Information Systems and CGI: Impact on Managerial Roles and Processes

This report examines the crucial role of information systems (IS) in modern business management, focusing on their impact on managerial roles and business process engineering. It utilizes CGI as a case study to illustrate these concepts. The report explores how IS, including Management Info...Read More

Running head: MASTERS OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Masters of business administration
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author note

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Executive summary:
This report is aimed to discuss the importance of information system into the managerial role of
business and trace their impact on business process engineering. The report has performed
assessment of organisational strength and limitation through analysing the global perspective of
strategy of the firm. In addition to this, the report has opted for ethical and social consideration
for strategic solution and through contesting the various other managerial aspects, has portrayed
policies to provide sustainability to the firm in front of threat utilising the information
technology. CGI has been chosen as the sample organisation for this report. Through this
analysis it has been found that information technology has provided much resource to the
managers to deal with ever changing business scenario. Considering the case of CGI it can be
seen that the firm has an existing ERP system, however, lack of data flow from both way has
constrained the transparency in the employee policy.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................3
Impact of information system to business managerial roles:...........................................................3
Analysis of MIS and its impact on business process engineering:..................................................6
Information vision and information strategy of CGI brand:..........................................................10
Background of the business:......................................................................................................10
Business products and services:.................................................................................................10
Key stats regarding the CGI:.....................................................................................................11
Shareholders:.........................................................................................................................11
Sales per business:.................................................................................................................11
Number of employee:............................................................................................................11
Sales per region:....................................................................................................................12
Global perspective of strategy of the firm:................................................................................12
Assessment of organisational strength and limitation:..............................................................13
Ethical and social consideration for strategic solution:.............................................................15
Policies to provide sustainability to the firm in front of threat:.................................................16
Conclusion:....................................................................................................................................16
Reference:......................................................................................................................................17

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Introduction:
21st century is the era of information technology (IT) and ever evolving business
environment around the world making it essential for every organisation to adhere information
technology into their organisational framework. With rise in the importance of technological
advancement into the organisational framework information and data has become two key assets
associated with the business administration (Laudon and Laudon 2016). Interdependence among
the organisations are increasing day by day, which is making it essential for the brands to share
vast amount of data and manipulate them properly to roll out market penetrating strategies.
Under this scenario information system (IS) and data administration gaining paramount
importance because it can single handedly retrieve, process and produce outcome from vast data
sets related to the organisation (Carayanni et al. 2015). This report is aimed to discuss the
importance of information system into the managerial role of business and trace their impact on
business process engineering. In order to test the impact of information technology on the
business management, this report will consider the CGI as the chosen industry. The report will
perform assessment of organisational strength and limitation through analysing the global
perspective of strategy of the firm. Next to this, the report will opt for ethical and social
consideration for strategic solution and through contesting the various other managerial aspects,
will portray policies to provide sustainability to the firm in front of threat utilising the
information technology.
Impact of information system to business managerial roles:
Long are those days gone when business can be classified by the sector of operation and
depending upon the same, identical scenario regarding the assets, business framework,
employment status, profit scenario and other information can easily be perceived. In 21st century,

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business environment has become highly complex, where intra-industry trade enjoys most of the
operation and business framework has been evolved to become sophisticated enough to reveal
business details simply through its mode of operation (Hoekman and Nelson 2018). At present
day, no one asks about the business sector, rather focus has been shifted to business model,
where people categories the organisation through mode of operation. For instance it may be
Business-to-Consumer or Consumer-to-Business; or even it can be Bricks and mortar to classify
the business model (Business 2016). Whatever mode of business is, one this that has changed the
business model is the presence of information technology and information system in the
framework of the firms. Facilities that the information technology provides to an organisation
can be summarised in two broad categories, which are communication and collaboration (Azhar,
Khalfan and Maqsood 2015). Information technology has not only brought enhancement in
bridging the gap in communication, besides this, it has aided the collaboration among the firms
to make the whole world market work as united front in presence of ever soaring magnitude of
threats. Table below shows the summarised facilities that information technology provides to
these two drivers:
Communication enhancement through IT Collaboration enhancement through IT
Email – one of the best facilities that IT has
provided to business. Utilising this facility
can not only connects with the fellow
employee of his or her organisation, moreover
connects with anyone in the world if the
business deems so.
Social networking – whether it is ecommerce
service provider or capital goods producer,
social networking is one of the best resource
for every organisation to promote the
business. Though utilising the social
networking brands can enhance collaboration
between them and can provide business

