Strategic Information Systems Report: Commonwealth Bank of Australia

This report presents a comprehensive analysis of the strategic information systems (SIS) at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA). It begins with an overview of CBA's business background, including its establishment, evolution from a government to a private bank, and its position as a leading financial institution with a global presence. The report then delves into a detailed environmental analysis, examining political, economic, social, technological, and legal factors that influence CBA's operations. Furthermore, it assesses the industry environment using Porter's Five Forces, focusing on threats of new entrants, bargaining power of customers, and the competitive landscape. Strategic resources, opportunities, and threats are also identified. The analysis extends to CBA's tangible and intangible resources, followed by an examination of its information system solutions, particularly the e-CRM process. The report concludes with an evaluation of the system and provides recommendations for improvement, emphasizing the need for technological advancements and strategic planning to maintain a competitive edge in the financial sector.

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

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Part 1:
Business background
In this report, the chosen business is Commonwealth Bank of Australia. This bank is a
multinational bank with branches all over the world. This bank was establishes and started its functioning
under the Australian Government in the year 1911.The headquarters of the Commonwealth bank is
located at Sydney , Australia Earlier the bank was owned by the government of Australia and later on , in
the year of 1966 the bank got converted into private bank(Chomik and Piggott 2016). This bank is
considered as one of the largest bank with good reputation. This is ranked among the top four banks of
Australia. It has its branches across U.K., Fiji and several part of the world. Commonwealth Bank
provides service related to the finance in different fields this includes loans related to education, home
loans and many more. In the year 2015 Commonwealth bank has been ranked as one of the best banks by
Australian Securities Exchange.
Type of Industry:
Commonwealth Bank provides banking and financial services for their employees. The
organization contains 51,800 employees by the year 2017 (Williams 2018). The Commonwealth bank
provides bank structure that includes retail banking structure, services for premium business, wealth
management and executive leadership. The presence of this bank internationally includes providing retail
bank in New Zealand, providing investment in the banking sector of China, providing representative
office in china, life insurance business among the people of Indonesia. The bank provides services
including credit cards, savings and transaction accounts and loans. Commonwealth bank is among the
largest banking sector and biggest ATM network. This bank also provides services to those people who
are planning to move to Australia. The bank also offers net banking, with the help of net banking one can
transfer money, withdraw and can manage the account.

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General Environmental Analysis:
Political:
The environment of the business is being analyzed on some factors. The first factor that affects
the environmental analysis is the political factor, this cam impact the bank in terms of achieving
profitability. Commonwealth bank is among the top four banks of Australia thus it can achieve huge
success by managing and planning the risk that are likely to get influenced by the political environment.
The political environment is being analyzed on the basis of some rules and regulations and the privacy
maintained. The commonwealth bank has changed form a government bank to a private bank over time;
this has helped the bank to increase the returns for shareholders and managers of the bank. The new laws
and regulation of financial deregulation has affected the people of Australia in a disastrous way.
Economic Factors:
The economic factors that influence the Commonwealth bank of Australia are the growth rate,
investments made by their client and many more aspects. Th trajectory path that determines the growth
rate along with the organization name is measured with the help of RAC; this shows the capital position
of the bank. The bank is associated with strengthen their regulation under the Basel III capital framework
(Upadhyay et al. 2016). This can affect the savings of the bank or can improve in managing the capital
of the individuals.
Social Factors
Social factors are the cultural attributes of an organization that will create an impact in the
society. Commonwealth bank has a great influence on making and supporting the community by
proposing offers related to financial literacy programs and by creating collaboration with several other
communities and associations as well. In addition to all this features, the Commonwealth bank allows
their employee to engage with other community and organizations so that they can promote across the

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communities and this also helps them expand culturally (Rothaermel 2015). Beside these facilities, the
bank provides attractive interest rates for the adult and youth, so that they can attract more people.
Technological factors:
Commonwealth bank of Australia is the first bank to offer their customer with banking and real
time settlement. This banking organization is the famous online banking with best facilities. Innovations
are made in order to develop the technical features that will affect and improve the customer interface of
the bank. Thus the investments made on improving the technological process helped in simplifying the
activity and also increase productivity of the employees (Benard and Victor 2013).
Legal factors:
Commonwealth bank formed collaboration with other banks in order to start a program for their
customers named Open Advice Program. The legal responsibilities that came with this program was
creation of negotiation with the ICAs and other independent groups. This group involved the entire
specialist person, so that they can get efficient outcomes (Hoque, Hossin and Khan 2016). In addition to
this, there are set of peoples known as independent review panel, they conducts surveys and provides
offers to their customers so that they can take proper decision and helps in understanding the agreements
that are offered by the bank. This program helps to address all the challenges that are faced while dealing
with the customers.
Industry Environment
Threat of New Entrants:
With the developing technology, the world is getting digitized in every filed. This has introduced
digitized financial system and banks are adopting to this environment so that they can compete with the
existing banks. There lies a high threat from the competing banks across the world. Though, banking is a
sector which is related with managing the financial status of a person, the people tends to choose the most

