IMAT5206: Critical Analysis of Centrica's Business Strategy Report

This report provides a critical analysis of Centrica, a British multinational energy company, focusing on its business strategy within the IT field. The analysis, based on CIO interviews, identifies key themes driving digital transformation, including Data Lake development, machine learning implementation, strategic partnerships with Microsoft, and migration from SAP to Hana. The report offers an overview of Centrica's business model, highlighting its focus on energy services and customer satisfaction. It delves into the description of these themes, explaining the role of Data Lake, machine learning, and the benefits of the Microsoft partnership. Furthermore, it identifies issues related to management information systems, such as the need for improved business strategy, skilled staff, and integration of innovative technologies. The report concludes with recommendations for Centrica to enhance its business strategy and achieve its organizational objectives, emphasizing the importance of data-driven decision-making and strategic alignment.

Running head: MANAGEMENT INFORMTION SYSTEM
Business strategy of Centrica
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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Table of Contents
Identification of themes..............................................................................................................2
Overview of Company...............................................................................................................2
Description of themes................................................................................................................3
Identification of issues related with management information systems....................................6
Recommendations......................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................9

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Identification of themes
This report is implemented on the company of Centrica which is considered as the
British multinational energy as well as service based company. This company wants to rise
up their business strategy in the IT field (Agarwal and Vrat 2014). According to this CIO
interviews analysis, the company wants to increase their strategies by developing Data Lake
as well as GDPR and also machine learning. Also, they want to migrate their systems from
the SAP to Hana. Based on this interview, there are several themes as well as views are
identified which are to be changed by the company of Centrica (Anaya and Pollitt 2018).
These themes help to happen a digital transformation within this company. The themes are
including Data Lake, machine learning, and strategic partnership with Microsoft and also
migrate the system from SAP to Hana (Bolden and O’Regan 2016). Because the company of
Centrica takes an innovative strategic initiative for their growth and in that place, these
themes are reflected their impact.
Overview of Company
The Centrica Company is a British multinational energy based company. Not only is
this company energy based but also this company provides lots of services as well as
solutions regarding various energies (Cherry and Jacob 2016). The main target of this
company is to provide the services relating with the energy in accordance with the customers’
needs for changing the strategy in the overall market. Their business strategy is to increase
the capabilities and also efficiency for growth of more profitability (Danda 2015). Their
techniques of providing various services related with energy are as right as fulfilment of the
business purpose which helps to satisfy the requirements of several customers (Essex 2019).
For happening the digital transformations it is not only such things oriented with a number of
rules but also it is required for such themes which are directly connected with the increment

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of the business strategy (Galliers and Leidner 2014). To fulfil the customers’ requirements,
the company applies such tricks for growing their business strategy such as provide the
services at reasonable cost so that the customers can afford the services. This action helps to
improve the efficiency of the organization. By providing the services to the customers, it
helps to maintain the capital discipline as well as strength of the balance sheet. Their services
are relating with the energy supply, home servicing, home solutions as well as energy
optimization and also business related services. But in the recent timing, this company of
Centrica may has faced few problems regarding with their IT infrastructure which leads to
happen customer loss. Thus, this company wants to change such strategies for increasing
their business profitability.
Description of themes
There are four diverse categories of themes and they are such as Data Lake, machine
learning, and strategic partnership with Microsoft and also migrate the system from SAP to
Hana. The description of these themes are as follows:
 Data lake – Data lake is a specially organised single store which is full of enterprise
related data involving the raw copies of the source of the system of data and
transformation of the information utilized for various actions like visualization as well
as advanced analytics and also machine learning (Ghosh 2018). Generally it acts as a
structured data relating with the relational databases, unstructured data and binary
data also. This application can be installed by this company because this application is
based on the relational data as various operational databases and also information
relating with the other business applications such as various mobile apps, IoT devices
and also social media (Laudon and Laudon 2016). With the help of this application,
this company is successful to make an interaction with the customers for fulfilling

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their requirements related with energy services. Also, through this application, the
staffs of the company can understand the type of the requirement related information.
But according to this analysis of this interview, it can be understood that it needs to
upgrade the Data Lake along with the MapReduce and also Spark (Laudon and Laudon
2015). The MapReduce is one type of processing related technique which is actually used for
the Java programming. Within this MapReduce, there are generally two major kinds of tasks
including map and reduce (Nagy et al. 2018). Apart from that, the Spark is treated as a
protection for various databases as SQL as well as machine learning and also streaming. All
of the applications are being used for this company because these are the baseline to protect
all of the details of the customers’ related requirements. The
 Machines learning – This machine learning is considered as an applications of the
artificial intelligence which tends to provide the capability to the systems for
automatically learning and also it helps to improve the experience except the explicit
programming (Paroutis 2016). This company has been installed this application
because this application is used for the accessing of the information and also utilizing
them for meeting the requirements of the clients. Because for this company, the
clients are the core part for increasing their business strategy by improving their IT
related applications.
 Strategic partnership with Microsoft – As per the analysis of this interview, this
company wants to make a strategic partnership with Microsoft because it needs to
provide empowerment to various people and also enables the global collaboration
which helps to improve their services in this field (Pateman 2014). By making the
partnership with the company of Microsoft, the company can change their journey of
the services to the Azure cloud which is a positive sign for this company. Moreover,
by making an attachment with the Microsoft Company, it provides the positive energy

