Information Management Case Study

Nateela Shabbir – Student ID: 1079925

INTRODUCTION

The company being discussed in this report is Widget Supplies. Widget Supplies is a young

but rapidly expanding ISO 9001:2000 certified distributor of medical equipment. It sells

several major product lines from a variety of manufacturers. Each product line is managed by

a different department and sales are divided by region and office. Widget Supplies original

sales and invoicing systems were established when the business was quite small, and were a

typical blend of off-the-shelf retail management software and basic Excel spreadsheets.

Widget Supplies key stake holders range from individual medical professionals to large

hospitals and health care centres. (Case study)

The information management issues that have come across the case study is Widget supplies

is that they were unable to provide critical information and data in a timely manner. Because

of this “essential sales, budgeting commission and profit reports all suffered from these

delays”. (Case study)

Other information management issues faced by the company were that some of the changes

on the database had to be done manually, which can be very time-consuming and cause

human error. This also made it very difficult to update as manually the new data was difficult

to manage and caused a lot of constraints in getting the decisions needed. The sales database

in place was too complex to and difficult for even advanced spread sheets to work with. A

spread sheet formula entered incorrectly caused an error and provided incorrect information.

Therefore the hand-crafted reports as outlined in the case study became “too time consuming,

complex, prone to error and difficult to audit”. (Case study)

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“The Gartner Group believes that customer data degrades at a rate of 2 percent per month,

making poor data quality a major obstacle to successful customer relationship management

implementation” (Klau, 2003, Laudon,Laudon 2006: 243).

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT AIDS DECISIONS

Any organisation that relies heavily on their information system need to ensure there are able

to reach their strategic goals and meet all requirements for their suppliers, stakeholders and

consumers. The major impact of information management is able to make a decision that

gives you long-term success.

So looking at decision, if you firstly look at what a decision is. A decision is like a physical

force. A force changes the speed or direction of an object, such as block of wood sliding on a

table. A decision changes the speed or direction of the events to which it is applied. Except if

it was a decision to do nothing. (Laudon, Laudon 2006: 115)

RELEVANCE, TIMELINESS, ACCURACY AND USED.

There are certain principles of information that need to be determined in an organisation to

ensure a smooth flow of data. The four principles of managing information are relevance,

timeliness, accuracy and used. These principles further on in this report will be discussed in

detail in regards to how these principles can be implemented by Widget Supplies.

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A general briefing on these principles can be outlined as:

Relevant: What is needed? It can be said information is only relevant, and therefore needed it

is used to make decisions.

Timeliness: When is it required? Information is only required when decisions needs to be

made.

Accuracy: How is it required? Information needs only to be sufficiently accurate to make a

decision.

Used: What is already being done? Information that has already been available can aid to

make decisions.

Firstly when the company is looking at what information they need regularly, they need to

determine what their objectives are, as well as decide what decisions they need to make to

achieve those objectives. The company also needs to think of what information is necessary

to support those decisions, and determine when the decisions need to be made. And finally

decide on the accuracy necessary to make the decision. Therefore because information is

relevant does not imply is it complete or in the most effective format (i.e simple). Other

elements would also need to be considered alongside the relevance.

Widget Supplies main objectives are to achieve the main information management

characteristics, which for many organisations are, relevance, timeliness, accuracy and

completeness. These characteristics are joined with other objectives of the company such as a

good support of its business process and operations. Information management also supports

decision making by its employees and managers and also support of its strategies for

competitive advantage, and gaining a strategic advantage.

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RELEVANCE

A company needs to decide if the information they are receiving is relevant by making good

decisions to have good information. Therefore all the information that is relevant is there but

none which is not relevant.

There are implications to this principle can be if you receive information and do not make a

decision based on it then you don’t require that information. However if you request for more

information this is not a decision, it shows you didn’t get the right information you required

in the first instance. And a decisions to do nothing can be seen as a decision, for example if

Widget Supplies seen that their report showed an increase in sales the budgeting had been

done correctly and no changes would need to be made until the report had to be run again, or

any further implications had shown up.

