Information Systems for Managers

Answer 1

Farokh to reform the D'Costa Cosmetics IT Infrastructure and align it with the Corporate
Strategy. Therefore, he must learn the fact that the divide between business and IT is so evident
in the culture that it reads like a workplace joke's punchline . Business people think technology is
just about turning PCs on or off when needed and tech-savvy employees don't read the nerve
center of what the business is doing.

Of course, there is a division between people who work in traditionally defined business units
and those who work in IT. This division was intentional in the first stage, but as technology
gradually reached its great importance, suddenly a necessity arose for local and global
businesses, this division is now seen as an obstacle and no purely. Companies today recognize
the need to align business with IT. A recent Gartner report predicts that worldwide half of the
organizations will achieve more IT-business collaboration by 2022. However, the problem is that
IT-business alignment is not easy to achieve. oh

IT and Business: problems experienced in the current scenario: Most companies see that IT and
business are not working as close as they should to optimize their product delivery service. What
is the most commonly cited reason? Working in technology is very different from traditional
business units. Other reasons come from the perspective that stereotypes perpetuate
misconceptions about how business IT should be viewed and vice versa. Personnel, who are not
skilled in IT , think that IT is too technical to understand, and they may fail to recognize that IT
is involved in core activities that generate income such as customer service, sales, marketing ,
and so on. However, in the 21st century, these stereotypes are changing, and therefore , different
disciplines have inherent incentives, languages, cultures, goals, and skills. So , some people are
more comfortable working with spreadsheets and numbers, while writing makes sense for some
people.

Despite the rise of roles like CIOs and CTOs, tech leadership hasn't stopped reporting significant
struggles when they try to collaborate across business units. Therefore, there are always quick to
notice some types or other problems in the business-IT relationship. It shows that these
differences are detrimental to many businesses, because they often present different problems
such as:
• Expensive investments with unexpected ROI.
• Limited success and/or lack of performance.
• Bottlenecks that hinder service delivery, perhaps through buggy or slow deployment
• Poor or confused customer service
• Barriers (can be direct conflicts) between solutions and processes.
• Poor support and communication for potential customers and end users.

Obstacles: Today every organization is out and out of the technology business, no matter what
service or product you offer. This shift is inevitable, and with it comes the concept of business IT
alignment. That's why IT enables the business while the business drives IT's efforts. Therefore,
both generate income, and neither is necessary.
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Definition of "alignment" for business and IT: The concept of business and IT alignment is
rooted in the long-standing fact that people in the business and the tech side have not been able
to link their communication, knowledge, and skills. -the ability to work together so they can
support successful service delivery.

Benefits of aligning IT and business

• IT cost reduction (even a minimum of 10% of IT spending, hardly benefits any business
objective)
• Business IT alignment often results in countless benefits:
• Increases collaborations
• Improve investment and improve ROI
• Promotes visibility into problem areas
• Accelerate time-to-market
• Improve your employee and industry knowledge
• Synchronize all units to be agile
• Your strategy has been achieved
• All of these improve your bottom line, and the benefits result in a superior customer
experience.
• It helps to make smarter decisions in every area, viz. application life cycles, infrastructure
design, marketing and sales, planning and budgeting, outsourcing, partnerships, staffing,
vendors, and more.

Achieving IT-business alignment is always best practices: The talk of alignment, and the result
of achieving it, mean two different things. Achieving true IT-business alignment is a tough job,
especially because it is cultural through practicality. Culture changes may seem easy—encourage
departmental meet-and-greet—hang up values-based posters -- but those efforts rarely succeed.
In contrast, achieving alignment requires strategy. And that strategy should be an iterative
process: it mandates determining a change, putting that change in place, seeing the change made,
and deciding whether to tweak it. or not. Consider the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, to implement
changes.
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Consider these best practices to align IT and business:

Change what you do and change your thinking - Think about your entire business units, that
should include technology, in a continuous and strategic loop. Changing your mindset reveals
that teams also begin to understand other teams so that all teams can work better, reduce risk and
increase efficiency.

Consider IT as an instrument of business transformation - If you want to know how IT supports

other business units such as sales, marketing, product development, etc. Hopefully, you've
explored revenue streams, so that IT can directly impact

Make the ambiance of a customer's experience the #1 factor - Aligning everyone under common
goals and language that directly supports the customer, it is easier to break down the disciplinary
silos of traditional types . Make sure your tech teams can also focus directly on the customer.

Use a language - Every company and every industry has its lingo. Help demystifying what each
team does - this is where you start by standardizing your business language across all
departments.

Remain transparent in all departments - Stopping the theme of unnecessary mysteries, instead,
management and executive decisions should be transparent. Example--If your CTO just trusts his
gut and/or your manager plays favorites, these are all big signs that your organization is not as
transparent as it should be.

The Infrastructure Law that Farokh must follow : For BASE STATIONS, the placement of
infrastructure must follow the "Law for Strengthening the Expansion of Telecommunication
Infrastructure, (i.e. Law No. 29022) and the related its regulation, and necessary changes whose
purpose is to establish a temporary, but special regime to implement the type of infrastructure
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necessary for the provision of public telecommunications services throughout the national
territory, in particular in rural areas.

FHWA Estimates, ie Highway Authorizations Under Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. However,

the Infrastructure Law does not deal with issues related to land tenants occupying a property or
lot without the necessary land title claimant. In general, the goal of the Infrastructure Law is not
only to streamline but also to standardize the environmental licensing and land acquisition
processes of transport infrastructure projects.

