MITS4001 Business Information Systems: Case Study Report

This report examines the adoption of Business Information Systems, focusing on case studies of Liverpool Direct and Hyde Group and their transition towards paperless operations. The report delves into the importance of removing outdated work methods when introducing new systems, highlighting challenges and benefits. It explores document management systems, specifically Scansoft's PaperPort Office, evaluating its usefulness for businesses. The report further discusses the likelihood of achieving a paperless office, considering both the potential benefits and the challenges posed by human behavior and technological limitations. Finally, the report analyzes the impact of implementing workflow management systems, such as those described in the case study, on business processes, outlining expected changes and the key drivers for project success. The analysis is supported by references to relevant literature and research in the field of business information systems.

Running head: BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Business Information Systems
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEMS
1.Why is it important to strip away old ways of working when introducing systems such
as those brought in by Liverpool Direct and Hyde?
Liverpool Direct is an organization which operates as a consultancy company. The
business had gone through a sea change once it had accepted to change their traditional ways
of working or operating the business and had introduced the digital transformation to the
business. The business of Hyde had also let their business system to transform and strip away
from their old ways of working and this was the same implemented as Liverpool Direct [1].
Both the organizations faced challenges while they used to work as before, and this is why
both of the organization wanted to transform their business and digitize it further to make the
business systems easier than before. Liverpool Direct and Hyde Group wanted to modernize
their systems since it was not facing appropriate outcomes of the traditional process, which is
why they were trying to implement the paperless procedures for both their business systems.
The result of the old processes in Liverpool Group made the business process slower
and the business had to incur an adjacent expenditure of about 750,000 GBP by using up the
office space. On the other hand, Hyde Group is an established housing association with more
than 1,200 people serving over 75,000 people [2]. The use of hard copies and extensive
paperwork for the recruitment processes were cut down because the business at this point of
time had been facing delayed payment for the employees since the papers had to be signed
personally by a working manager, who were mostly unavailable due to their schedule.
Stripping away of the old procedure was needed since both of these organizations had
been facing problems with the old technology. After Liverpool Direct implemented the
paperless systems, all the business information that were served on hard copies were easily
available on the database system which did not take up much time like the previous system

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did. Hyde Group also was much benefitted from the new technology implementation and
could easily reduce the time for recruitment as well as the entire process [3].
Therefore, from both these cases, it is easily understandable that the stripping away of
old processes to replace them with new technology implementation would simply ease the
business process saving copious amount of time and money in the process [4]. Thus, it is
important for business processes to think about bringing constant changes to the existing
business processes from time to time with the changes in technological advancements.
2. Using the Internet as a resource, locate information regarding a simple document
management system, such as Scansoft's PaperPort Office. How useful is such a product
likely to be within a department of a large company or a small business?
Scansoft's PaperPort Office 11 is a software application as developed by Nuance
Communications which is the commercial document management software utilised for
scanning the documents. It is originally software which is bundled with visioneer scanners. It
is mostly utilised as a document management system, and extremely easy to use [5]. There
are various available the versions for PaperPort that are available online and based on these
versions the software can perform different functions. One of the versions of the software can
perform optical character recognition for creating the files in the portable document format or
PDF which are easy to search through. The PDF files created because they would be easier to
be indexed according to the text present in these files and the presents of appropriate software
like Microsoft Windows Search, these documents can be easily searchable. It also has the
ability to scatter the documents of single PDF into individual pages and again gathering them
together for forming a single PDF [6]. The previous versions of PaperPort used to create the
files in .max format but however the latest version uses PDF format for creating the

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documents. The previous versions were not available for editing because of their format but
the latest PDF formats can be edited easily.
The Nuance PaperPort software is an effective document management system which
efficiently works with the folders within Windows Explorer directly and effectively makes it
easier for or organising and classifying documents and files [7]. It is an intuitive document
management system which helps in digitising the hard copies and probably is a very good
choice for utilising in small businesses. It is easy to use and focuses on document imaging
providing better functionalities. However there is the lack of collaboration tools in the
software that does not follow version control and proper check out [8]. Therefore it can be
said that for the small scale business organisation using PaperPort might be a good option for
or utilising it as a document management system, however for a large organisation, the
software might not be found as an effective one.
3. What is the likelihood that the paperless office will ever be achieved?
A paperless office or a paper free office is what most organizations at targeting to
achieve as it is an established theory of creating a work environment which make sure that
minimum use of physical paper is brought about in the business system instead of using the
primary digital documents. The organisation would be e declared as paperless only when the
workers and associated stakeholders would be found to have ultimately illuminated or reduce
the use of paper in the workplace at maximum [9]. This is done by digitisation of the physical
hard copies and there are several benefits attached to it. For example, abhor police working
environment save a lot of time which is usually spent on filing, searching and organising the
physical documents. It also reduces the space that physical paper takes up. In a traditional
business environment it might be seen that papers and stacks of more papers are making the
filing cabinets in an organisation. Paperless environment reduces all these possibilities as the

