Strategic Information Systems: A Case Study of Colt Group

This report examines the strategic implementation of information systems within the Colt Group, a leading metal manufacturing organization. It analyzes the company's business processes, requirements, and the selection of SAP SE as an accounting information system. The report further explores the benefits of using technology to improve business efficiency, potential security risks, and mitigation strategies. It provides a comprehensive understanding of how information systems can be strategically leveraged to enhance organizational performance, security, and sustainability.

STRATEGIC INFORMATION
SYSTEMS

Table of Contents
Introduction..................................................................................................................................................1
1. Define business processes....................................................................................................................2
2. Develop business requirements............................................................................................................3
3. Determine the systems requirements...................................................................................................4
4. Software and vendor selection.............................................................................................................5
5. Determine at least three ways which organizations utilize such technologies to improve business
efficiency.................................................................................................................................................8
6. Evaluate the level of efficiency of the technology implementation....................................................9
7. Examine potential security risks and data breaches.............................................................................9
8. Provide guidelines on how these risks could be mitigated................................................................10
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................12
References..................................................................................................................................................13

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Business process for routine operations.......................................................................................3
Figure 2: Features of SAP system: GUI with graphs and charts.................................................................6
Figure 3: Asset balancing.............................................................................................................................7

Introduction
Information systems in an organization can be defined as the computer software those can be used to
store, process and share the information for the proper management and decision making. They can add
efficiency to the organization for automation and high performance. Presented report will discuss the
business processes and requirements of the Colt Group which is a leading organization in the metal
manufacturing. The organization provides products and services for climate control and natural
ventilation along with smoke control. The report will determine the system requirements and discuss the
software and vendor selection process. It will also discuss the ways in which the organization can use
the technology to meet the goal. Also efficiency level of the technology to support the organization,
security threats and potential solutions to the data breached will be discussed effectively.
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1. Define business processes
Business processes can be defined as the set of the actions to achieve the desired outcomes in the
business growth, profitability, sustainability and competitive scope. The Colt Group has business across
75 countries and headquarter is situated in Hampshire. The organization has large manufacturing and
sale of the products to the customers and in such cases, it is crucial to manage the financial resources
effectively to lead with high profitability and proper decision making. The organization has following
main business processes those also consume a big capital in investments:
Resource management: The management of the organization has role to communicate with other
departments like marketing, production and sales to collect the information on the work and provide the
required resources to them to achieve the business goals. Recruitments and selection, reporting to top
management and allocation of the resources along with handling of internal assets and conflicts are
some of the major works associated with resource management (Van Der Aalst et al, 2016).
Production: The most of the cost is associated with the production process where the organization has to
order the raw material, design the product framework with the help of the skilled and experienced
employees and then prepare the physical product. The production process has involvement of the
purchase and maintenance of the machines and programs to meet the goal in effective manner. Also
there is need of consistent human resources to execute the production operations.
Inventory management: Cost is also required to manage the inventory, load and store the products and
transfer them to warehouse or clients. This business process has to include the cost of the operations,
labour for product loading and shifting and resources to control the inventory incorporate to production
(Laudon and Laudon, 2016). Inventory management has to record the product distribution among the
warehouses and clients and prepare the reports for decision making at top management.
Accounting: It is the foremost process in the business which has counting for each penny. It has control
and coordination with other departments and business functions for the financial needs. It allocate
capital, monitor utilization and report the management for the profitability or loss with specific
operation or entire business model.
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The entire organizational business process model is control on the financial capabilities but guided on
the decision making of top management in Colt to meet the market scopes and opportunities (Pearlson et
al, 2016). The organization executes the business processes in the following manner.
Figure 1: Business process for routine operations
(Source: self created)
2. Develop business requirements
The organization has branches at multiple locations those need to the controlled and managed from the
head quarter. The organization has requirements to control the funding and investments in the business
as it is the core of the business to achieve the continuance and growth. In context of the capital, the
organization has following major requirements those must be addressed for high profitability and easy
decision making for competitive benefits:
Centralization of management: The organization has requirement of the centralization of the
management as it enables to control the finance more effectively. The organization has requirement that
it is connected to the branches as well as their departments to control the financial flow and meet the
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desired outcomes. Centralization is required to reduce the efforts, ensure the high availability of the
information and achieve the accuracy (Rosemann and vom Brocke, 2015).
