Techtronics: Evaluating Information System for Business Improvement

This report assesses the role of information systems (IS) within Techtronics, an Australian electronics manufacturer, focusing on its impact on marketing, sales, production, and human resources. It explores general management control, application controls (input, processing, output, integrity, and management trail), and risk management strategies, including data cleaning, backup, encryption, and strong password systems. The report also emphasizes the importance of auditing IS to safeguard data quality, outlining an audit plan and process involving team meetings, departmental assessments, and report publication to address reliability and integrity issues. The goal is to improve data security and overall organizational performance, with a focus on continuous improvement and adaptation to emerging risks.

Running head: INFORMATION SYSTEM IN BUSINESS
INFORMATION SYSTEM IN BUSINESS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1INFORMATION SYSTEM IN BUSINESS
Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................2
Role of IS for the organization:..................................................................................................2
General management control:....................................................................................................5
Comparison of management control and the application control:.............................................6
Risk management control:..........................................................................................................7
Importance of auditing IS and safeguarding data quality:.........................................................7
a) Audit planning:..................................................................................................................8
b) The audit process:..............................................................................................................8
Conclusion:................................................................................................................................9
References:...............................................................................................................................10

2INFORMATION SYSTEM IN BUSINESS
Introduction:
The aim of the report is to assess the information system for the chosen organization.
The organization chosen here is Techtronics. It is an Australia based electronic
manufacturing company specializing in electronic appliances and consumer electronics. The
organization has recently integrated the information system for improving the business
process ("Electronic parts & components SuperStore | Techtronics Australia", 2018). The
report will review the impact of IS on various aspect of the organizational business process
like marketing, sales, production and human resources. The report will also discuss about the
general management control, different types of application control. A comparison will also be
drawn between the general management control and the application control. A discussion will
also be carried out for the risk management control. Along with that the audit plan and the
audit process will be discussed which will be directed toward safeguarding the data quality
for better data security. The report will discuss this sections in sequence.
Role of IS for the organization:
In order to understand the role of the IS for the selected organization it is important to
identify the areas where IS has significant impact. The areas identified are:
 Marketing and sales
 Production
 Human resources
Marketing and sales:
Marketing and sales are two important areas where information system has significant
impact. Marketing activities are intended to plan, promote and improve the market
performance. In order to improve the marketing it is important to understand the needs and
demand of the consumers. In order to do that it is important to collect data about consumer

3INFORMATION SYSTEM IN BUSINESS
preference, habit, and frequency of shopping. However it is not possible to collect these data
which is often huge in volume and then process these data manually. These are effectively
analysed with the marketing research software which is part of the organizational information
system. The statistical analysis performed by this software helps to categorize the customers
in terms of actual and potential customer (Laudon & Laudon , 2016). This categorization
helps to understand customers in more details and helps to create more effective marketing
that is inspired by the consumer behaviour including demographic, geographic and
psychographic behaviour. These marketing research software supports marketing intelligence
that helps to gather and interpret information about the potential market competitors. This
analyses give the organization an edge over its competitors. As sales are closely related with
the marketing, IS while improving the marketing plan also helps to increase the sales of
products. Another important factor contributing to the marketing success is effective sales
plan with proper strategy. The information system or more precisely the decision support
system helps to create sales forecast by analysing previous sales report and finding common
trend in the sales with extensive analysis of pros and cons of the previous sales strategy
(Devlin & Murphy, 2015). This not only helps to improve the sales performance but also
create effective sales forecast for the organization and what is likely to expect from the recent
sales strategy.
Production:
Production is another area where organization uses IS for better production management
(Gebauer & Schober, 2015). The success in the production depends on the following
subsystems:
 Product subsystem:
In order to remain in the market place of today’s competitive world it is
important to incorporate innovation and as well variation. To survive in the market