Decisions you make cannot change the past, only the future therefore information should only

be primarily be concerned with forecasting. This has also been seen in the case study, as the

future plans for WidgetSupplies includes a XempleX project to properly calculate, integrate,

track and report sales commission. They have also looked at ways where the stock control

and supply chain solutions are on the table, this is the decisions they are making now aiding

with future decisions.

Widget Supplies had to ensure the information they have is adequately relevant as the

continued growth of the company made more information available and it was important to

know which information is actually needed. XempleX solutions were brought on to aid with

this. XempleX a data mining and reporting solution understood Widget Supplies

requirements. XempleX as a business intelligence solution had a modest approach. They

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created new data entry forms were required to collect additional data, this was to ensure that

all the relevant information was included and no vital data was excluded.

The objectives of the company need to be communicated as well as the related decision to

your providers. Widget Suppliers was facing problems with this as they could not simply

answer the questions they needed to ask. Information providers need to tailor the information

they provide to the recipients requirement.

To ensure you have relevant information the company needs to make sure that the

information to be provided will be sufficient to make the decisions, therefore no more or less.

Widget Suppliers need to ensure they made it clear to their provider what decision they wish

to make, and if it’s confidential be clear in their own mind what it is

TIMELINESS

Every company has deadlines to meet, and information must always be produced as soon as

possible. There is always a speed that information is required, and a company needs to make

strategic decisions on this information. It needs to be determined the urgency of the

information required. Most decisions are required urgently, but this isn’t always the case.

This is because other required information may not yet be available or it isn’t complete

therefore the decision cannot be made just yet.

The implications of timeliness can be discussed as being the relationship between the position

of the information user in the organisational hierarchy and the speed at which they are

provided with information often results in information being made available in totally the

wrong places at the wrong time. (Mason, Swanson:1991)

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XempleX provided WidgetSupplies a business solution that ensured the most important and

relevant information was accessed as soon as required. As WidgetSupplies used manual

forms and spreadsheets this caused a lot of delays but XempleX implemented a new easy-to-

query reporting database with automated import/export routines, as well as autmodated

calculations for mark up, margin and commission. WidgetSupplies system were now using

automated systems that didn’t give them many implications and problems which they faced

earlier of not getting hold of the information as soon as required and the lengthy time it took

to gather the information.

When information is requested and provided relates to the urgency of the decision that needs

to be made. Organisations need to allow the time needed to understand the information before

making the decision. This will almost certainly result in providing information for people at

the “sharp” end of the organisation (i.e the people dealing with the customers or clients)

before providing it for the strategists)

Another implication to keep in mind is when there is a rush for information it presents risks.

It can then therefore be inaccurate and incomplete. This can then be more expensive to be

produced because you might require more staff or pay overtime to current employees.

Timeliness can also be a delay in the production of information which is needed at that time

to make urgent decisions.

The use of the internet or other data wireless connections also highlights another rish, and out

of date information. Therefore unless the data is clearly dated, out of date information may be

used for decision making. Therefore the decisions made are based on out of date information

and impact the organisation hugely with a financial loss.

ACCURACY

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Accuracy is often considered to be an indication of rightness or wrongness. But in practice

when measuring for example a distance (kilometres) profits (dollars) or time (hours) there

can only be degrees of rightness. The accuracy with which we can measure something not

only depends on our measuring apparatus but on what we are measuring.

Accuracy cannot be absolute and we need to therefore consider why need the required

information. i.e what decisions are to be taken, before defining the accuracy necessary. The

degree of accuracy you will be able to provide can depend on the past data you have and your

confidence in the assumptions you have to make. Some decisions may involve information of

varying accuracies. This has been seen in many organisations where a lot of factors influence

the decision, and accuracy plays a very vital part in this.

Kumar 2004 and Lucy 2005 have stated that Management information systems have been

seen to be accurate and provide up-to-date and correct information when they are based on

factual data.