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environment a new look (Järvelä 2015).
Intranet – providing limited access and
controlling the information resource
availability to the employees was never easy
before. However, IT brought in intranet,
which aids the firms to perform the task
easily.
Blogs – another useful platform to enhance
the web presence of every business. It aids to
share information, collect information and
build knowledge pool for rolling out strategic
plans for the firm.
VOIP – connecting with the employees and
directors were never as easy as it now through
the use of VOIP. It provides essential
communication enhancement to the business
houses and let them mitigate the
communication gap (Layman and Alexander
2016).
Groupware - 21st century is world of intra-
industry trade, where labours are not
restricted to the geographical boundaries.
Firms can employ and let the employee work
from anywhere in the world. Features like
groupware provide essential collaborative
features to enhance the growth of the firm.
Utilising tools like this, employees can access
the core information system of the firm and
provide necessary input to provide it
sustainability (Natek and Zwilling 2016).
Videoconferencing – another boon of IT to
the business administration. Utilising this
managers can easily connect with employees
and stakeholders easily to enhance
cooperation (Larsen 2015)
Virtual world – a place, where firms can
promote itself and ask for collaboration to
have mutual benefit. Utilising the virtual
world, firms can make money online and
provide competitive advantage over its rivals.

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File transfer – one of the key factors that have
made the business administration easy.
Through file transferring technology, firms
can now share and avail large amount of data
from anywhere in the world and can analyse it
to avail strategic plans.
Wikis – utilising this firms can access
essential information of the market and rivals
to implement strategic plans for future
growth.
Table 1: facilities that information technology provides
Source: (Created by Author)
Analysis of MIS and its impact on business process engineering:
With ever evolving magnitude of risk in the organisation framework and rise in
collaboration between the firms, it has become hard for the mangers to keep an account on the
available information (Christopher 2016). Analysing the raw data to bring out market penetrating
strategic plan for the organisation and lead the firm to have better growth prospect, has become a
strenuous task for the managers. Under this situation, Management Information System also
acknowledged as MIS is one of the best tools to the managers for determining strategies of the
organisation (Pearlson et al. 2016). Utilising this tool, managers can produce effective marketing
strategies, fruitful management report and enhance the productivity through proper allocation of
the resources and distributing the tasks efficiently (Galliers and Leidner 2014). Compared to the
regular information system, MIS not only retrieve data from various sources, rather test it with
the ‘What if’ scenario. On the other hand MIS is potent to bring out data that are useful to build
strategic planning for the firm and aid the managers to screen transactional data (Soundararajan
and Singh 2016). Utilising the decision support feature, MIS can assess corporate strategic at
executive level and mould it to bring in fruitful outcomes for the managers.

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Under the advanced information technology of today development of MIS aids the firms
to streamline the process of company’s current need of information objectives through bringing
in new procedure to make the strategic planning of the firm more efficient (Kotler 2015).
Development of MIS has aided the firms to introduce Enterprise Resource Planning system that
can run an entire organisation single handedly (Mo and He 2015). With availability of
centralised data, ERP can store and analyse the available data and make essential strategic
decision for the firm to have better profitability and higher growth. However, there are
shortcomings too in case of ERP software. It has been argued that ERP commoditize the business
process and thereby lose uniqueness (Osei 2017). With the higher level of interdependence
among the firms, available data varies a little. Thus strategies generated by the ERP seem to be
overlapping in nature with the firms and it leads to precarious situation in the market.
Other than ERP, it Business Process Management or BPM is another sophisticated
outcome of the MIS. With support of the information technology and information system, BPM
can be acknowledged as intentional effort of the firms to plan, implement and issue strategies for
the firm (Harmon 2014). It is an automated process that makes the MIS system more efficient in
nature that aids the firms in many ways. For instance, it can be seen that utilising the BPM
system, firms cam empower their employees and enforce best practise in the firm (Chang 2016).
In addition to this, enforcing consistency and built-in reporting feature aids the firm to keep up
dated metrics of their key process elements. BPM allows to both way flow of data, which entails
both the managers and employees can share data with each other regarding the operations of the
firm and ensure equal participation by the hierarchy and lowererchy in growth of the firm
(Marrella et al. 2015). However, in there is limitation too; it cannot be used to provide
competitive advantage to the firms. Owing to cross feeding of data, BPM cannot generate

