Strategic Information Systems: Analysis of Rainbow Illusion's Business

This report analyzes the business information system of Rainbow Illusion, a retail chain, focusing on its strengths in managing sales, including the implementation of a distributed computing system and various payment methods. It examines the advantages of these strengths and identifies ...Read More

Running Head: BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEM
Business Information System
Name of the University
Name of the Student
Author Note

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Executive Summary
The goal of the report is to analyse the strengths that can avoid the possible
problematic instances occurring in the store of Rainbow Illusion that sales readymade
female cloths. The store follows a chain process for the management of invoices also
several reviewing process is done that is later documented by the assistant manager by
reconciliation process. This report also differentiate between the distributed computing
system and the centralised computing system. The comparison shows that the
distributed system has several merits over the centralised system.

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Table of Contents
Introduction........................................................................................................................3
Strength of Rainbow illusion in controlling sales...............................................................3
Advantages of the strengths..............................................................................................5
Increase of Fraud by situational pressure.........................................................................7
Aim for installation of distributed system replacing the centralized system......................8
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................11
References.......................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
Rainbow illusion is the chain of the retail store that has 30 stores in the South
Wales and Victoria. The organization provides readymade clothes for females. This
report will also discuss about the instances that is ignored by the company because of
their available strengths. Also, two persuaded instances will be discussed which can
lead the company to encounter fraudulency. At the end, this report contains a brief
discussion about the choices of installing distributed computing system in the place of
centralised computing system by some companies.
Strength of Rainbow illusion in controlling sales
Rainbow illusion is associated with some detailed as well as categorised system
which helps the organization to manage the business operations with some list of
operations. The sales process of the organization is handles in a proper way which
helps to develop the organization in many ways. Some strengths of this sales process
are like:
1. Introduction of distributed computing system: The processing system of the
Rainbow Illusion is split into several number of steps and required categories
such as starting from item selection, invoice preparation and delivering the item
to the required customer. All the specified steps have proper number of
representative and their expertise are restricted to the extent as required in a
particular stage such that one process do not haphazard the other ongoing
process (Snapp et al. 2017). Therefore, it can be stated that Rainbow Illusion

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follows the distributed system of computing where each department have a group
of responsibilities and the consecutive step is followed by the next step and the
representative involved. Hence, all the process in each steps are distinct and
information related to those process can be traced down easily.
2. Different methods of payment have different system: The payment process for
any purchase of clothing item has various ways, starting from cheque payment,
card payment, cash payment and several other ways for payment in stores
(Krinsky et al. 2017). In order to record the transaction details of the stores
invoices are parted in four ways so that all the kinds of payment methods for
variable transaction can be recorded in a structured manner. Rainbow Illusion
has permitted three types of payment method and those are cheques, cash and
bankcards.
3. Analysis of the status of invoice at all the stage: After the customer choose the
item for purchase, the sales representative manually prepares the invoice, later
on the invoice is sent to the cashier at the payment counter. After this process
the cashier evaluates invoice by examining the details of the order and then he or
she delivers that credentials to deliver the product to the customer (Kamargianni
et al. 2016). Therefore, the process of selling becomes easier as the ordered
item can be validated after proper analyzation of the invoice and then the input of
details is done for sale.
4. Input of sale is done after invoice analysis: As discussed above the
representative manually input the invoice, then sent that invoice to the cashier,
the available cashier analyses that invoice and input the details for sale

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(Pagalday et al. 2018). The extra analyzation of invoice validates the purchased
item more for the customer. Also, if any error occurs, that can be clarified easily.
5. Maintenance of chain process as per the authority: The whole process of buying
a product from the rainbow illusion is joined with numerous small processes. The
transaction is executed depending on the priority of the authorities which is
possessed by the personnel (Morita et al. 2015). All the responsibilities of the
store are distributed among the different authorities of the store that starts from
the sales representative to the higher manager.
6. Reconciliation of transaction record: The reconciliation process is the keeping
account of the data that is recorded from the transaction of the whole day and it
is a vital function that needed to be done on the daily sales as well as the
inventory. This process is carried out by assistant manager of the store (Prey et
al. 2018). The manager of the store reviews this reconciliation report at the end
of the day that is prepared by the assistant manager of Rainbow Illusion.
Advantages of the strengths
The strengths involved in the system for controlling sales for the company allows
them to ignore certain instances that can affect the on-going business in a negative
way. As mentioned above, the first strength is the introduction of distributive computing
in the business system, this system categorises the transaction in different steps. Every
person involved in the transaction process in different steps have a responsibility to fulfil
that is assigned to them. Categorising the functions of the representatives of the store
lowers the risks and errors that may occur. If any error or issue occurs, the process of

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finding out the error occurring in a particular department will be easy and correction can
be done in lesser time. Also, the distributive computing system enables the store in
keeping less representative, however in an efficient manner (Wu 2017).
The second strength is the involvement of different system for different methods
of payment. It allows the store for distinct identification of the methods of payment and
their effects which has to be acknowledged. In case of using a single system for
payment allowance the process of sorting will be more time consuming and lengthy than
using a separate system also, tracking down an issue of an order will be time
consuming.
The third strength is the analyzation of the invoices along with the details at every
stages that enables the system to be more firm. This result in the occurrence of
negligible issue in the required invoices. Therefore, the company assures of less
customer issues and less errors in record with the introduction of this system in the
transaction process (Chen, Wu and Miau 2015).
The fourth strength makes transaction process free of any error that can possibly
be present as the whole invoice is analysed thoroughly in several stages and then the
sales’ input is done. This process can avoid several confusions that may occur between
the employees of the store and the customers regarding the item purchased.
The fifth strength is the maintenance of chain process or analyzation of the
methods involved in the process before the supply of the orders. “Higher the stage of
authority, higher of the responsibility”, it allows the process to pass through several
verification and get confirmed at the earliest. Hence, error occurrence remains
negligible.

