Rainbow Illusion Case Study: Risks and Internal Controls Analysis

This report analyzes the Rainbow Illusion Company, a retail chain in Australia, focusing on its strategic information systems and revenue cycle. It examines the company's operational processes, including sales and payment methods, and identifies six key strengths in its system. The report also addresses problems avoided by these strengths and discusses two situational pressures that could increase the risk of fraud. Furthermore, it explores the advantages of a distributed system over a centralized one. The analysis covers various aspects of the business, from transaction cycles to financial reporting and potential fraud, providing a comprehensive overview of the company's operations and risk management.

Running head: STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Executive Summary
The report deals with the case study of the Rainbow Illusion Company. The rainbow Illusion
is an organization that deals with the readymade clothes for young females. It is situated in
New South Wales and Victoria that is two of the most important place in Australia. The
rainbow Illusion Company ahs total of 30 stores in these two areas and thus huge customer
base and the profits of the company are huge. They have a very big business but procedures
of cash transactions are very old and uses four parts sales invoice. The report deals with the
processes, risks and internal controls of its revenue cycle. The report focuses on the six
strengths of the Rainbow Illusion Company in order to control the transactions of its sales.
The report discusses about the problems that have been avoided by the company. The report
focuses on the two situations of pressure that would increase the likelihood of fraud Last but
not the least, the report concludes with the discussion about the distributed systems.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................3
Discussions.................................................................................................................................3
Business scenario...................................................................................................................3
The Six Strengths of rainbow Illusion System.......................................................................4
Problems avoided by Rainbow Illusion Company.................................................................6
Increasing fraud due to the situational pressure.....................................................................8
Installing a distributed system over a centralized system......................................................9
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9
Bibliography.............................................................................................................................10

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Introduction:
The Rainbow Illusion is a retail chain that is concentrated in New South Wales and
Victoria. It sells ready-made clothes for young females. Each of the stores of the company
has a full-time manager and an assistant manager. The sales person and the cashier are young
people who are working on part-time basis and are paid with hourly wages. The company
uses cash registers that are unsophisticated with four parts sales invoices to record each of the
transactions. These invoices of sales are used regardless of the type of payment.
The report deals with the evaluation of processes, risks and the internal controls of the
revenue system of the Rainbow Illusion Company. The report focuses on the six strengths of
the rainbow Illusion Company for controlling the transactions of its sales. The report focuses
on the problems that are avoided by the company through these strengths. The report
discusses about the two situational pressures that would increase the probability of fraud in
the company. The report has a detailed discussion about the advantages of distributed system
over centralize system.
Discussions
Business scenario
The rainbow Illusion Company is a retail chain that is situated in Australia. It deals
with the ready-made clothes for young females. Each of the shops of the Company has a full-
time manager and an assistant manager; both of the them are paid with salary. The sales
person and the cashier are young people who are working part-time and are paid an hourly
wage. The company uses cash registers unsophisticated with four-part sales invoices to
record each of the transactions. These are the invoices of sales are used regardless of the type
of payment.

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On the floor of sales, the salesperson records manually the number for the employee,
the transactions, and the other details. The salesperson then gives the invoices to the cashier
and retains one of the copies in the sales book. The salesperson after doing the required job
passes the transaction details to the assistant manager. The assistant manager prepares a
report for the review of the manager. The manager reviews the report and then passes the data
to corporate headquarters for processing. The processing of data department returns a weekly
sales and the activity report to the manager for review.
The Six Strengths of rainbow Illusion System
The Rainbow Illusion Company is retail chain that deals with ready-made clothes for
young-females. The business is very big and it is situated in New South Wales and Victoria.
There are hundreds of sales transactions in a day. There are various strengths that of the
Rainbow Illusion Company for controlling the transactions of sales. The strengths of the
company are mentioned below:
 Distributed system for the reason of computation:
This part of the company works on the operation of procedures for the company.
Among the different types of procedures, the items are chosen in a specific section, in another
section the invoices of the sales are prepared and in the last section that is the section of
dispatch, the items are maintained. There are large number of representatives in the company
that maintains all the specific jobs for the company. All the staffs of the company have their
specific tasks to do and they focus on the specific department that they work. Thus from all
these it can said that company have a system that is distributed according to the task and also
according to the staffs of the company.
 The method of transaction in diverse system

