Strategic Information Systems and Amazon.com: A Comprehensive Analysis

This report provides a detailed analysis of Amazon's strategic information systems (SIS). It begins with an executive summary and table of contents, followed by an introduction to Amazon.com and its business model. The report conducts a gap analysis, evaluating the differences between Amazon's current and desired states, and examines the company's SIS practices. It then delves into the components of SIS, including operation support systems (transaction processing, process control, and enterprise collaboration systems) and management support systems (accounting information, expert, decision support, and information systems). The report highlights the limitations of the current SIS, such as security concerns and implementation costs, and suggests future directions for improvement. It concludes by emphasizing the importance of linking SIS to business goals and the significance of critical success factors in data administration. The report references various sources to support its analysis and provides a comprehensive overview of Amazon's SIS.

Running head: STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Strategic Information Systems
(Amazon.com)
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author Note

1STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Executive summary
In the following study, a Gap Analysis id done along with various projects those are undertaken
under Strategic Information System process. The overall activities are done under the case study of
Amazon.com. These are helpful to provide an ambitious scope for the organization.

2STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Table of Contents
1. Introduction:......................................................................................................................................3
2. Gap analysis:......................................................................................................................................3
3. The current case of Amazon under SIS practice:..............................................................................4
4. Analysis of SIS components:.............................................................................................................5
4.1. Components of Strategic Information System:...........................................................................5
5. Limitations and future directions:......................................................................................................7
5.1. Limitations:.................................................................................................................................7
5.2. Future directions:........................................................................................................................7
6. Conclusion:........................................................................................................................................7
7. References:........................................................................................................................................9

3STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS
1. Introduction:
The Amzon.com, Inc is a popular American cloud computing, and e-commerce company
settled at Washington. This tech giant is one of the long stretched retailers of the Internet as denoted
by market capitalization and revenue. Amazon’s strategic information system is developed to react
towards the corporate business initiative. It has provided competitive scopes to Amazon.
The following report demonstrates a Gap Analysis and present case projects under SIS
practices. Various SIS components are discussed here along with analyzing limitations and future
studies.
2. Gap analysis:
It is a smart tool managed by organizational managers to work out the size and shape the
strategic tasks undertaken for moving from the current state to future and desired state. The analysis
of gaps has been a smart tool to guide the planning team of Amazon in searching corporate
strategies. These are meant to achieve targeted levels of various corporate performances. It has been
a brilliant process and however, it has been without drawbacks. It has needed particular things to
keep in place to take advantage of the tool. Here, the agreed indicators of the corporate performance
have been largely desirable (Galliers & Leidner, 2014). Here the indicator of the overall performance
must be traceable through a range of metrics of business performance. This is done in the form of a
simple cause-effect relationship. Here, the sound data feeding outcomes are being measured by the
KPI or key performance indicators.
Here the agreed time span for strategic planning has been exercising to compare forecast
performances within various assumptions. There have been different sets of assumptions that are

4STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS
trailed within this process of planning scenario. Before plan the analysis, the strategic planning team
of Amazon requires undertaking an effective target setting (Pearlson, Saunders & Galletta, 2016).
These targets of the desired future performance of Amazon require being set utilizing corporate
performances that are mentioned above. This targeting must be done with every possible risk of
corporate collapse within a mind. It should also include the availability of various forecasting
techniques for Amazon’s strategic planning team for using in business forecasting of various likely
outcomes within different scenarios. It has been at many times warranting the business employment
of forecasting software (Cassidy, 2016).
3. The current case of Amazon under SIS practice:
The primary cause of successful journey of Amazon has been the innovation strategy of them.
Amazon has followed B2C or Business to Customer model. However, it has changed its methods
and changed from a direct sales model to service and sales models. With the help of this model, the
target group of Amazon has been its customers and various other business groups. The organization
has offered different small business groups in using their platforms and web service. This has been
to offer the products to customers. Amazon has taken a commission on every sell of the products of
retailers. It has helped in creating an ecosystem in the current market (Whittington, 2014). Through
different associative programs, Amazon has created and developed partnerships with businessman
and customers. Here, the main goal of the program has been to gain more customers for boosting the
sales of the organization. Instead, Amazon has provided than their affiliated new revenue share. It
has allowed the company to extend their marketplace to a wider section from one single product.
There has been a change model present in a business strategy of Amazon. This has been a cyber-
book store comprising associations and affiliates of various other retailers. It has been a platform for
other companies to turn into a cyber-market (Lowry et al. 2016).