Effective decision making: The organizational leaders have to select the appropriate strategy for the
competitive benefits through the analysis of the practices and historical results. For that, it is essential
that archive records and results are available or documented to analysis. Also newly collected
information from the market and business aspects is available to the organization to meet the
requirements. Decision making also can be boosted with the properly documented and formatted content
so that it can be easily shared or communicate among the users.
Standardization: The organization has to follow the legal and regulatory framework of the country in
which branches are working. In such conditions, the organization has to report the income, net
profitability and growth to the government for the taxation and other purpose. Therefore, there is need of
a system which can boost the organizational operations for the data management and finance control
(Langer, 2016). Standard approaches can be followed with the use of the information system. It can save
the time and cost along with efforts for high accuracy and reliability.
Easy communication and management: scattered business operations have involvement of the other
employees and clients to meet the goal and in such cases, it becomes complex for the organization to
manage the communication with high non-repudiation services. Also, management of the information
access and sharing under the constraint permission and access level is complex task. The organization
has requirement to manage the data as well as finance with ease of practices.
3. Determine the systems requirements
From the business processes and requirements, it can be observed that the organization has requirement
of an accounting information system which can help to manage the financial capabilities among the
users, departments and various business functions. An accounting information system can be defined as
the computer program which can be used to track the financial activities through the information
technology sources. The information is further used by the decision makers in the strategic growth of the
organization. Therefore, accounting information system in the Colt organization has following
requirements.
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Technical setup: To install and manage the accounting information system in the organization, there is
need of technical setup according to software version and vendor specification. However, there is need
of computing system with adequate features so that the organization can install and run the desired
system to meet the goal of information management (Leon, 2014). Technical setup has consideration of
the software and hardware for the requirement and it also covers the setup in the environment. A well
structured workplace, network system to connect computers to each other and proper conditions to work
on system.
Expertise: The organization has need of the expertise to use the system. The system can be utilized
properly with the required skills and capabilities in the employees. The system has requirement that the
user actions and activities on the system are effective to generate the desired data and has no intention to
compromise the security or reliability of the system. Expertise to resolve the issues, understand the
operations and feed the data for decision making is essential in the business.
Transaction and records: A system works properly to support the business only if it has adequate data
availability and permissions. The organization has to feed the data in the system on the regular basis so
that it can be used to fetch it on demand and generate the decision for the monthly or weekly reports
(Blount et al, 2016). Various transactions and business records are required to express in the accounting
information system so that the organization can make decisions for strategies.
4. Software and vendor selection
The organization has availability of the various vendors and their software versions to meet the
requirements for an accounting information system but the organization has to select the system with
consideration of the present requirements, future scopes and cost and time as maintenance factors on
system. The organization can use SAP SE as the accounting information system in the organization as it
is designed to meet the organizational requirements for financial and relationship management. The
organization has to select the software for the following reasons:
Procurement and Inventory Management
It helps the organizations to achieve the control and management of the entire business during the
establishment and growing state. Raw material and product components are can be managed effectively
under the procurement management which also includes requisitions, invoices, and payments. The
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system can be used to manage the inventory among various storage location and consolidations with
management of the strong relationship (Jakowski and Anthony, 2016). The organization can manage
acquisition of products, delivery, and storage of supplies with high ease. Account payable process and
real time monitoring and reports are some of the great features to control the inventory in manufacturing
industry.
Manufacturing and sales
The organizational requirements for the manufacturing and sales can be handled easily with the help of
the system. It can manage the schedules, cost, time and other requirements during the production so that
procurement and ordering cycles can be lead with high profitability. The organization can use the more
accurate estimations and reporting to boost the business with minimum efforts to handle the operations.
It also helps to reduce the errors and production defeats through the proper estimation of the
requirements during decision making process.
Figure 2: Features of SAP system: GUI with graphs and charts
(Source: sap.com)
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Human factor
SAP has most of the functions in the automated manner so that there is less need of the human resources
to manage the operations. The organization can use the software to automate the routine accounting
operations for the data collection and processing (Mu et al, 2015). The organization can use the system
in payroll and taxation with high accuracy. Also the user interface and processing are simple and good
enough to meet the user skill level in small or enterprise level organizations.
Financial reporting
The organization has benefit to manage the financial ledgers and records so that it can be used further to
make the decisions. The organization can use the system to collect and process the data from the
multiple sources and business functions and process the decisions to support the strategic growth
(Langer, 2016). Easy and accurate reporting helps to lead with high profitability.