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The sixth and the final strength is the documentation of the transaction. The
fragments of the transaction are collected for the final output. Hence, the introduction of
the process of reconciliation comes that removes all the unwanted confusion that can
occur between variable departments of the store. The hard copy of the documents
related to the transaction of the entire day is kept. This helps in sorting of data in a
structured manner and if any issue occurs, the required data can be recollected and
rectified accordingly by the concerned authority of that particular department.
Increase of Fraud by situational pressure
The organisation remains vulnerable in experiencing fraudulency under some
influential situation. The company’s employees are mostly targeted as the influential
situation. The potency of situation effects the company’s involvement related to the
occurred issue that circles the concerned employee. The situations can be of two type
those are professional and personal in nature. The effects of such situation may lead to
fraudulency that can be related to the aspects of information or finance of the company.
It can be said that the company may face fraudulency due to two such situational
pressure and those are as follows:
1. If any employee is getting threatened or blackmailed by some lawbreaker for his
own interest, that employee may cause fraud to the company. This situation
pressurise the employee to involve himself in effecting the store in negative way.
2. An employee may fall sick suddenly and in the process of treatment a lump sum
quantity of money can be required.
The first instance taken into consideration is of threatening and blackmailing,

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these situations can occur very often with the target of extortion. The extortion can
be of company’s information or money. Also, the threatening can be of two type, one
is of professional and the other is of personal. The employees can harm the
organization by the process of extortion where they can misuses the organization’s
systems or the data of the customers (May and Bhardwa 2018). These kind of
threatening and blackmailing is generally occurred between rivalry companies. The
most complicated part of such situation is that those scenarios are revealed only
after the fraud execution. Therefore, it is difficult for the company to identify the
possible fraud that can occur. Also, the affected employee is restricted by the
blackmailers and reveal of such situation is rarely seen before the occurrence of the
fraud. Therefore, fraudulency is experienced by several companies through extortion
whether in respect of information or money.
Aim for installation of distributed system replacing the centralized
system
A distributed computer system is considered to be the integration of several small
independent system of computer which the user view as a singular system. In a
distributed system, several small system uses variable resources and provide their
respective services to the operating system, hence the operating system is responsible
for the maintenance of the whole system (Iyengar, S.S. and Brooks 2016). The
connected small system in the distributed mode do not depend on each other but they
are interconnected with each other by the high speed network. In this system an
envelope of software is needed as multiple operations take place and these operation

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are connected, therefore an interface is required to the user at the end for seamless
joining of the operations.
Figure 1: Distributed Computing Systems
(Source: Bhattacharyya et al. 2018)
The distributed computer system is installed by many companies as the benefits
overrides the centralized computing system, those benefits are:
 Fault and redundancy tolerance- The fault tolerance of the distributed system
is higher than the centralized system. The operation of the business remains
unaffected if one system fails out of all the present systems available in the
network, suppose 40 system are running at the same time and 1 system out of
the 40 fails in the entire network, hence that 1 system will not hamper the rest 39
systems and as a whole, the network will not be affected and the system will run

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seamlessly without any interruption (Ganesan et al. 2017). However, when
single data centre does not operate properly the whole centralized system will
fail and the network will get terminated. Hence, distributed system has this major
advantage over centralized system.
 Cost effectiveness- Distributive system are cost effective than the centralized
system. The installation cost of the distributed system is higher than centralized
system, however after the implementation of the distributed system the overall
cost of the system remains low than of the centralized system (Sanders et al.
2016). The maintenance cost of the centralised system becomes higher which
results in the increase of the overall cost.
 Scalability and Modular Development- The distributed system has higher
scalability as their operation scale varies horizontally over the system (Ouyang et
al. 2018). It can be said that adding more system to the distributed system will
decrease the load of work and increase the efficiency of the business. At one
instance, system provides highest service with high quality to the end user and
updating the same system is not required. This helps the organization to reduce
the load of the work and it allows the systems to work seamlessly in order to run
the business smoothly and achieve the desired goal (Wu 2017).
 Low Latency- Low latency occurs in distributed system due to the approach of
traffic from the closest node. In the distributed system the nodes are found to be
placed at several locations and hence the system encounters low latency (Yang,
Xiao and Poor 2018). Therefore, the systems included in the business have
higher speed with added quality. Therefore, the design of the software is

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prepared according to the requirement of running those software in multiple
nodes all at a time. This results in complicated process as well as higher cost of
the overall system (Ghosh 2014).
Conclusion
The situations occurred in the store of readymade cloths named as Rainbow
Illusion and its prevention are discussed in this report. The introduction of chain process
in the process of transaction in order to make invoice of the purchased item by the
customer and the assistant manager prepares the report of reconciliation is disused
here. It is found that the transaction and sales system runs on the concept of distributed
computer system which enhances the strength of the system. The system of transaction
is divided into several steps and each step has an employee with particular
responsibility. This process allows the system to run seamlessly and no confusion is
created between any personals. The management of the store involves the manager as
well as the assistant manager which increases the efficiency of the management
process. The next part of the report discusses the strength of the company which is
used to ignore certain situations. After this section, an analysis is done on two
situational pressures which causes fraudulency to the company through the employee.
The last part of the report discusses the contrast between the distributed computing
system and centralised computing system, and it is clear from that comparison that
distributed system has several merits over the system of centralised computing. The
introduction of the distributed system has ease the working of the employee as well as
lowered their workload, also customers are attracted more towards the distributed

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system applied in the company.

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