Data that is inaccurate, untimely or inconsistent with other sources of information can create

serious operational and financial problems for the business. WidgetSupplies was

experiencing the same issue until they came up with a quick solution. When fault data goes

unnoticed it can lead to incorrect decisions, product recalls and hugely impacts the financial

losses within the organisation.

The information that has been captured is actual information which is most relevant data that

is processed and stored to provide an access to it when it is actually required. Important

organizational decisions are based on the information provided by a management information

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system, due to which their accuracy is essential. All processed information derived from an

accurate and correct management information system is typically free of flaws, consistent and

complete. (Laudon,Laudon; 2010:330-335)

Widget Supplies would need to estimate the sales and make a decision on this,therefore the

information gathered has to be as accurate as possible. The information XempleX gathered

helped to achieve how the information required. XempleX satisfied WidgetSupplies

advanced reporting and analysis requirements with a custom-built solution that spread sheet

users found familiar and easy to work with. Users could still produce basic reports directly

from the original sales system, or use the new reporting exclusively.

In some ways you have to make fewer guesses and those you do have to make are based on

reasonable assumptions.

USED

Information has a great impact on decision making, and hence its value is closely tied to the

decisions that result from its use. Information does not have an absolute universal value. Its

value is related to those who use it, when it is used, and in what situation it is used.

A XempleX solution extends the life and range of existing business systems. Complex legacy

data sources are treated and merged with new data or produce comprehensive reports.

XempleX solutions seen what WidgetSupplies had already done with their database and

reporting system and in some cases they had to only adjust a few things. As mentioned in the

case study most of the original sales data entry forms were adequate so these were left in

place. Therefore they seen the vital importance of managing information where the used

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information can be useful in generating and assisting in new ways and forms as a business

grows you require better and quicker systems in place.

“According to the Data Warehousing in Seattle, inaccurate and low quality data cost U.S

businesses $611 billion each year in bad mailings and staff overhead” (Laudon,Laudon 2006:

243

Audit plans organisations create need to be efficiently prepared. All the relevant information

has to be visible. It can be said that for any organisation information is vital, as the

information provided aids organisations to make decisions. And decisions are necessary to

achieve the organisations objectives. And this all comes down to the initial audit, and having

a good information system in place. (Lucas:1990)

An organisation has to have focused aims and all the information will fall in place in a

simplistic way that is suited to the organisations way of doing things and carrying day-to-date

duties as well as the long-term objectives the organisation wishes to achieve. Information

Management Systems are very important and this case study has showed clearly the

importance of a good solution in place.

CONCLUSION

Widget Supplies had to consider each and every are of their business to see if the information

management objectives which are based on strategic decisions of the company need to be

achieved. Firstly Widget Supplies had to consider did they want a system in place that would

give them a quicker efficient database, or a database that as quick and efficient but also to

give them long-term information that would aid in making long term decisions. The business

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process and operations from their current system had to be reviewed and analysed and

XempleX helped to achieve this.

Widgetsupplies knew what information is required to support the decisions that needed to be

made. From this they helped XempleX to achieve a better understanding of their current

system and their objectives. XempleX provided an efficient and effective cost-effective

solution. They found that the visual object-oriented structure allowed them to navigate

through different aspects of the solution far more easily than script-wizard or dialogue-based

configuration systems. This in turn made it easier for WidgetSupplies to communicate needs

and requirements during the development process.

XempleX gave WidgetSupplies a new way to access data, and they no longer feel distracted

nor forced into unwanted or premature changes to the business.

To summarise deciding whether information is relevant is probably the most difficult of all.

The difficulty is how to objectively judge relevance. Correct information is vital for correct

decision-making and correct decision-making is vital for survival. Failure to use it properly

must therefore be one of the biggest risks facing an organisation.

Best practice needs to be applied for Information Management. Best practice is made from

relevance, timeliness, accuracy and used elements of Information Management. Data quality

represents the reliability and effectiveness of data. It cannot be achieved instantly; it is a vital

and on-going process. A well-designed database and information policy will go a long way

toward ensuring that the business has the information it needs

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Information Management Case Study