COIT20274 - AAHS Information System Recommendation for Improvement

This report provides an analysis and recommendation for an information system for Animal After Hour Services (AAHS), a veterinary hospital facing challenges due to expansion. The report defines information systems and their importance, identifies business and system problems such as lack of data integration across branches and inefficient communication, and outlines the information requirements of AAHS, including customer, supplier, animal, and employee data. It recommends beneficial information systems like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Decision Support Systems (DSS), emphasizing the strategic use of the Internet, intranet, and extranet for improved communication and data management. The report also addresses change management strategies, security, and ethical issues related to the implementation of the new system, recommending measures to ensure data confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The report concludes with a final recommendation for AAHS to adopt an integrated information system to streamline operations and enhance service quality.

Running Head: AAHS INFORMATION SYSTEM RECOMMENDATION
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Animal After Hour Services (AAHS) Information System Recommendation
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Contents

2AAHS INFORMATION SYSTEM RECOMMENDATION
Executive Summary........................................................................................................ 2
Information Systems and their Importance......................................................................3
Business and system problems........................................................................................ 5
Information requirements of AAHS................................................................................6
Beneficial Types of Information Systems........................................................................7
Strategic use of the Internet, intranet and extra-net.........................................................7
Change management....................................................................................................... 8
Security and Ethical Issues.............................................................................................. 9
Recommendation............................................................................................................ 9
References.................................................................................................................... 10
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3AAHS INFORMATION SYSTEM RECOMMENDATION
Executive Summary
All around the world, businesses start small and after a while grow to expected or
even unexpected levels. This has been true for the AAHS; When the business began,
there was no need for an all-around information system to help them manage all
customer and services details on the go. The business has grown to a level where it's
pretty hard to manage all information across the branches and all the more than 45
employees. In this paper, I am going to highlight the definition of information
systems, its usage and value to AAHS and how it will improve the services and
operations of the AAHS business.
Information Systems and their Importance
An information system is basically a software program that assists individuals
and businesses to organize and make a good analysis of data. Information systems
bring about the possibility to get answers to questions and solve any problem that is
related to the mission of the business (Laudon and Laudon, 2016).
Utilizing Information systems will definitely bring about many advantages to
Animal After Hour Services as opposed to disadvantages. Several kinds of
information systems exist for any kind of small business. One example is the
Management Information System that is mainly concerned with the internal sources
of data in the business. First this MIS is able to perfectly organize data. The excellent
arrangement of information is crucial for any business that is trying to succeed.
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4AAHS INFORMATION SYSTEM RECOMMENDATION
Having a good information system, the management of Animal After Hour Services
will be well organized, present quick solutions and make faster decisions under any
circumstances. Dr Terry King will be able to manage all their information and
improve the execution of their business processes (Chatterjee et al., 2016). The
information will be stored in a central database available all around the branches of
AAHS.
Having an Information System also Brings about a positive perspective on the
future of the business. Any entrepreneur who aspires to improve must establish a
broader perspective using an excellent management information system. This is well
achieved by two types of information systems; the Decision Support System and
Knowledge management System. Businesses all the world over can hardly compete
with other successful businesses without a well-designed and coordinated information
system.
By utilizing an information system, the latest trend follow up in the business will
be possible. This is a perfect way to accelerate the business progress. One will not
have to spend a great deal of time and finances on activities that are otherwise
unnecessary, but one will be able to focus on the sole objective.
Using Information systems also makes it pretty convenient to keeping data a
business will need in a few or many years to come. A good instance is how successful
newspapers store their pictures in a secure data archive. This data archive is then
accessed later to find the pictures whenever there is a need. This is also true for
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5AAHS INFORMATION SYSTEM RECOMMENDATION
Animal data. All the records in every branch will be kept for use in the future. This is
perfectly achieved by the Management Information Systems (Pearlson Saunders and
Galletta, 2016).
Business and system problems
From the case study, Animal After Hour Services is being faced by a couple of
business and system issues especially because of its expansion into Jindalee and
Carrara. One of the business issues faced by AAHS is the fact that Dr. Terry is not
sure how he is going to implement a software product that will enable him and his
nephew to effectively manage the entire business processes in all branches without
any unnecessary duplication. This is not a good position in business since the sole
proprietor is not sure what costs they will incur in order to solve the problem at hand.
Another problem faced by the enterprise is the issue of having common data across all
the branches. Currently, all the branches utilize stand-alone systems that do not
communicate with each other; in that, every branch has different patient treatment
records. When a patient is taken in on one branch during a certain time, their data is
only kept in that branch alone. This does not provide the ability for the veterinarians
and other clinical staff to go through the patient historical records in order to come up
with the right medication for the patients.
The data across all the sites is also not secured since they are not currently
utilizing the latest security technologies. Furthermore, considering the fact that Dr.
Terry has now employed more than 50 workers for his enterprise, he currently does
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6AAHS INFORMATION SYSTEM RECOMMENDATION
not have an efficient system for rolling out payments for his employees. This position