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The Rainbow Illusion Company focuses on different modes of transaction for their
procedures of business. The customers of the company can choose any of the modes of
payment to make the payments after buying goods from this company. All the different
modes of payments include credit cards, debit cards, cheque and cash. The company also
have the options of using different e-wallets for taking the payments from the clients.
 The process of invoice in the procedure of shopping
The procedure of making the invoice after every purchase is a very essential thing. In
case of the Rainbow Illusion Company, they use a double invoice processing. In the first
case, a rough invoice of the purchase is made for the items that are chosen by the customers.
In this invoice, the details about the items and the price of the items are included. The
customers make the second invoice at the cash counter during the cash payment. This process
is more efficient as it involves double-checking. It helps to counter the mistakes during the
making of invoice.
 Transferring the order to the sales department
After the customers have paid the cash to the counter, the invoices are sent to the
department of sales for reviewing. In the department of sales, the invoices are checked further
to check that if there are any mistakes in the invoice. After the invoices have been checked,
they record the data of the invoice in the department of sales of the company. This helps the
company to keep the record the customers that visit the stores along with their choices and
their needs.
 The maintenance of chain procedures:
In the Rainbow Illusion Company, the purchase method is based on chain procedures
along the different sections of the procedures that are linked to each other and they work
accordingly. The chain process helps the company to follow a specific path for the

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procedures of purchase of any product from the company. The chain process also helps the
company to encounter any of the mistakes that are missed by the sections of the procedures.
It makes the Rainbow Illusion Company more efficient in their purchase of product
procedures.
 Unity among the record of transaction:
This is an essential stage of the company. In this stage, all the transactions that are
done are monitored in this stage. Each of the transactions is monitored and the data are
tracked. This helps the rainbow Illusion Company to record all the data of the transactions
that happen the whole day and the transactions are rechecked.
Problems avoided by Rainbow Illusion Company
The strengths of the Rainbow Illusion help it to avoid some of the problems that are
risky for the organization. It has some advantages by incorporating the strengths.
The distributed system of the organization helps to provide a procedure that is error-
free and it is provided to the customers of the company along with the minimum time
consumption. Because of this practice, the pressure of the work of the company also becomes
less. The different stages various professionals are provided to handle the work more
efficiently and perfectly. Each expert for each of the department does their work efficiently.
They are trained very well in each of the section. These make the procedures of work more
simple and error free.
There are different kinds of benefits for facilitating the various transaction modes in
the stores of the company. There are various types of customers that visit the stores of
Rainbow Illusion; each of the customers pays through different modes of payment. The
company gives the flexibility of almost of all payment modes to the customers. Thus, it helps
the customers to choose the mode of payment they want to pay the money to the company.

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In this part of the strategy, the staffs make a rough invoice of the items that are
purchased by the customers. After the invoice is made, it goes through several stages where it
is checked repeatedly until the final invoice is made in the counter where it is modified and
revised. It helps to give the customers an invoice that is error free.
The department of sales keeps the record of the invoices for the transactions that
happen through the whole day in the stores. In this department, the invoices are checked and
analysed from where the errors can be seen and modified. It helps the company to understand
the amount of products that are sold.
The Rainbow Illusion Company follows a procedure of chain. The chain procedures
make the process safer and very prominent. It helps the company to provide a procedure that
is fast and error less. It is also time saving for the customers that visit the stores of the
company.
The account manager tracks and keeps the record of all the sales transactions that
happen in a day in the stores. It helps to keep the records of all the sales transaction that
occurs in the company.

