Purpose and Scope of Study
Bandon Group has been a family owned business that has traditionally dealt with distribution of office machines. The company has offices spread out in Portland, Salt Lake City, Utah and Phoenix. The purpose of this study is to analyze Bandon’s group prevailing information systems and appraise the system in a bid to make the recommendations that management needs to embrace in order to re-engineer the company so as to realize the long term organizational goals. It will entail investigation of the company and its needs (Summer, 2005).
The Business Direction
Traditionally, Bandon group has been in the office equipment business dealing with photocopiers, facsimile machines and printers. However, the company is now taking on a new look as it embraces information systems consulting, document outsourcing and color graphics. The past decade has seen the company experience exceptional growth mainly attributed to the strong brand name it has created. Management forecasts an even further growth with outsourcing being the highlight with a predicted growth in revenue from 23 million to 30 million (Summer, 2005). But as the company experiences this exponential growth, it is emerging that their information systems have not been sufficiently scaled up to support current as well as future organizational requirements whether internal or external.
The feedback retrieved from the customers reveals some of the things that management will probably want to change. The clients of Bandon have requested the company to put in place more streamlined procedures for example, online services on the company website as well as e-commerce solutions.
Needs and Measures
There is a need for the company to employ enterprise resource planning especially since their competitors in the field have been using it. Difficulties experienced in sales can be attributed to the lack of cohesion between the sales prospecting databases with the operations administration database. There is therefore a need for the company to improve the OMD database onto a database built on a relational platform. A relational database will not only make the process easy but it will also make it more efficient and bug free (Bangia, 2007).
Business Requirements
As can be inferred from the business direction discussed above, there is need for the company to meet some important requirements if it is to realize the anticipated growth. For starters, there is need to increase the sales of the company. There relational database proposed by management will help achieve this once implemented. The customers have also requested for an online purchase platform. This is a ready market that should be utilized by adding shopping carts and other online shopping facilities on the website.
Secondly, Bandon needs to improve its customer service especially with the increasing numbers of customers. A satisfied customer will always return to the company and tell all his friends about it (Stanton and Richard, 1999). Technological advancements can be embrace d to better the customer service experience as well as overcome some of the associated problems. The use of facsimiles to report their meter readings is not convenient as they are prone to fail intermittently. A web based solution can be employed to make customer service more reliable.
Bandon Company also needs to improve on the administration of the company. When stringent administration procedures are put in place the company will spend less on the administrative costs. The feedback from the customers reveals that they have difficulty in comprehending the invoices with complains about the invoices not showing the number of copies done. There is also an absence of electronic invoicing for the clients that prefer electronic means of payment.
Present I.T Environment
To help facilitate the sales, the company has developed a variety of databases which are primarily based on pivotal software. These databases have been characterized with difficulties in sales due to a lack of cohesion between the sales prospecting databases with the operations administration database. There is a need to embrace relational databases. With such a setup, work will be done more efficiency and at the same time, save on time. It is also possible to reduce the frequency of occurrence of errors in the systems.
The present billing system is making it hard for the company in the control of billing. There is a need for an Information system that will automate this and make the process faster and easier. Additionally, there is a lack for a system that incorporates services that are not related to the copiers. There is no form of online billing with clients having to use the fax as the option for sending their meter readings.
Another issue with the IT infrastructure is the lack of an online platform for trade on the company website. The Bandon website has been a powerful tool for disseminating information to the clients and prospective buyers but it should be further improved to incorporate some online business related services. Many people today are opting for e-commerce as their preferred way of trading (Earl, 2000). This is market segment that the company should fully utilize.
References
Bangia,R. (2007). Business Systems. New York, Firewall Media.
Earl, G. (2000). Are you web ready? Black Enterprise. 31(2), 101.
Stanton, J. & Richard, G. (1999). Success Leaves Clues: Practical Tools for Effective Sales and Marketing. London, Silver Lake Publishing.
Summer, M. (2005). Enterprise Resource Planning. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.