Information System Implementation: A Case Study of APIC Enterprise

This report is a comprehensive case study analyzing the implementation of an Information System (IS) at Asia Pacific International College (APIC) in Australia. The report begins with an overview of APIC, highlighting its competitive advantages and the benefits of IS implementation, such as cost reduction, improved operational efficiency, and increased student satisfaction. It then recommends various IS solutions including Business Information Systems, Transaction Information Systems, and Management Information Systems, detailing their functionalities and benefits for APIC. The report emphasizes the importance of both in-house development and outsourcing components. The report includes visual aids, such as a data flow diagram for transaction processing and a cost-benefit analysis graph. The report concludes by summarizing the key findings and recommendations for APIC to optimize its IS implementation.

Running head: IMPLEMENTATION OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
IMPLEMENTATION OF INFORMATION SYSTEM: A CASE STUDY OF APIC
ENTERPRISE
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1IMPLEMENTATION OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
Executive Summary:

2IMPLEMENTATION OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................3
Overview of the University....................................................................................................3
Competitive Advantage of the university..................................................................................4
Recommendation to the university to acquire IS solutions........................................................6
BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEM...............................................................................6
TRANSACTION INFORMATION SYSTEM......................................................................7
MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM.....................................................................8
Importance of in-house development and outsourcing components........................................10
Referred IS for APIC...............................................................................................................11
Conclusion................................................................................................................................12
References................................................................................................................................13

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Introduction:
All organizations are trying to make their tactical, strategic and operational operations
more effective an efficient in this global competitive environment. An Information System
(IS) is the collection of elements which can rise the competitiveness and can give better
information regarding the decision making of the organization. Thus, many organizations
have implemented information system to gain a competitive advantage in the business
market. The chosen organization for this report is the Asia Pacific International College,
Australia. The report briefly describes about the overview of the organization, the
competitive advantages gained by the implementation of information system in the
university, Alternatives of IS solutions, importance of in-house development and the out
sourcing components and best IS solution for the university.
Overview of the University
APIC is the dynamic Australian Higher Institution that offers undergraduates as well
as post graduates degree mainly in two cities of Australia Melbourne and Sydney. In every
teaching period thousands of students studied in the college every year offering various
courses like Business, Information Systems and Project Management (Kozarevic, Peric and
Delic 2014). The college mainly focuses to foster, provide and promote the professional and
academic capital to every individual student. APIC analyses the transformation process that
the student undergoes prior entering in the corporate world and they endeavour to give advice
and capabilities to the student where they choose to work or live. APIC is accredited by
TEQSA (Tertiary Education Quality and Standard Agency), regulatory agency and
Australia’s independent national Quality Assurance (Hamilton 2018).

4IMPLEMENTATION OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
Competitive Advantage of the university
The Information System provides competitive advantage in many organizations.
APIC need to prepare a strategic plan to execute some operations in the university (Saunders
2015). The competitive factors that are gained by the information system are as follows:
 The education cost can be decreased which will help the college to acquire more
students. Implementing Information system in the perspective of cost can help to keep
the track of the payments made by the students, to increase the efficiency of the
business processes.
 Offer different strategies to implement in the business-like different courses, different
infrastructural structure, difference fess structure, offering different better strategies
for the business operation.
 A narrow segment which supplies quality, cos effective and quick service to the
students of the university.
 Increase the market share, increase the number of students, and increase the
profitability of the college (Noe et al. 2017).
 Provides quick business growth by giving synergy to the strategies which helps the
business to focus on the core business operation and also allow the business to
innovate the business policies for students
 Offers efficient business process so that the college operates the similar type of
operation better than its rivals.
 Increase the customer satisfaction for the college which concentrates on making the
students happy and it realized the student that they are learning in such of

5IMPLEMENTATION OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
organization where the university process is automated. It also helps in student
retention in the college by satisfying them with an efficient service which reduces the
bargaining power of the college (Chang, Wong and Fang 2014).
 It rises the speed of business operation which helps the business to deliver a quick
service to their students. The main motive of implementing the information systems is
to make university process full automated which implies that to make the process
quick.
 Another important reason to implement the information system in the college is to
provide an error free service to the students. The output provided by the information
system is based on the program installed in the system and the input given by the user.
The system provides an error free output which satisfies the student in a huge amount.
It also allows the college to develop the process based on its competitors in the
market.
 Information system does not allow the student to switch to other colleges due to
economic or technical reasons (Wei et al. 2013).

6IMPLEMENTATION OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
Recommendation to the university to acquire IS solutions
Modern technology boosts the performance of every organizations. Organizations rely
on them in a huge amount to focus and develop new strategies to produce revenue, streamline
operation and to engage the students. It also helps the college in taking effective and efficient
decisions for the college (Laudon and Laudon 2015). It is recommended to the college to
implement any of the three-information system to gain the discussed competitive advantages:
BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEM
A collection of interrelated elements that operate collectively in various zones in the
education business environment of APIC. It mainly deals with input, storage, out, processing
and control the data which can be transformed into some useful products which can be
utilized in various operational activities of the college (Vera-Baquero, Colomo-Palacios and
Molloy 2013). The components are like human resources, software, hardware, data and
communication. Human resources composed of the developers and the users of the
information systems like IS technical support staff and the IS managers. Hardware comprises
of the computer system or the printers used for the operations of the Information system.
Software resource refers to the computer applications and the programs which is used in the
IS operation. Communication resources refers to the networks which help the input to get
transferred to the software to produce an output for the users (Beynon-Davies 2013). The data
are given by the users to get an appropriate output from the information system.
The business information system serves many operations in the APIC. It basically
uses the application of information technology such as personal computers. Computerised
BIS (Business Information System) is one of the greatest applications of the Business
Information System which help the college by providing many useful operations. The
Business information system basically deals with two main operations criteria like