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of the Power BI which helps to make the changes in the environment of the global
finance as well as planning and also analytics teams which helps to solve various
business related problems along with the confidence with the help of the information.
Also, the Microsoft provides more workforce as well as innovative facilities for
making the business of Centrica more attractive for the clients. In addition to this, the
partnership offers the Digital Champions which provides the proper education to all of
the employees so that they can create their impact on the productivity of the business
(Reisert, Zelt and Wacker 2018). However, the Microsoft provides the proper
streamlining for satisfying the requirements of the customers with the help of the
combination with the Power BI and this activity helps to provide the high level of the
customers’ insights.
 Migrate the system from SAP to Hana – Usually the SAP application, it can be
used for tracking various system applications and also diverse categorised products.
Generally, the SAP application has been used by this company Centrica for making a
track to all of the customers so that they can able to fulfil their requirements. Apart
from that, this application also helps to the company for creating a new kind of
business interaction with the customers (Shalender and Singh2014). By making
interactions, it can be known the customers requirements as well as their feedback
which are actually required for increasing the business strategy. But according from
the analysis of this interview, it can be understood that the company has faced some
of the issues regarding with this SAP application and they have assumed that if it can
be migrated all of the systems from the application of SAP to Hana, therefore this
problem can be mitigated. Because the application of Hana is a special kind of
application which can be utilized in the memory databases technology for allowing
the system related information within the short of the time. Because this application

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provides the permission to allow all of the customers related data which are useful for
the business purposes.
Identification of issues related with management information systems
According to the analysis of this CIO interview, it can be understood that the
Company Centrica may has faced lots of problems relating with the management information
systems. Therefore, they are concerned about their increment of the business strategy so that
they can stand a good position in the market place among the other companies (Smith and
Wong 2016). There are few issues regarding management information systems and they are
as failure to meet the business strategy as well as hiring of the good staffs, meeting the
organizational requirements and also integration with the current technologies etc. Because
the management info ration system is a particular system related approach which is integrated
with various technologies for managing different types of customers as well as another
service or sales related information. But with the installation of the MIS in the organization
some of the parameters need to upgrade for running the organization in a best position.
But some of the times it can be seen that the organization may face such issues and
among them they are not able to meet their organizational needs which is considered as one
of the most important issues of the MIS system. Lack of business strategy is another kind of
problem oriented with this management information system because in the today’s world, to
continue the competition with another industries, it needs to strict with the business strategy
which helps to move forward to the organization. Apart from that, the organization also
requires to hire several number of good skilled persons which incorporates with this system
because to conduct the organization with the management information system, the skilled
employees are required. Moreover, additionally it also requires new kind of innovative
technologies by which the working processing can be continued along with this management

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information systems within this organization. Because though the management information
system is a new innovate type of system, therefore it requires additional new innovative
categorised technology which leads this system for improving the organizational
performance.
Within the innovative technologies it includes Microsoft Office which helps to
provide the specialized tools for the account ting as well as customer relationship
management or CRM and also project management related tools etc. These technologies
helps the organization to work with the management information system. However, to recruit
some professional expert the business performance of the organization can be improved.
Because the IT professionals as well as developers and also programmers can handle various
issues of the management information system and thus they can manage all of the sensitive
information related issues for improving the performance. One of the important issue is to
protect all of the data because the organizational data are sensitive for them and therefore it is
a responsibility for the industry to protect the information.
Recommendations
As per the CIO interview, it can be understood that the company of Centrica has to
increase the business related strategy which is helpful for their organization. Therefore they
need to maintain such recommendations which may help them to fulfilling their target. The
recommendations are such as:
To collect all of the facts of the organization which requires some improvement.
Because according to this interview, the organization has faced some issues related
with SAP, Data Lake and also data transformations. Therefore, in that case, they need
to improve around these particular places in which they have some weakness.

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To develop a vision statement which helps to meet the organizational strategy.
Without making a good strategy, the organization cannot get success in their business
improvement.
Identification of the strategic objectives which may lead the organization to achieve
their business related target. By identifying the strategic objectives, the organization
can recognise their strength as well as weakness which parameters help them to
construct a good strategy.
To construct a good performance management which helps to manage as well as
monitor all of the information relating their business. Because it requires to monitor
the customers’ related requirements by which they can provide their services for
fulfilling their requirements.

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References
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organization: A SAP–LAP analysis. Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 15(4),
pp.345-361.
Anaya, K. and Pollitt, M., 2018. Storage Business Models: Lessons for Electricity from
Natural Gas, Cloud Data and Frozen Food.
Bolden, R. and O’Regan, N., 2016. Digital disruption and the future of leadership: An
interview with Rick Haythornthwaite, Chairman of Centrica and MasterCard. Journal of
Management Inquiry, 25(4), pp.438-446.
Cherry, B. and Jacob, S.R., 2016. Contemporary nursing: Issues, trends, & management.
Elsevier Health Sciences.
Danda, S., 2015. Application of modified agile methodology to improve usability of SAP
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Essex, M., 2019. CORPORATE SOCIAL INCUBATION: CHALLENGES AND
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