Besides the advanced features and supports from the software, the vendor of SAP SE has critical
services for the organization. For example, Vendor has low cost in comparison of the other software in
the market and provides the timely updates for new features and functions in the software or accounting
process. Also vendor has good support for installation, maintenance and upgrade besides of the expertise
to be creative and innovative in the software versions.
Figure 3: Asset balancing
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(Source: Sap.com)
5. Determine at least three ways which organizations utilize such technologies to improve business
efficiency
Competition is increasing and boosting the organizations for the more accurate strategic planning and
implementation for profitability. The organizations are moving toward the computer-defined methods
for the accounting and data management as it helps them to increase their efficiency for the market
scope. Colt as a manufacturing organization also has to improve the business efficiency to meet more
customers and establish the market values with high satisfaction. The organization can use the
technology of data management and accounting in the following manner to achieve the benefits:
To automate operations with accuracy: The businesses are saving time and efforts with the use of the
accounting and information management systems because such systems can be configured for the
automatic operations on the basis of the defined rules or commands. For example, in manual system, the
organization has to insert the information of the product, employees or customers on the forms and then
to prepare the invoices (Galliers and Leidner, 2014). Also, the information is multiple times copied to
save into documents or to share with others. Now, the computerized system has reduced the erroneous
practices to manage the data and it can be automate once the information is partially guided from the
users. Invoice can be created automatically according to the taxation rates and other constraints.
To manage data access: The traditional approaches has only physical security on the data sources but the
modern computer defined data management has physical as well as logical security on the data so that
unauthorized users can be prevented to access the information. Data access can be managed and
processed more effectively to achieve the goal of the data confidentiality and security.
To cost effective scalability: The businesses might be grow in upcoming time to more number of the
users and locations so that the organization can use the technology to save the cost on the business
operations and scalability scope (Arvidsson et al, 2014). For example, the organization can scale to the
next level of the business without further making any changes in the information system or accounting
system. Also it has less interference of the human resources to manage the information.
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6. Evaluate the level of efficiency of the technology implementation
SAP SE can add a good efficiency to the business to achieve the competitive goals and benefits. It can
be used at the various departments to manage the information and finance. For example, at present, the
employees in the Colt organization are liable to report to the management for the progress and
operational requirements and for that, they have to communicate physically with management
department. With the help of SAP, the employees in the organization will be capable to communicate to
the management team in real time and share their data effectively with them for real time monitoring
and decision making (Blount et al, 2016). The organization can achieve efficiency in the data sharing
and communication whereas authenticity of the user will be increased. In this manner, it can save the
time, cost and efforts on the communication mediums and practices.
The organizational has critical requirements that decision making should be clear, guided and accurate
to support the strategic planning. The system can be used to generate the accurate or most closely
estimations for the administrators and management team members in the business. It can support higher
decision making process through the documentation, reporting and presentation of the information.
Decision making can be made fast and accurate with proper analysis of the collected data.
It provides coordination among the employees to manage the business operations through the data
availability and sharing of the work progress. The implementation of the technology in the business can
add efficiency for the semi automated system for data management with high accuracy, speed to process
and store data and deliver cost effective security (Van Der Aalst et al, 2016). The organization also can
achieve the efficiency to visualize the information for the better decision making and avail the data more
effectively to the users.
7. Examine potential security risks and data breaches
The technology has enabled the business to meet their goals more effectively but it also opened the door
of security risks and data breaches for them. In other words, technology has replaced the traditional data
damage and theft activities with modern security risks on information or data storage. The organization
can face the following potential security risks:
Unauthorized access: It is possible that poor configuration of the system or the environment can allow
the users to access the software data stored on the servers or local system. The unauthorized access to
the system can allow the users to take confidential information on the financial capabilities and resource
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utilization which might be profitable for the competitors to attract the market (Cassidy, 2016).
Unauthorized access to the data stored with application can generate the loss for the competitive growth
and benefits.
Data theft and removal: The system can be used to theft the data from the storage or remove the data
with the authentication details of the actual users. Accounting and information management systems
uses the user authentication for the update and data modification but data can be theft during
transmission or storage where it can be deleted from the storage to prevent the organization for
profitability.
Damage to system and environment: The application can be corrupted so that the organization has lower
productivity or performance along with security risks because the data being processed on the
application can be transmitted to the other systems (Whittington, 2014). Also system and environmental
conditions for the proper functioning can be damaged to affect the business to achieve the goal or
performance.