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operational Information System (OIS) and Management Information Systems (MIS). OIS
mainly deals with the business operations and methods and the MIS generally deals with the
management operations of the business-like decision making, developing different strategies
and many more. The hardware deals with the physical elements of the computer system that
can be differentiated as CPU (Central Processing Unit), output devices and the internal and
external memory. The output devices translate the output in a readable form for the user.
TRANSACTION INFORMATION SYSTEM
ERP software needs fee collection software to handle the important operations of the
finance and account department of the APIC. Manual fees management system involves
many mistakes due to work rush and pressure (Peters and Panayi 2016). Thus, APIC should
be implemented by this type of information system which can deliver an error free fee
management system. It does not contain only fees management of the student but also deals
with all the transactions of the college. It can deliver a well oriented statistical report on
different domains to the financial department. This system will deliver information regarding
any queries of the students. This system will deliver the fess due date to the student with due
amount in the registered phone number or email of the student which is an important feature
of transaction processing systems (Taft et al. 2014). The fees collection report can be made
by the system for each and every student of the college. It displays the automation of
fundamental process utilized in the various business operation. The process does not deliver
the user with the processing criteria of the input given by the user. It simply takes the input
from the user and process the input as per the client requirement and deliver an appropriate
output to the user. The system will also reduce the work rush and pressure of the college
officials and allow them to concentrate on the core business operations. The process looks
like:
INPUT--- PROCESSING------------OUTPUT

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The data flow in a normal transaction processing system takes place in the following way:
1. An event is noted by the data entry tools
2. The program then executes some operation which is based on the program designed in
the software
3. The Transaction Processing system generated the schedule reports
4. The user sends any query report to the Transaction processing system.
Figure 2: Data flow in Transaction Processing System
(Source: Romney and Steinbart 2013)
MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM
The performance of a company depends on the resources available from both external
and internal medium. These resources are like the facilities, finance, manpower, materials and
data. Every organization depends on the resources and moreover on the utilization process of
those resources. The arrangements of those resources are not sufficient but they should be
properly acquired, utilized and monitored for the success of any organization. The system can
perform many management type operations which includes organizing, monitoring, planning,
executing, control and evaluation of information for APIC (Laudon and Laudon 2015).

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Correct decision making for an organization also depends upon the utilization of resources by
the company. Management Information system (MIS) is needed by APIC for collection of
information, the change of information into requirements, good storage for the information,
effective use of the data and the retrieval of the data. It also allows integrated and advance
decision-making process for APIC (Willcocks 2013). It also allows advance type
communication. MIS enables to develop the multi-disciplinary management by considering
the financial, material, operational, behavioural, policies and computer-based problems.
The main operations performed by Management Information System are:
Planning: In the planning stage of any business, the information plays an important role that
consists of business assets, liabilities, machineries, plants, resources, competitors, market
dynamics and so on.
Recording: The information related to the organizational operation needs to be recorded to
avoid the contradiction between the input and the output. The data are collected, stored and
are updated regularly.
Controlling: The data should be filtered or organized in particular layout which avoids the
trouble regarding the manual search of any kind of data.
Measuring: The business analyses and prepare a performance report based on the gathered
information. The System outputs an error free output which implies that the statistical data or
the report is also accurate and appropriate for the business.
Decision Making: Management Information System concerns with a managerial decision-
making process, analyse the theory of the organisational behaviour as well as the underlying
human behaviour towards the organization. The decision-making data comprises of socio-
economic effect of globalization, democratization, competition and the impacts of every
factors on the organizational structure.

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Figure 2: Cost benefit analysis of information system
(Source: Cost Benefit Analysis 2019)
Importance of in-house development and outsourcing components
The main importance of in-house developed software are as follows (Lynch 2014):
 The software can be designed to perform according to the business process that the
business had already operated by the business

11IMPLEMENTATION OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
 The annual expenses for APIC can be handled easily which does not imply that the
business is dependent on the software as well as to the vendor which then increase the
annual fees.
 The business can handle the priorities for the software development.
The importance of the outsourcing components is (Rehme et al. 2013):
 Time saving: It saves the time by operating the business process quickly and can
increase the scope of business development for APIC.
 Cost Optimization: Nearshore helps to reduce the cost. The cost of nearshore is quite
less than the offshore.
 Risk Reduction: Outsourcing reduces risk for the business. APIC contains few
business risks associating with it, it can be mitigated by outsourcing components.
 Increase the communication level of the college. Communication is an important
factor for APIC which can be enhanced by the outsourcing components.
 Legal Issues: It prepare the legal issues for the APIC.
Referred IS for APIC
It is recommended for APIC to implement transaction process system initially. APIC
as an educational institution deals with various transaction every day. Thus, it is
recommended to APIC that it should implement the transaction processing system in its
premises to avoid any misuse or vulnerable attack in the college. The transaction process
system can build an innovative and effective environment for APIC. The following factors
can be innovated or developed in APIC by implementing transaction processing system (Lee
et al. 2013):