013)
6. Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that AA or Auto
Accessories is one of the most popular and important organizations for car manufacturing
parts who are specialized in all types of items like car stickers, camera for traffic recording,

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camera viewer and many others. The stocktaking and the reorder are done manually by
simply checking all the items that are remaining on shelves and recording the items that to be
ordered. The most effective utilization or management of information technology is solely
required here. They have appointed a business analyst or BA for their organization with the
purpose of analysis of the organization or the domain of business and thus assessing the
model of business or the integration with technology. There is opportunity for the
improvement and the business solution for applying ICT in the business. The above
mentioned e portfolio has clearly provided a brief description on the case study of Auto
Accessories with relevant details. The stakeholder analysis is done with identification of
stakeholders and proper knowledge sources for data collection. Moreover, the business
processes are provided for the organization. A proper system solution is provided to them for
solving all the problems they are facing in the business.

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