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Increasing fraud due to the situational pressure
The Rainbow Illusion Company supports many data and systems. These data should
be secured so that no one can misuse the data against the company. This can have a negative
impact on the company. The main target of the hackers is the information and the data of the
company. They try to steal the personal information of the customers of the company and try
to misuse them. The strength of a company is securing all the important data and information.
Security is an essential aspect for the development of business. The focus of the Rainbow
illusion Company is to identify the risks that are associated with the company. The scenarios
of a company highly depend on the personal and professional nature of a person. The two
situations that increase the probability of fraud in the company are:
 In the first case, an employee of the company faces some threats that are potential and
some risks also due to lawbreakers for the purpose of interest that is customized. This
often leads the employee to operate activities that are forged inside the company. This
sometimes lead to take steps that are harmful against the company. This has a negative
impact on the company.
 A staff of the company can get ill at any time. They need immediate treatment for the
sickness and thus a huge amount can be demanded for the treatment of the staff from the
rainbow illusion Company.
The factors that are primary are related with the fraud that can happen in the company
are threatening and blackmailing. The risks that are associated with the company Rainbow
Illusion can be two kinds- professional and personal. The main motive for the activities that
are forged is to harm the system of the business of the company. The competitors of the
organization always do these blackmails and the threats. They want to bring down the
business of the company. The main disadvantages of the activities that are forged are carried
out successfully and they get exposed to the public. There are many firms that have witnesses

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such activities that have harmed their business. There should be some countermeasures so
that the risk and the threats are mitigated or the effect of such activities can be immediately
controlled.
Installing a distributed system over a centralized system
A centralized computer system is a system that uses the infrastructure of server or
client where one or more than one nodes are connected to the server that is in the center. The
centralized system is by many organizations where the client that is present dispatch a request
to the server that is present in the system and then after that they receive the responses. There
are many companies that do not use the centralized computer systems because to their
disadvantages. The cons of the centralized systems are:
1. The entire central system can abruptly fail.
2. The centralized system depends on the network connectivity. The centralized system can
stop working if the connection is not good as the nodes are connected to the central
system.
3. There is no back up of data in the centralized computer system. The maintenance of the
server in the centralized system is very difficult. The node of the server is only one. The
system becomes inefficient if the server node is taken down for maintenance.
The distributed system are the systems where every node present in the node
participate in the decision making. The distributed computer systems are difficult to design
and the debugging of the algorithms for the distributed system. The common clock causes
problems in ordering of the temporal transactions. It is very difficult for a single node to get a
view that is global of the distributed systems.
The pros of the distributed systems are:

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 Sharing of data: the advantage of this system is that the user at one of the site can access
the data that are present at another site.
 Autonomy: due to the sharing of data through distribution of data, each of the site is able
to retain control over the data that are locally stored.
 In the distributed computer systems there is an administrator known as the global
database administrator that is responsible for the whole system. A small part of the
administrator of global database is delegated to the administrator of the local database for
each of the site. It depends on the design of the database that is distributed.
 Each of the administrators of the local database may have various degree of autonomy
that is local.
 Availability: if one of the site falls in a distributed computer system, the sites that are
remaining can be able to continue operating. Thus, a fail in the site does not necessarily
shut down the distributed computer system. However, this happens in the centralized
system as there is one central system and if it stops working, the system fails.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the report it can be concluded that the rainbow illusion Company has
several strengths that helps it make profits and it also good services to the customers. The
sales invoice system in the company is old but it is very efficient as it uses the distributed
systems for its transactions where all the staffs participate to make the job done. All the staffs
such as the cashier, sales personnel, assistant manager and the manager play a very important
role in the sales transaction of the company.
The report deals with the risks, processes and the internal controls of the revenue
system for controlling the sales transactions. The report focuses on the six strengths of the
Rainbow Illusion Company that are identified for controlling the transactions of sales. The

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report focuses on the problems that are avoided by the company by incorporating the
strengths that are identified. The report discusses about the two situations of fraud that
increases the probability of fraud in the company. The report has a detailed discussion about
the advantages of distributed computer system over a centralized system and why some
companies favour distributed computer system rather than a centralized system. Lastly, the
report concludes with the advantages of distributed system and the use of it in the company.