The Role of IT Systems in Business: Unit 33 Report, 2018-2019

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the role of Information Technology (IT) systems within a business context, using Sainsbury as a case study. It explores the use of IT in various organizational functions like human resources, marketing, and finance, highlighting how IT contributes to achieving business objectives such as meeting customer needs, employee satisfaction, and fostering innovation. The report delves into IT's role in data management, including knowledge management, customer relationship management (CRM), and cloud computing. Furthermore, it examines how IT supports value-added changes through systems like management information systems (MIS) and database management systems (DBMS). The report concludes with recommendations for improving IT systems, emphasizing the importance of cloud computing and CRM. The report utilizes the Harvard referencing system.

BUSINESS INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY SYSTEMS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
LO 1.................................................................................................................................................3
P1 Use of IT in organizational functions.....................................................................................3
P2 Contribution of IT in achieving business objectives..............................................................4
LO 2.................................................................................................................................................5
P3 IT in storage of different data management............................................................................5
LO 3.................................................................................................................................................7
P4 IT for supporting value-added change....................................................................................7
LO 4.................................................................................................................................................8
P5 Recommendation of IT solutions............................................................................................8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFRENCES.................................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Information technology is basically the utilization of any computers, networking or
different physical devices as well as processes to build, process and exchange each and every
type of data and electronic information. It plays a vital role in business context and thus helps to
increase their overall effectiveness.
Sainsbury is one of the renowned chain in supermarkets being established in 1869 by John James
Sainsbury and headquartered in London, U.K. It primarily deals in supermarkets, banks cafe,
energy etc.
This report gives a brief about use of IT in organizational functions, Contribution of IT in
achieving business objectives, IT in storage of different data management, IT for supporting
value-added change and Recommendation of IT solutions.
MAIN BODY
LO 1
P1 Use of IT in organizational functions
Information technology forms the main part of any organizations and thus no enterprise
or company can survive without internet or other sources of IT. It forms an important link
between organization and the marketplace and thus helps the organizations to achieve their goals.
It plays an essential role in Sainsbury and thus the whole organization functions based on IT
system.
Human resource
This is the most significant functions of any organization without which they cannot
survive in this cut-throat competition. The main role of Human resource in Sainsbury is to recruit
and hire the talented candidates for organizations and at the end retaining them. In human
resource function, the major role of information technology is to help in storing and processing
the various information about employees and other aspects of the company (Chang, 2016). The
major attribute of information system in this function is human resource information system
which helps the department in collecting retrieving and storing the different kinds of data. Main
purpose of Information system in human resource function is to help the management with
various constraints of Sainsbury like employee information, company's financial information etc.

Marketing
This is the most important and one of the remarkable function of the organization. The
main role of marketing function in Sainsbury is to generate leads by promoting their products
and services to large platform. Information technology has a profound role in marketing where it
helps the marketing department to access the data and information about target customers for
making them aware about the various deals, products etc. The most important role of information
technology in marketing function is that provides a wide platform like customer relations ship
management to the department through which they can easily store the information and data of
their prospects and thus also helps them to contact them for any new product launch or other
aspects. On the other hand, major purpose of information technology in marketing function is to
provide them with the latest tools like e-mail marketing, digital marketing which help them to
reach customers and advertise the products.
Finance
One more important and the vital function of organization without which it cannot
survive is the financing. This major role and responsibility of finance in Sainsbury is to manage
the cash-flow and thus oversees the financial condition of the company. Information technology
plays an essential role in managing the finance department of Sainsbury and thus helps them in
various scenarios (Luftman, Lyytinen and Zvi, 2017). The main role of information technology is
that helps the finance function in bookkeeping as well as budgeting. It provides the platform and
tool through which the finance department are able to estimate the return on investment easily.
Apart from this, primary purpose of information technology is to offer the computer system or
latest technology through which they can easily solve the complex finance problem in a minute.
P2 Contribution of IT in achieving business objectives
Information technology serve as an important part of the organization and thus is
considered ad the life giving element in the company. With the advent of advanced technology,
each and every organization has now become dependent of information technology and thus
cannot even think to function without it. It has transformed the operations of entire business and
thus have revolutionized the way of working. In formation technology due to its high importance
helps the organization to achieve their goals and business objectives. Sainsbury is well-known
organization which have long term as well as short term goal and thus information technology
helps in achieving these objectives