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automatic data regarding strategic programs of the firms and even if it does, then they will not be
effective enough
Next to this, comes the Business process reengineering or BPR, which is one of the
management strategies, introduced during early 1990 and aimed to aid the organisations to
improve their customer service (Iqbal, Nadeem and Zaheer 2015). Under the complex market
scenario of 21st century, customer satisfaction plays a vital role in case of sustainability of a firm.
Utilising the MIS under the framework of the BPR organisations are looking forward to provide
a new horizon to the business world. Information system plays a vital role in case of BPR and the
implication of MIS is wide spread in case of business process reengineering. With the help of the
BPR, firms now can treat geographically dispread resources utilising the modern mechanism of
the information technology and aids the firm to shelf their production cost (Wisner 2016). In
addition to this, BPR fast data capturing feature with single entry technology, BPR aids the firm
to reduce search time effectively and generate automated report regarding the strategic planning
of the firm. However, many organisations used BPR as cost cutting tool for lying off part of the
available workforce. It caused a bad name for the BPR and let it termed as the cost cutting
measurement of the organisation.
MIS has vast effect on the business process engineering. In order to analyse the
implication of the information system on the BPR, there are various models (Hong et al. 2016);
however, among them total expenditure on IS and System Resource Approach are the best suited
under the present complex market situation. Contesting the traditional approach under the MIS
framework, it can be seen that right combination of debt ad equity ratio in case of capital
structure enhances the growth of the firm.

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Figure 1: traditional approach of IS using total expenditure
Source: (Created by Author)
As highlighted by the figure 1, it can be seen that as the financial leverage of a company
increases, cost of capital falls, leading to better economic status of the firm. Now, the catch in
this scenario is that MIS stores data centrally and allocate available resource optimally through
generating strategic plans for the firms (Kaushik and Raman 2014). It helps the firm to reduce its
cost of operation and generate higher revenue for the firm, leading to better economic status of
the organisation.
According to the System Resource Approach, MIS enhance the organisational
effectiveness and lead to better future prospect for the firm (Sekaran and Bougie 2016). System
Resource Approach argues that firms has predetermined goals and them aims to achieve all of
them through logical planning. MIS in this regard helps the firm to collect and analyse essential
data from the market and produce fruitful strategies to make the firm enhance its operation
through achieving higher level in customer satisfaction.
Now, moving forward, this report will focus on the selected organisation, which is CGI to
determine the information vision and information strategy for its growth.

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Information vision and information strategy of CGI brand:
Background of the business:
CGI company group, popularly known as the CGI is a Canadian IT firm, which is well
acknowledged for their quality service. Since introduction in 1976, the firm is aimed to provide
quality service to their customers and vast experience of business over the last 40 years has made
the firm potent enough to gain competitive advantage in the world market (CGI 2018).
According to the CGI, they are always aimed to fulfil the customer demand, and strive to
recognise their clients, members and shareholders. The brand has earned 10.7 billion dollar of
revenue during the last four quarters making it one of the profit making organisation in Canada
(Schindler 2018). Being served around more than 400 locations around the world, CGI is truly a
multinational company that has not only make it one of a renowned brand, moreover it has
transformed itself largely to become where it is now with the use of informational technology
and suitable information system (CGI 2018).
Business products and services:
Initially CGI was an IT consulting firm, however, over the time through proper strategic
planning and managing information system, the firm started to indulge itself in other business
too. For instance, CGI started to outsource its IT consulting service, then slowly introduced new
wings for software development, system integration and various other industries. According to
the Schindler et al. (2018), astonishing improvement of the firm has been mainly achieved
through the proper implementation of the strategies and ability to adhering with the information
system.

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Key stats regarding the CGI:
Shareholders:
Figure 2, highlights the shareholder names and their share holdings in percentage format.
Figure 2: shareholder details of CGI
Source: (CGI 2018)
Sales per business:
From figure 3, it can be seen that there is rise in business during 2017 compared to the
situation of the 2016. However, information technology services of the firm have faced a
reduction during the last year.
Figure 3: sales per business of CGI
Source: (CGI 2018)
Number of employee:
The firms has 71,000 employees

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Sales per region:
According to figure 4, the firm operates in US largely and presence in Asia Pacific region
is lowest.
Figure 4: Sales per region of CGI
Source: (CGI 2018)
Global perspective of strategy of the firm:
Since the introduction of CGI back in 1987, the brand has evolved largely to become
where it is now today. According to the fiscal highlights of 2017, it can be found that the brand
has net earnings of $1 billion and total revenue was $10.8 billion (CGI 2018). In addition to this,
annual report highlights that, due to high growth rate in business, it has attracted $11.3 billion of
foreign direct investment and cash flow from operation was as high as $1.4 billion. Owing to the
large amount of the investment, the firm has gained maturity during last decade and now it
enjoys comparative advantage in producing IT services. Compared to its rivals, the brand has
grown at a faster rate leading to enhance its business to more than 43 countries around the world.
Through analysing the share price of the firm, it can be seen that it has rose from $0.27 in 987 to
$64.70 during 2017 (CGI 2018). Besides, this with a stern focus on customer satisfaction, the