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4. Analysis of SIS components:
The components of information systems have comprised of various components. These are
people, network, database, software and hardware. Those components have integrated to perform
controls, feedbacks, outputs, processes and inputs. The hardware has been consisting of various
media devices, operating systems, processors and output/input devices (Kummer & Schmiedel,
2016). The databases have consisted of various data that are organized in a required structure. The
network has comprised of network devices, communication media and hubs. Here the people have
comprised of device operators, system specialists and network administrators. The information
processing has consisted of inputs of data storages, controls, outputs and data storages. At the input
stages, the data instructions are fed to systems. These during process stages have worked on by
various software programs and various other queries. While the output stage occurs, the data gets
presented in an effective structured format and reports (Ogiela, 2015).
4.1. Components of Strategic Information System:
At Amazon, the information system has been categorized by information usage. Thus the
information system in Amazon has been divided to operations support systems and managing
support systems.
Operation support
system
For Amazon, the data input is done by various end-users that are processed to create
information products. These are utilized by multiple external and internal users.
Here, the systems are known as operation support system (Laurini, 2014). Its
function is to facilitate business transactions, to support internal and external
communications, controlling productions and upgrade the central database of
Amazon. This operation support system has been divided into a transaction-
processing system, enterprise collaboration system and processing control system.
TPS or Transaction At Amazon, various kinds of transactions are present in many departments. These

6STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Processing System typical organizational departments include marketing, human resources, plants,
finances, accounts and sales. Around this many transactions have been taking place
like depreciation accounting, inventory management, material accounting, credit
slips, credit sales, cash receipts, sales returns and sales orders and many more
(Kavanagh & Johnson, 2017). This kind of transactions is categorised into various
batch transaction processes and different real time processing of transactions.
Process Control
System
At Amazon, specific decisions are made by various computer systems instead of any
manual interventions. Here, critical data are fed in real-time basis enabling the
process controls. Here, the types of systems are denoted as the process control
systems.
Enterprise
Collaboration Systems
Currently, there has been more stress over team efforts and collaborations around
various functional groups. Systems of Amazon have been enabling collaborative
efforts through developing communication and sharing data as denoted by
enterprise collaborative systems (Alamri et al. 2016).
Management Support
Systems
Here, the managers have needed precise information in the particular format for
undertaking organization decisions. The system facilitating active decision process
for Amazon’s managers are referred to as management support system. Managing
support systems have been primarily categorized as accounting information
systems, experts systems, decision support systems and information systems
(Altameem, Aldrees & Alsaeed, 2014). The managing of information systems have
been providing information to managers facilitating the daily decision-making
processes. Here, the method or decision support has been supplying data to
managers that have been promoting particular issues that are related to the solution.

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5. Limitations and future directions:
5.1. Limitations:
There have been various limitations present in this study. Firstly, the discussion has not
considered the security issues. There are multiple hackers who can get access to corporate saboteurs
and identities for targeting sensitive company data. These data are included in vendor information,
bank records, personal data and intellectual property on company management.
Further, the study has overlooked the expenses of implementations. To implement strategic
information systems at Amazon, a lump sum quantity of cost has been present in case of people,
hardware and software. Here, the hardware, software and various other services are rented, bought
and ten supported. The employees have needed to be trained with multiple unfamiliar information
technology and software (Dewi & Suprapto, 2017).
5.2. Future directions:
The information system has contributed to the effective running of Amazon’s information
systems. It has shown exponential growth in every year. Through understanding the above analysis,
it can bring to Amazon, the best possible advantages. As far as further classification of a strategic
information system is concerned, it can be categorized by activities to vital planning systems, tactical
information systems and various operational information systems.
6. Conclusion:
The above discussion helps in understanding that linking to business goals has been the heart
of IS planning. Without this relates the IS functions have never been having much primary relevance
for Amazon. Selecting proper planning methods has dependent on present use and spread of
technology under Amazon and significance of current system. The various resources analyzed above

8STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS
are similarly vital to impact the overall process for Amazon. However, multiple methodologies must
be recommended here and as the new technology has been more beneficial, it has also been posing
various problems as the proper expertise and skills are unavailable to use that properly. Here, the
success of overall information system strategy and data administration strategy has depended on
various critical success factors. For instance, through understanding the critical success factor
helping database administration, the successful corporate plan for data administration can be
developed. Above all, no matter how much comprehensive those list of success factors have been,
this should lie by the idea to implement and develop a successful strategy of database administration.
This should tightly assimilate with the entire planning activity of information system of Amazon.

9STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS
7. References:
Alamri, S., Almutiri, N., Ballahmar, H., & Zafar, A. (2016). Strategic information system planning:
A case study of a service delivery company. Iarjset, 3(5), 78-84.
Altameem, A. A., Aldrees, A. I., & Alsaeed, N. A. (2014, October). Strategic information systems
planning (SISP). In Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering and Computer
Science (Vol. 1).
Cassidy, A. (2016). A practical guide to information systems strategic planning. CRC press.
Dewi, K. C., & Suprapto, P. A. (2017). Strategic Information Systems Planning at Bali State
Polytechnic Using Ward and Peppard Framework. Advanced Science Letters, 23(12), 12147-
12151.
Galliers, R. D., & Leidner, D. E. (Eds.). (2014). Strategic information management: challenges and
strategies in managing information systems. Routledge.
Kavanagh, M. J., & Johnson, R. D. (Eds.). (2017). Human resource information systems: Basics,
applications, and future directions. Sage Publications.
Kummer, T. F., & Schmiedel, T. (2016). Reviewing the Role of Culture in Strategic Information
Systems Research: A Call for Prescriptive Theorizing on Culture Management. CAIS, 38, 5.
Laurini, R. (2014). Information systems for urban planning: a hypermedia cooperative approach.
CRC Press.
Lowry, P. B., D’Arcy, J., Hammer, B., & Moody, G. D. (2016). “Cargo Cult” science in traditional
organization and information systems survey research: A case for using nontraditional