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papers in this regard are all digitised copy of the physical papers. It is intended to digitising
the data for providing better security, better backup, effective collaboration and reduced rate
of carbon footprint.
Although it mine also be focused on too that it is impossible for an organisation to get
close to truly paperless. This is because of the mindset of people where most of the human
being or the employees associated with an organisation still have the faintest mind set of
acquiring something tangible, looking at it and sharing it. In addition to that, whether
reduction in cost of printers it is much easier to print documents then go completely paperless
[10]. It is predicted that when the generation would move even further were the people would
be utilising computers write from the preliminary ages, there would be a possibility that
significant process towards the technological advancement would make people attend
absolute digitisation by going paperless.
4. If a company implements a workflow management system such as the one described
in the case study, what would be the expected changes in the business processes. What
do you think would be the drivers for success of such a project?
Workflow management system is regarded as the correlation between the tasks which
make up the work of an organisation. Workflow and business process are more over the
similar things and can be regarded as synonymous to each other. Having a workflow means
that the business is trying to achieve a particular result and this is what do workflow
management does to make sure that the business process achieves the particular result and the
best way possible [11]. The utilisation of the workflow management system implements it
system into the usual word that people do within an organisation by automating them with the
help of Information Technology systems for computer software. It das integrate the IT

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systems for sharing the data between the workflows and other information technology system
performed within a particular organisation.
With the help of a properly implemented workflow management system, an
organisation can expect to automate their processes which mean that the manually executive
tasks would be e replaced by automated processes the implementation of the collecting in
storage of performance information and at the same time the achievable real-time analysis.
utilising workflow management system within a business also helps in the continuous process
improvement of that particular business organisation as the entire organisation would be we
able to monitor the overall performance of a particular process and detect if there has been
any changes made it in the result it for process outcomes along with requirement of change.
The change model implementation for any alterations within the performances and the
processes in a particular organisation would also be able to continuously improve the process
with the help of this tool.
Therefore, the organisation would reduce the waste and operating costs, increase the
rate of profitability of the business, detect any sort of activities that would either add or
reduce the value of company processes and at the same time automating a solution to the
problem. The organisation would soon find a growth in the satisfaction and loyalty of the
customers and also gain the potential customers [12]. The organisation would be able to have
transparency with the business information including the ways by which they can be utilised.
The business organisation would also find and increase collaboration and teamwork within
the organisation while absolute reduction of human failures. The implementation of and a
proper strategic plan and effective decision making would also be heavily assisted by the
workflow management system along with the continuous process improvement.

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References
[1] I., Lee, ed. The Internet of Things in the Modern Business Environment. IGI Global, 2017.
[2] D.M., Bailey. Small Business Sees Environmental Excellence as Part of its Own
Performance Excellence, 2018.
[3] A.S., Yuksel, I.A., Cankaya, and S.F., Cankaya. IoT for Hospitality Industry: Paperless
Buffet Management. In The Internet of Things in the Modern Business Environment (pp. 269-
288). IGI Global, 2017.
[4] R., Hillary, ed. Small and medium-sized enterprises and the environment: business
imperatives. Routledge., 2017.
[5] S., Gupta. Paperless Society-From Vision to Fulfillment. Global Journal of Enterprise
Information System, 7(1) , 2015.
[6] J.N., Hill. The paperless movement, 2015.
[7] S.D., Orantes-Jimenez, A., Zavala-Galindo, and G., Vazquez-Alvarez. Paperless Office: a
new proposal for organizations. Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, 13(3), pp.47-55,
2015.
[8] E., Koester. Green entrepreneur handbook: the guide to building and growing a green
and clean business. CRC Press, 2016.
[9] Y., Choi, and B., Baker. The Impact of Automation on Business and Employment in
South Korea. IUP Journal of Supply Chain Management, 14(4), pp.23-37, 2017.
[10] J., Liu, E., Pacitti, P., Valduriez, and M., Mattoso. A survey of data-intensive scientific
workflow management. Journal of Grid Computing, 13(4), pp.457-493, 2015.

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[11] R., Sarno, C.A., Djeni, I., Mukhlash and D., Sunaryono. DEVELOPING A
WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR ENTERPRISE RESOURCE
PLANNING. Journal of Theoretical & Applied Information Technology, 72(3), 2015.
[12] R.F., da Silva, R., Filgueira, I., Pietri, M., Jiang, R., Sakellariou and E., Deelman. A
characterization of workflow management systems for extreme-scale applications. Future
Generation Computer Systems, 75, pp.228-238, 2017