Information Strategy and Management: El-Alamein Case Study Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of El-Alamein, a leading printing and packaging company, and its journey towards digital transformation through the implementation of an information strategy. The report begins by outlining the company's challenges, including a lack of IT infrastructure and the absence of an IS/IT department, which led to operational inefficiencies and security vulnerabilities. The case study details the selection and implementation of Oracle's E-Business Suite as the ERP system, highlighting the valuable information provided by the system for various business functions. The report also examines the risks faced during the ERP implementation, such as employee resistance and turnover. Furthermore, it assesses the value added by the IT/IS investment, including improved productivity, enhanced inventory management, and the establishment of strategic relationships. The conclusion summarizes the outcomes, acknowledging the difficulties encountered and the positive impact of IT/IS investment on the company's value and operational efficiency. The report references key academic sources to support its analysis.

Running head: INFORMATION STRATEGY AND MANAGEMENT
INFORMATION STRATEGY AND MANAGEMENT
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Introduction
El-Alamein is a leading organization in printing as well as packaging industry. It is
approved supplier for biggest international organizations in industry of fast food. There
was no reliable network, infrastructure, storage or servers in the organization. No IS/IT
department was there in organization chart. After reviewing several ERP systems as
well as scoring against requirements of the company, E-Business Suite of Oracle was
selected as best ERP for meeting business requirements and information of the
organization.
Description of Systems
The systems that have been described in the case study are IT/IS systems and
mainly the ERP system. El-Alamein did not have any IT/IS department and was facing
various challenges as the company lacked in proper infrastructure, network, storage
devices and servers. Till the year 2006, the organization did not have any IT
department and was dependent on separate PCs. The work duties were facilitated with
end-user designed excels sheets. The company had been a victim to many attacks that
resulted in loss of orders, inaccurate inventory and mismanagement in between the
various functional departments. In the year 2006, the CEO of the company decided to
shift to digital platforms which required establishing various infrastructural components
that include computer network, security policy along with a backup system. ERP
system was to be implemented along with time and attendance systems. The
implementation of these systems was seen to solve the problem of time consuming
operations. The company has come up with a website which helps many of the
functional departments that include marketing, sales, customer services as well as sales.

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Oracle E-Business Suite has been chosen as the ERP system that can help the company
to manage informations along with business requirements.
Valuable Information provided by systems
The systems to be implemented will help the business to go digital mainly the
attendance, time management as well as the ERP system. The time and attendance
system has been integrated with the ERP system thus provide advantage to the
company. Oracle E-Business Suite was selected ERP system which could meet up to
the expectations of the company and compatible with the various business
requirements. The information that the ERP system can provide are planning,
inventory, marketing, human resources, purchasing and sales. This will help in
managing the various business operations as it is centralized as well as integrated in
nature (Lowry & Wilson, 2016). The Oracle E-Business Suite that has been selected by
the organization customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management
(SCM) and other computer applications that can either be developed or be acquired
(Motiei, Zakaria, Aloini & Sekeh, 2015). The information about the time of the tasks
being done and the attendance of the employees of the organization are two valuable
informations that can be obtained from the system.
Risks facing El-Alamein in implementing the ERP system
Implementation of the ERP system by the company has faced different difficulties
the main being employees reluctance to adapt to the changes. Employee turnover is the
major problem that the company faced while implementing ERP system. The company
has lost six of his valuable persons during the process of implementation of the ERP
system. Knowledge management is considered one of the vital factors in case of
implementation of ERP system. Organizations are implementing the new system in

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order to enhance their business operations but as they are not considering some major
aspects, these are failing. The reluctance of the employees to adopt the new technology
and specifically to learn more is one of the main reasons for the failure of the project.
There are lot of instances where the project implementation fails due to the only reason
that organizational workforce are not willing to accept the changes that the
management wants (Chakravorty, Dulaney & Franza, 2016). The backbone of an
organization is its workforce and in this organization the reluctance of the workforce
can be well understood from the fact that it has lost six of its employees during this
process.
Value added by IT/IS investment to El-Alamein
The IT/IS investment has added a lot of value to El-Alamein as this brought in
reductions in the investment risks, strengthened the process of integration, brought in
improvisations in productivity at the same time enhancing the efficiency related to
inventory management. With the IT/IS investment the company has been able to
establish strategic relationships with different multinational companies. The
establishment of IT/IS department has increased the company’s value by a value that is
more than EGP 10 million. This is said to be five times of what was spent till date on
IT/IS and the return on investment has exceeded 500 percent. The production time and
attendance of the employees can be tracked properly thus given the company to handle
the operations in a proper way. The implementation of the technology has helped the
company to streamline various operations thus improving the productivity of the firm.
The firm has been able to build relationship with various multinational companies and
thus in this way has succeeded in expanding its business. The new technology has
supported operations such as customer services that are considered as one of the major
aspects that contribute to the growth of the organization.

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Conclusion
After a year of the ERP system’s implementation, two modules only went live: HR
module and financial module. Several difficulties were experienced by the project. For
reducing the risk, organization took several steps. Employee turnover could cost
organizations huge amount of money which was faced by the organization during time
of implementation. Establishment of IT/IS in the organization resulted in increase of
company value.

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References
Chakravorty, S. S., Dulaney, R. E., & Franza, R. M. (2016). ERP implementation failures: a
case study and analysis. International Journal of Business Information Systems, 21(4),
462-476.
Lowry, P. B., & Wilson, D. (2016). Creating agile organizations through IT: The influence of
internal IT service perceptions on IT service quality and IT agility. The Journal of
Strategic Information Systems, 25(3), 211-226.
Motiei, M., Zakaria, N. H., Aloini, D., & Sekeh, M. A. (2015). Developing instruments for
enterprise resources planning (ERP) post-implementation failure model. International
Journal of Enterprise Information Systems (IJEIS), 11(3), 68-83.