may sometimes bring about omissions or wrong salary calculations in the enterprise’s
payroll. One more issue faced by AAHS is the lack of an efficient communication
platform with its customers. Currently, the customers do not have a way of viewing
their past records or even update their personal details (Stair and Reynolds, 2017).
Information requirements of AAHS
The key information requirements for AAHS comprise of customer data, supplier
information, animal data and employee information. These are the four major
information requirements that a new information System will need in order to solve
all of the current issues faced by the enterprise. Customer data includes personal data
of its customers, their location etc; this will be utilized by the information system to
track the behavior of AAHS customers. This will also be utilized by for creation of an
online portal for the customers to view their bills, status and many other useful
information provided by AAHS. This will surely bring competition to any other
similar business around AAHS. Supplier information is also important for perfect
analysis of supplier bills by the business (Simkin, Norman and Rose, 2014.). This
helps in the final run of financial reports by the Information system. Moreover, in
order to ensure quality services for all the animals admitted at AAHS, the records of
the animals (animal data) is very important. This will help in analyzing the perfect and
most efficient treatment techniques for various animals and also find out what is the
best treatment after making consideration of the past medical history of the animals.
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7AAHS INFORMATION SYSTEM RECOMMENDATION
This strategy or information requirement will definitely improve service since there
will be total customer satisfaction due to a consistent problem solving history.
Beneficial Types of Information Systems
As mentioned earlier in this paper, various types of information systems can be
used by AAHS to solve various business issues. In order to ease the process of making
decisions, a decision support system needs to come in handy. This business support
system does not operate individually. AAHS needs first to implement an Enterprise
resource management information system which will have the primary concern of
handling all the logic and procedures in the enterprise. An ERP system will effectively
help AAHS to have a perfect interconnection in all of its departments regardless of the
location. This will provide for a seamless communication and a real-time sharing of
information regarding the treatment history of the animals and the progress of the
medication as well. Now when an ERP system has been implemented, a decision
support system will be integrated with the ERP system in order to generate true
analysis of the business position and even customer satisfaction while utilizing the
data stored by the ERP (Sethi, Pant and Sethi, 2017).
Strategic use of the Internet, intranet, and extranet.
AAHS must make use of the internet in connecting with her customers and other
stakeholders. After the ERP system has been implemented, it will be connected to an
online portal to collect details from the customers and also allow customers to view
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their billing history and maybe make payments through online gateways such as
Paypal. All these are achieved by utilizing the internet. The intranet, on the other
hand, will allow for smooth communication between departments using the ERP
information Management system. Extranet will definitely play a major role in
allowing for communication between all the branches using the Information System
Implemented (Turban et al., 2015). Most ERP Information Systems communicate in
this manner. The main office may act as the server and then an extra-net connection is
made so that the systems can communicate with a single database across all the
branches. In the end, this will allow for the best quality of service for all the
stakeholders.
Change management
In order to manage all the organizational changes that are inevitable, a perfect
strategy for change management needs to be formulated. The strategy that AAHS
needs to implement goes down to a number of phases(Cameron and Green, 2015).
One is that AAHS needs to involve all of its stakeholders in making the System
changes.All customers must be notified that a new system that would help better
services is being rolled out. All employees too must be made to know of the upcoming
changes and also trained way before the Information system goes live. A sense of
ownership of the new system must also be crafted on the employees (Kaufman, 2017).
This allows everyone to have a sense of responsibility for making any changes in
every area of their influence or control.
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9AAHS INFORMATION SYSTEM RECOMMENDATION
Security and Ethical Issues
The introduction of this new ERP system may bring about a number of security
issues. When employees use insecure passwords that can be guessed by anyone, the
ERP system will be compromised at some level. An intruder may guess the login
details of a given employee and decide to make major changes to the system after
signing in. The information system data center and servers must also be well secured.
Placing the servers at a location that is not physically secured is a great risk for
AAHS. Any interruption will bring down the entire business process.
Recommendation
Nonetheless, in order to address these security issues, the CIA
(confidentiality,integrity and availability) triad principles must be achieved.
Availability is achieved by ensuring that there are routine backups for the system so as
to allow for recover-ability just in case there is data loss or breach of information
(Bhati, Trivedi and Sarangdevot, 2016,). Confidentiality is achieved by training
employees of the common security rules and the tricks used by black hats to gain
access to information systems.
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References
Bhati, P.S., Trivedi, M.C. and Sarangdevot, S.S., 2016, February. Security Issues
in Enterprise Resource Planning. In Computational Intelligence & Communication
Technology (CICT), 2016 Second International Conference on (pp. 205-208). IEEE.
Cameron, E. and Green, M., 2015. Making sense of change management: A
complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan
Page Publishers.
Chatterjee, M., Ledbetter, C., Son, S.H., Christopher, S.M. and Ferlan, M.J.,
Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC, 2016. Wearable personal information system.
U.S. Patent 9,386,932.
Kaufman, H., 2017. The limits of organizational change. Routledge.
Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016. Management information system. Pearson
Education India.
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.
Sethi, R., Pant, S. and Sethi, A., 2017. Integrating business-to-business customers
in original equipment manufacturers’ supply chains through information systems
integration. European Journal of Management Studies, 22(2), pp.125-162.
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Simkin, M.G., Norman, C.S. and Rose, J.M., 2014. Core concepts of accounting
information systems. John Wiley & Sons
Stair, R. and Reynolds, G., 2017. Fundamentals of information systems. Cengage
Learning.
Turban, E., King, D., Lee, J.K., Liang, T.P. and Turban, D.C., 2015.
Implementing EC Systems: From Justification to Successful Performance.
In Electronic Commerce (pp. 645-687). Springer, Cham.
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