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reliable and the one whom they can completely trust. Thus, irrespective of the better facilities provided by
the new entrants, people tend to stick by their existing bank.
Bargaining power of the customers:
The customers associated with the Commonwealth bank posses great bargaining powers, as the
bank tends to launch the items which have same financial rates in the market. This helps to expand in the
market. This was the reason of the bank to offer their customers with best rates so that they can influence
the bargaining power of the market (Weill and Woerner 2015). This is done by offering different kinds of
services that will help them to manage the rates for their customers this includes lowering the home loan
rates, better education loans for students and many more.
Rivalry amongst the existing competitors:
Every sector of the business faces competition in the market. There are several banks that are
planning to develop strategies so that they can beat the other bank. The Australian financial industry is
also known as Red Ocean as the four major banks of the Australia competes against each other. The
rivalry between these four gangs is having a great influence on their customers. Thus, the market situation
is very clear from this that, if any bank looses their market shares in the current situation then they may
lose their existing market value (Nagle and Müller 2017). Thus, this becomes very much necessary to
hold the market value for Common wealth bank, else they may lose the power and market shares also in
the world of competitive market.
Strategic Resources:
The resources that are combination of intangible and tangible assets are controlled by the
Commonwealth bank are stated as the main features that will determine and affect the growth of the bank.
In addition to this, the resources include managing the teamwork, maintaining the growth and looking

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after the customer’s balance sheet. The bank is responsible for managing and executing the strategic
capabilities (Dobbs 2014).
Opportunities and threats:
Opportunities:
 Implementation of new technologies will enhance the service provided by the Commonwealth
bank.
 Several initiatives are taken by the bank, so that they can provide best facilities to their
customers. This includes “OneCommonBank” concept was being introduced.
 With time the bank decided new areas where they can expand also emerge into different countries
over Asia will eventually help them in their growth.
Threats:
 The bank possesses great threats from their rivalry banks.
 The investors that are associated with the bank are working in order to increase the banks
profit by increasing the activities Apart from this , the weak economy structure may lead to
decline growth rate of the organization.
 Several risks are likely to be come along with changing the location.
Part 2:
Tangible and intangible resources:
The resources which can be measured and is having some physical existence in the nature is
known as tangible assets. The tangible assets are:
Current assets: The asset that help a person in case of emergency. This includes cash, inventory asset
and marketable security.

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Fixed assets: The assets that are maintained a regular basis by an organization. The tracks of these assets
are being maintained by preparing a balance sheet for these assets. These assets are associated with the
money that are generated and are used b other tangible assets and are recorded with statements (Song,
Sun and Jin 2017).
Intangible assets are referred to those assets which does not have any physical existence. The
main intangible asset of a bank includes Band equity. Band equity does not possess any physical
existence thus it is referred to as intangible asset.
Information system solution:
The information system provided by the bank aims at creating a system that will provide an
interface for human interaction with the help of internet. For this reasons e-CRM process was introduced,
so that they can obtain the information that are necessary to reconstruct the customer interaction phase.
This process involves integration of the collected data that are based on the customer’s interactions
(Galliers and Leidner 2014).
Evaluation of the system and recommendation:
Wit the implementations of new technology, there arises a need of including the already existing
processes. The process of managing the contents of web, process related to analyzing the customer
behavior and many more are needed to be kept along with the implementation of e-CRM process
(Willcocks and Reynolds 2015). There is a need to develop new plans and strategies for the bank, so
that they can gain more trust of their customer and also can beat their competitors. Computers for
individual uses with alerts are needed to be implemented in order to maintain and address all the problems
that are likely to be faced by the customers. The bank needs to implement better strategies so that they
can develop their service and can give better satisfaction towards their customers.

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