4INFORMATION SYSTEM IN BUSINESS
place it is necessary to bring new products and this should be done in continuous
basis. However, bringing new products into, market and that too while keeping a
continuous progress, is challenging. If the product does not click with the consumers,
the company is likely to deal with financial loss. Hence proper decision about the
design is a necessary. However decision regarding the design is not often structured in
nature, but there are several way that information system supports the decision
making like assists for designers in knowledge work, evaluation of new products , test
for product desirability and research for new products.
 Place subsystem
Information technology has helped manufacturer in ensuring that the right
product is available to the customer at the right place. The advancement of
information system technology has made it simpler to track products and product
movement in the distribution process
 Promotion subsystem
The Information system in production also helps in product promotion through
data base marketing. It helps to accumulate and process extensive data about the
consumers which helps to reach each and every potential consumers with personalised
promotional plan.
 Price subsystem
The decision support subsystem, part of the larger Information System or IS,
helps to formulating effective price. It analyses price database of other competitive
organization and creates aggressive pricing policy for the product which is likely to be
successful in the market.
Human resources:

5INFORMATION SYSTEM IN BUSINESS
Human resources is a vital department for any organization. It manages the employee,
organizational strategy both ethical and managerial. In order to ensure that organization
appreciate the talent to retain them in the organization for its own profit (Kunj & Rittel ,
2015). It is also important to identify employees who are lacking in performance. The choice
has to be made for both employees of both the category. The outstanding employees must be
retained through appraisal while different strategies for employees lacking in performance
has to be made. However in order to formulate effective strategy it is important to monitor
the performance and record them for further analysis (Heinrich et al. , 2017). This analysis is
not possible without the help of the Information System as it maps the performance of the
individual employee against the set standards of the performance matrix and prepare
personalised training plan for each of the individual. Hence, information system plays an
important role for not only the organization but for the overall organization as well.
General management control:
Management control is the procedure that organizations applies for controlling and
managing the organisational procedures. A successful control over the organizational
workflow is the key to the successful business. The general management control oversees
both the internal and external management process. The internal management is about the
control of internal workflow like allocation of resources, control over the production, and
proper use of the human resources (Marshal & Steinbart, 2017). The external management
control is about to deal with the stakeholders to maximize the profit and minimize risk of
sales and production. The general management control is helpful for organization for
ensuring that the mangers as well as the workers are doing their respective works effectively
which is in the interest of the organization.
Types of application control:

6INFORMATION SYSTEM IN BUSINESS
There are five types of application control and those are input control, processing
control, output controls, integrity controls and management trail (Wu, Straub & Liang, 2015).
All of these control is discussed in the following sections:
Input control:
It basically checks the integrity of the data before it is applied to the system as input.
The system here under consideration is the business applications. It ensures that the input
data complies with the parameters as specified by the organization.
Processing control:
It brings automation in the process control.it ensures that the processing is not only complete
but at the same time without error and also verified with the authorities (Chan & Vasarheyli ,
2018)
Output controls:
It basically compares the result obtained with the system with the desired result and
then decides what needs to be done for getting the desired result (Knechel, W. R., &
Salterio ,2016).
Integrity control:
It keeps track of the data from the time it is processed till it is stored in the appropriate
location. This ensures that data is consistent and correct too (Henss, 2018).
Management trial:
It is an audit trial. It helps the management in identifying and monitoring the
effectiveness of the other controlling approaches discussed above and also help to identify the
associated errors.