Meeting customer needs
This is one of most important short terms as well as long term objective of Sainsbury
which helps them to establish their position in market. Providing the best quality services to
customers and satisfying all their needs and demand is the prime objective of company. In this
context, information technology plays an essential role (Cassidy, 2016). It provides various
platforms and tools to the company through which they can easily fulfill all the needs and
demands of customer. For example- with the help of online survey, company is able to solicit
feedback from customers which helps them to know the expectations of consumers.
Employee satisfaction
This is another objective of Sainsbury where they are continuously engaged in increasing
the satisfaction level of employee and their engagement. As higher the satisfaction level, more
will be the retention rate of company and thus it will the company to achieve their goals and
establish position. Information technology here plays and important role and thus helps in
achieving this objective. Numerous IT tools like virtual reality, employees are able to
communicate with each other and this increases their motivation level. Besides this, the main
aspect of information technology which is HPWS helps company to properly assess the
performance of employees and hence provide them the necessary rewards based on this. Thus in
this way, IT helps in achieving this objective of Sainsbury.
Innovation
Continuously innovating the products and services is one of the significant objective of
Sainsbury and thus they are highly engaged in bringing creativity in each and every aspect.
Information technology plays the vital role in helping the organization to achieve this objective
(Laudon and Laudon, 2016). There are various IT tools like Data analytic, cloud computing
through which the organization is able to assess the market trends and thus this helps in knowing
where innovation is necessary and what degree of innovation is required. Thus, information
technology assist in achieving this goal and objective.
LO 2
P3 IT in storage of different data management
Information technology helpers the organization in various ways but the most significant
and remarkable function if IT in organization is that it helps in retrieving and storing the data and

information.
Knowledge management
Information technology plays an essential role in knowledge management in Sainsbury.
For example the various computer technologies like e-mails, multimedia conferences, discussion
list enables the employees to interact with each other and share knowledge and skills with each
other. Thus, in this way IT provides the platform for company through which knowledge is
shared across the whole organization (Yeh, Lee and Pai, 2015).
Customer relationship management
This is the another tool which is being used by Sainsbury to store the various information
and data of customers. IT helps the company to maintain this CRM in which the customer
information are being stored and are used by employees for communicating with the customers.
Not only this, CRM also helps in gaining an insight of the customer preferences and thus design
the marketing strategy to suit their needs.
Data management
The role of cloud computing is imperative in context to data management. Cloud
computing is basically the information tool through which Sainsbury is able to store the
confidential data of their employees. This tool helps the organization in securely manage the data
of employees as well as store the useful data for backup and recovery. As company contains
wide variety of information regarding employees, resources, customers thus this cloud
computing helps in storing the data as backup in case of any mishappening (Bach, Čeljo and
Zoroja, 2016).
Communication management
IT have a profound effect on the communication system of organization and thus
facilitate effective communication. For example through the use of intranet and e-mail,
employees are able to communicate with each other and thus this eventually increases their
productivity. On the other hand, customer relationship management and various digital
marketing tools enables Sainsbury to interact with the customers and advertise the products. In
this way, Information technology helps in communication management within organization.
D2 Evaluation
As information technology helps the organization to store and collect a wide range of
information thus there are various IT tools available to the organization which eventually helps