Infect code or data: The stored data or the code in the system can be infected to achieve the benefits. For
example, code can be inserted in the system to monitor the user activities, confidential authentication
details and acquire the access to the data sources. This also can be used to reduce the usability of the
system to manage the data effectively.
In many cases, the organization has data breaches through the man in middle attack where attacker can
collect the information in between the sender and receiver. In such cases, the organization as well as the
employees has no information about the attack and the theft information can be used to meet personal
objectives. Also eavesdropping attacks can reduce the data security through the unauthorized access to
the information. Virus and malware are used to target the users those at distance location to collect
information or to reduce the productivity of the system.
8. Provide guidelines on how these risks could be mitigated
The organization can implement proper security on SAP SE system to ensure continuance of the
business. The risks and data breaches can be mitigated with the following practices in the organization
when considering the technological implementation:
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Implement rules for user: The organization has to constraint the user access and permissions according
to their role and group so that security can be enforced on the data. User permission management on the
files and applications can helps to ensure the security on data and prevent the data breaches on storage.
Use backup: It is recommended that the organization has never dependency on the single copy of the
data as it can be lost due to malfunctioning of the device, user intentional or accidental delete or natural
disasters. In such cases, the secondary copy of the information can help the organization to resolve the
risks or mitigate the impacts (Fennelly, 2016).
Implement security: The organization can use surveillance system to provide the physical security to the
devices those containing the critical data. Physical security is essential to provide the more reliable
security from the users and others. Security also can be enforced with the help of the software defined
security. For example, password based authentication can be used on the software to connect with other
devices or server in the organization to fetch the production or customer related data. The organization
can use anti-virus and firewall like programs those can provide the security to the data sources against
the unwanted access or modification (Galliers and Leidner, 2014).
Dedicated and encrypted data transmission: The organization can boost the dedicated communication
between two users so that isolation from the internet or other users can be achieved. It helps to protect
the data during the transmission. Also the encrypted form of the data can be used to make it nearly
impossible for the attacker to use the data.
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Conclusion
The report has been concluded that the organization can use the information systems to meet the
performance, security and reliability in the organization. It has been concluded that the organization can
use accounting information system in various departments so that information can be used effectively in
the decision making process. It also can be used to manage the finance in the business for higher
profitability. It is concluded that management also can consider the potential risks and their solutions for
the sustainable operations in the business. The report has been discussed various security risks on the
system and discussed how the organization can mitigate them.
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References
Books and Journals
 Arvidsson, V., Holmström, J. and Lyytinen, K., 2014. Information systems use as strategy
practice: A multi-dimensional view of strategic information system implementation and use.
The
Journal of Strategic Information Systems,
23(1), pp.45-61.
 Blount, Y., Abedin, B., Vatanasakdakul, S. and Erfani, S., 2016. Integrating enterprise resource
planning (SAP) in the accounting curriculum: a systematic literature review and case
study.
Accounting Education,
25(2), pp.185-202.
 Cassidy, A., 2016.
A practical guide to information systems strategic planning. CRC press.
 Fennelly, L., 2016.
Effective physical security. Butterworth-Heinemann.
 Galliers, R.D. and Leidner, D.E. eds., 2014.
Strategic information management: challenges and
strategies in managing information systems. Routledge.
 Jakowski, J., SE, S. and Anthony, D., 2016. SAP User Experience and Landscape Architecture in
the light of Enterprise Architecture.
 Langer, A.M., 2016. Assessing Business Requirements. In
Guide to Software Development (pp.
21-36). Springer, London.
 Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016.
Management information system. Pearson Education
India.
 Leon, A., 2014.
Enterprise resource planning. McGraw-Hill Education.
 Mu, E., Kirsch, L.J. and Butler, B.S., 2015. The assimilation of enterprise information system:
An interpretation systems perspective.
Information & Management,
52(3), pp.359-370.
 Pearlson, K.E., Saunders, C.S. and Galletta, D.F., 2016.
Managing and Using Information
Systems, Binder Ready Version: A Strategic Approach. John Wiley & Sons.
 Rosemann, M. and vom Brocke, J., 2015. The six core elements of business process
management. In
Handbook on business process management 1 (pp. 105-122). Springer Berlin
Heidelberg.
 Van Der Aalst, W.M., La Rosa, M. and Santoro, F.M., 2016. Business process management.
 Whittington, R., 2014. Information systems strategy and strategy-as-practice: a joint agenda.
The
Journal of Strategic Information Systems,
23(1), pp.87-91.
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