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Comparison of management control and the application control:
The management control in simplest term is general in nature. It applies to the all the
applications that is part of the information system. It controls each and every applications so
that it function properly and the possibilities of error is minimum. Application control is
specific in nature and it applies to a particular application, rather than all the application in
general. It ensures that the particular application to which the control belongs, is processed
properly and it is completed without error (Westrup , 2017).
Risk management control:
In order to maintain the data integrity the organization has adopted data cleaning
technique and for this data integrity gateway or the DIG is used. It automates the data
processing, delegate task, monitor data cleanup to identify error and inconsistency.
To maintain data availability the data backup is deployed so that data is available if
there is any inconsistency in the data.
To ensure data confidentiality encryption is applied for the entire session of storing
and retrieving data.
To ensure data security strong password system is integrated for restricting the data
access to the people not authorized for the access.
Risk identification, risk assessment and risk control forms an integral part of the risk
management control. In order to identify risk the team should be encouraged. It is an iterative
process (Alavi & Leinder, 2015). As the programs advances, new risks are likely to be
included. Hence any fixed approach to identify the risk will not work. Without proper risk
identification, risk assessment and risk control is not possible.

8INFORMATION SYSTEM IN BUSINESS
Importance of auditing IS and safeguarding data quality:
Auditing of the IS system is very important to find the security issues and scope for
the improvement as well. Safeguarding the data should be preferred by the organization as it
affects the performance of the organization. The data that the organization collects includes
data bout the sales, product plan and price, consumer base, and data related to the
organizational structure as well. Hence these data are very much important and it should be
protected with strong security measures (Noe et al. , 2014). The auditing of the IS is
conducted through audit planning and an implementation of the plan called the audit process.
a) Audit planning:
The audit plan for the information system auditing will follow the following steps:
Team meeting:
A team meeting will be held for circulating the plan and scope of the auditing. The
scope of the auditing will include the areas of interest, the procedure and actions regarding
that.
Preparation of the team:
A team will be prepared for the auditing of the system
Publish of the audit report:
After the audit is prepared the report will be published and it will be circulated to the
respective departments for review.
b) The audit process:
As per the plan for the audit, the meeting has been conducted with team leads from
the sales, marketing, production and the technical department. It was decided that the each
department will carry out an initial assessment of the informations system that is used in the

9INFORMATION SYSTEM IN BUSINESS
respective department. This audit will be directed towards finding the issues with the system
and devise proper strategy to mitigate that. Thus the scope of the auditing was finalized. The
team leaders formed respective group within the team with the team members and carried out
the audit. After the audit was completed the results was published. The audit has identified
issues with the reliability and integrity in the financial record as there were evidence of
mismatch in the financial record and also some errors were identified while storing and
retrieving the financial data in the database. The customer database were also faulty as there
was some record of data theft violating the customer privacy. This issue although identified,
was not reported as it was thought to be less important. However, the issue must be resolved
for protecting consumer data and this should be done by increasing the database security and
improving the platform for the database as well. The security platform for the database has
not been updated yet recently which must be done for strengthening the database security.
The report as per the plan has been sent to the concerned higher authorities for review and
formulate next strategic plan.
Conclusion:
The report concludes that the information system is an important aspect for any
organization adopting technology for the business process. It makes business management lot
easier. It improves certain dimension of the business like sales and marketing, product
promotion, production and effective management and provides a better approach for
managing human resources. Information system as part of the business management provides
general control and application control for controlling and monitoring several business
related application. However there are certain issues like data security, data integrity, data
confidentiality, data availability for which information audit is an effective approach.

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Alavi, M., & Leidner, D. E. (2015). Knowledge management systems: issues, challenges,
and benefits. Communications of the AIS, 1(2es), 1.
Chan, D. Y., & Vasarhelyi, M. A. (2018). Innovation and practice of continuous auditing. In
Continuous Auditing: Theory and Application (pp. 271-283). Emerald Publishing
Limited.
Devlin, B. A., & Murphy, P. T. (2015). An architecture for a business and information
system. IBM systems Journal, 27(1), 60-80.
Electronic parts & components SuperStore | Techtronics Australia. (2018). Retrieved from
https://www.techtronics.com.au/
Gebauer, J., & Schober, F. (2006). Information system flexibility and the cost efficiency of
business processes. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 7(3), 8.
Hall, J. A. (2015). Information technology auditing. Cengage Learning.
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