them to achieve their objectives. The most effective tool and which Sainsbury can use is the
cloud computing and customer relationship management. These two have their own advantage
over others and thus will help organization to effectively maintain their operations. Cloud
computing is essential because it will help company to store the important information as back
up in case if there is loss or hacking of information occurs. Customer relationship management
on the other hand will helps organization to enlarge customer base as through this they can easily
communicate with the customers. Increase in number of consumer will eventually increase the
sales of organization.
LO 3
P4 IT for supporting value-added change
Value added change is basically the change which is being bought in the organization and
thus brings value for customers, employees and the overall organization. In this context, IT plays
an important role and thus helps in increasing the performance and sustainability of organization.
Management information system
This is the IT system which is basically design to track the sales and other aspects of the
organizations. The basic value added change which is being bought in Sainsbury is managing the
effective planning and thus properly manage the important information and data of customers,
suppliers etc. This system can be used for increasing the performance and sustainability of
organization. The main advantage of this system is that it facilitates effective planning and thus
provides the Sainsbury with the relevant information about different aspects. Besides this, it also
reduces the overload of information as there remains a large stream of information in company
thus effectively manage the information (Nguyen, Newby and Macaulay, 2015).
On the other hand, major disadvantage of this system is that it requires continuous
monitoring and evaluation which sometimes become complicated for the organization. Apart
from this, its effectiveness tends to fluctuate if there are any changes in upper management
occurs.
Database management
This is another system of information technology which can help an organization to
enhance their operations and thus improve the overall performance. Database management is
basically the IT system in which the all the data are securely stored. In short, it is basically the
system which is specially designed for manipulating, retrieving, storing and efficiently managing

the large amount of data. The most important value added change in organization which can be
supported by this system is change in data storage. Organization has bought an immense change
in the method of data storage which will eventually increase the performance of organization.
The main advantage of this system in supporting this change is that it creates an environment
where the users and the employees can easily access the data and thus helps them in gathering
better knowledge. Besides this, it improves the security of data. DBMS offers a framework
which enables in the better protection of confidential information. On contrary to this, major
disadvantage is that it generally incurs high cost to the company as skilled personnel are required
to handle this (Sun, Strang and Firmin, 2017).
D3 Recommendations
For improving the management information system, Sainsbury should develop a well
through plan and also should develop various web policies which will help in effectively
implementing this system. On the other hand, for improving database management system
qualified personnel are required thus Sainsbury should provide an effective training to their
employees regarding this software which will eventually reduce their operational cost.
LO 4
P5 Recommendation of IT solutions
The organization faces a variety of problems that eventually hinders their operations and
somewhat make their position less stable. In order to overcome these problems, there are various
IT solutions which the company should adopt
Effective planning and data management
Sainsbury usually faces the problem of managing and storing the useful data in the
system and thus finds it difficult for planning the various activities on basis of these data. Due to
this, the workload on employees increases as they have to manually gather the data and store it.
To cope up with this problem, Sainsbury should design an effective database management
system which will help them in effective planning as this system will automatically save the
information according to its priority (Bharati and Chaudhury, 2015).
Communication problem
Sainsbury also faces the problem of effective communication and hence the employees
are not able to interact effectively with each other due to lack of effective technology. For this,
company in addition to effective E-mail should develop an effective communication tools like

internal blogs through which the employees can easily chat with each other regarding any
problem and this will increase their productivity.
Tracking sales
This is the another which Sainsbury faces while managing the data of their customers.
Due to inefficient customer data, company is not able to track the sales of their product and thus
are not able to store their information. For this, Sainsbury should develop and effective
management information system and train their employees of its use. This will help company for
storing information effectively (Trieu, 2017).
CONCLUSION
It has been summarized that information technology plays an important role different
functions of organization and thus helps to achieve efficiency in every aspect. Information
technology through its apparent effect helps the organization to achieve their goals and
objectives. It not only helps in increasing the efficiency of organization but also contribute
equally to different attributes like knowledge management, data management, communication
management etc. When the organization introduce change which adds value to customers,
employees etc. the IT comes into picture and thus various IT system support these value based
change and at the end improves the performance as well as sustainability.

REFRENCES
Books & Journals
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