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CGI group has enabled itself to attract large number of investors. As the method of
internationalisation, the firm depends upon the comparative advantage doctrine, which entails
lower opportunity cost is better for higher export of a good, in which a country attains efficiency.
Through the large experience of 40 years in the IT consultancy sector, CGI has attained
comparative advantage and it helps the firm to introduce its business t new countries. Wing to
large scale of operation the firm has enough capital stock and liquidity, that it can easily surpass
the local IT service provider of both the developed and developing nation. Thus depending upon
the comparative advantage and high amount of investment, the firm efficiently directs its
business to new markets. Now, considering this enormous growth, the firm highlights that one of
the key instrument that has aided it to evolve it into a large IT service provider is the ability to
adhere with information technology and information system. The firm has incorporated advanced
ERP system in its business framework since last two decade that has aided it to have fruitful
market strategies.
Assessment of organisational strength and limitation:
In order to assess the organisational strength and limitation SWOT analysis is performed
for the CGI. Details of the analysis are as follows:

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Table 2: SWOT analysis of CGI
Source: (Created by Author)
From the SWOT analysis it has been clear that the firm has various strength and
opportunities, which will aid the firm to grow in future. One of the major points to notice in this
regard is that, SWOT analysis has highlighted, the firm can enhance its business opportunities
through indulging itself into strategic partnership and incorporating MIS into its system
(O’Connor 2017). It will not only aid the firm to have better growth in future, besides this, it will
aid the CGI to withstand the challenging environment of business in 21st century. Threat factors
highlighted in the table 2 points that the firm need to consider growing competition as deciding
factor of its existence.
In order to understanding the working environment of the CGI, it is important to perform
PEST analysis of the CGI group. Details regarding the PEST analysis of CGI group are as
follows:
Strength
one of the
largest IT service
provider in the
world
Vast employee
stength
Large area of
operation
Enhanced
customer base
Weakness
employee
dissatisfaction
frequent plicy
change
lack of
transparency in
employee policy
Opportunity
technology
partenrship
introducing MIS
Mergers with
foreign firms
low operating
cost
increase in
virtualisaition in
market leading
to future
business
Threat
growing
competetion in
market
low price value
position
Currency
fluctuation

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Table 3: PEST analysis for CGI group
Source: (Created by Author)
Incorporating the PEST analysis for the CGI highlights various political, economic,
social and technological factors that the firm need to consider before initiating any business in
new place. Combining the finding of SWOT and PEST analysis, it can be stated that CGI is
performing its business well, however, there is scope of higher growth, if it considers the
information system and information technology in its structure. Lack of transparency in
employee policy is hampering the internal business of the firm and it need to be gauged with
immediate effect.
Ethical and social consideration for strategic solution:
CGI is one of the largest IT service providers that deals with vast amount of raw data
generated through data mining. Utilising this data, the firm states its market strategies and thus it
the firm has well developed programs to secure and maintain ethical and social parameters.
Through maintaining proper ERP program, firm restricts the employee to avail core data that
Political factors
political stability is
essentia for the IT
service providers
IPR framework of
the operating zone
wage legislation
anti-trust laws
Industrial safety
standards
Economic factors
Economic growth
rate of operaing
zone
Literacy rate of the
economy
Unemployment
and wage
standards
Government's
intervention level
in market
Stability of
exchange rate of
the host country
Social factors
skill and level of
the local
employees
Leisure interest
Cultural value of
the host country
Entrepreneurial
spirit of the
operating country
Education level of
the local
population
Technological
factors
Rate of
technological
diffusion
technological
advancement of
the host country
recent
technological
development of
the operating
country

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ensure data privacy of the firm (Arachchi et al. 2015). When it comes to social consideration,
then vast experience of operation in the IT sector has enabled the firm to know how to deal with
various business environments.
Policies to provide sustainability to the firm in front of threat:
Recommendation for policy of the CGI group is as follows:
One of the major threats of the CGI group is lack of transparency. Thus it would be better for the
firm to bring in MIS system rather than depending upon the existing ERP. It will provide two
way data flow and ensure that both the employee and employer are seamlessly transferring
valuable data with each other.
Lack of open ended information system management makes it hard for the managers to keep
account of every employee. Thus it would be better for the firm to introduce employee code
according to the internal strategy provided by the information system management tool.
Conclusion:
Through this analysis it has been found that information technology has provided much
resource to the managers to deal with ever changing business scenario. There are drawbacks in
available management tools that use information system positively, thus it is better for the firm to
move forward to the newer open ended tools that can provide better strategic implementation
option to the mangers. Considering the case of CGI it can be seen that the firm has an existing
ERP system, however, lack of data flow from both way has constrained the transparency in the
employee policy. To conclude it can be said that, if the firm opts for recommended strategies,
then it would help the firm in long run to have better growth.

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