Farokh's enthusiasm to change the D'Costa Cosmetics IT infrastructure and align it with the
corporate strategy should take care of the above important points. He is also expected to take
care of the rotating business and IT employees to encourage understanding, promote an inclusive
and vibrant culture, understand the changes in people, and finally, create a plan to -align with
exclusive.

Answer 2

Arthur D Little, Inc. (ADL). was instrumental in bringing about a transformation initiative at
BPCL that began at the end of 1996. In creating a vision for the company, the ADL methodology
involved a cross-section of the organization, who everything determines the current company.
reality, conceptualizes the gaps between the current reality, and the vision, and ultimately
develops a change plan to bridge these gaps. The emergence of customer focus has emerged as
the primary dimension of this exercise. Therefore, the company's line change initiative was
transformed into a program called - Customer Service and Customer Satisfaction ( CUSECS).

SBUs (Strategic Business Units) : The change plan, in tangible terms, has resulted in a radical
and repeated delay in the organization. It eliminated the previous departmental silos while
creating six strategic business units (SBUs), such as, Refinery, Industrial and Commercial, and
Aviation, Retail, LPG, and Lubricants; in addition to sharing services and support entities such
as finance, information systems, human resources, etc. Compared to the previous seven or six
layers , the new structure appears with four layers. According to ( Senge , 1990), it is related to
intangible terms, changing processes that can transform BPCL into a learning organization.

Because the entire change plan requires effective integration and must be based on a large
increase in the intensity of information in the organization. It is perceived that to a large extent,
IT can contribute to this and thus the project began to develop as an information system for the
organization.

BPCL's IS Plan: BPCL's IS plan envisages a comprehensive system development for supporting
the company's business aspirations. A small group of nine people taken from the CUSECS and
IS programs designed to map the existing business systems (legacy systems) and also the future
needs described in the optimization of resources, customer focus, integration, and flexibility. The
team concluded that it is important to replace the widespread "batch-process-oriented legacy
systems" with a "state-of-the-art ERP system". processes of BPCL with the help of conceptual
insights and people recognized as having expertise in their business areas through a series of
process workshops, and fully obtained 600 process maps. This workshops were held in all 4
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regional headquarters, namely Mumbai , Calcutta, Delhi, and Chennai The team a
comprehensive questionnaire, developed a detailed list of requirements, based on these processes
, and finally created some scripts so that they can get reliable business situations.

Validation or pre-selection of ERP products: The questionnaire and list of requirements serve the
purpose of validating or pre-selection of ERP products for detailed evaluation, while scripts are
used to final product review. As the group prepares itself for the objective evaluation of the ERP
products, the supporting entities and SBUs must own it. According to a member of the IS team,
"The sheer volume and intrinsic complexity of ERP packages in itself presents a daunting
challenge, however, the greater challenge lies in enlisting all stakeholders in selection process".
A series of educative workshops were held for Entity/SBU heads and their teams on aspects
ranging from basic concepts to architectural details of ERP products.
These presentations are expanded to a wider cross-section of people in the organization at a later
stage. Each vendor, after deciding on the possible ERP vendors, is asked to make presentations
to an identified set of over 100 people from different businesses. The purpose of making these
presentations is to clarify the main people their doubts, understand the working of ERP systems,
create a feeling of need in them and finally make them submit their own ERP in their
implementation in individual businesses. Each business, by following this process, came out with
the expected qualitative as well as quantitative benefits, which became the basis for the approval
of the project.

To find the most suitable ERP package for BPCL's current and future needs, a detailed technical
selection process was conducted. For the implementation of this best ERP package, SAP R/3
software was chosen.

Project ENTRANS: A short form for Enterprise Transformation ie ENTRANS name is decided
by the top management for the project implementing their SAP R/3 project. The name represents
the vision of the top management of BPCL to transform BPCL and make it the new BPCL. The
uniqueness of BPCL's ERP implementation is that it has been a solid business initiative right
from the inception of the project. "We are only doing the necessary catalytic role", paradoxically,
this expression of pride or egoism is significant from the Head of IT at BPCL.

However, during the software selection phase, due to critical technology issues, BPCL's IS had
to step into the role of a process anchor, and after that, the implementation phase was led by a
non-IS man. The man, Mr. Shrikant Gathoo , who ultimately headed the project is an HR
professional. The unique feature of the IS plan group is that it has only ten people from IS, the
rest of the 60 from different business disciplines. A PSC (Project Steering Committee) was
established with the heads of all HR, IS, SBUs, and Finance as its members. The mandate of the
PSC is to validate the decisions made by the project team, and then make decisions on interface
Entity/inter SBU issues, followed by identifying and requesting decisions from Apex Council
(made up of working members of the board of directors) on issues with wider
organizational/strategic implications, providing resources, and reviewing project progress. The
PSC regularly meets at least once a month and whenever issues warrant resolution.

The two-phase implementation of BPCL is designed to implement almost all SAP R/3 modules.
The implementation should be completed in two phases. The first phase consists of Conceptual
Information Systems for Managers

Design and Planning (CDP) while the second phase is designed for Detailed Design and
Implementation (DDI). The need to involve an external agency - a SAP Implementation Partner
with relevant expertise and experience - is generally agreed upon. PWC (Price Waterhouse
Coopers) was selected, through the bidding process for the CDP phase, as the implementing
partner.

Answer 3a

Jennifer Roberts is passionate about pursuing the Infra Revamp initiative of Hawthorne
Investments and began her journey by targeting BYOD as her first initiative. As the task
requires, I need to highlight some important Tips for establishing a successful BYOD policy in
the company.

For anyone like Jennifer who is in the process of developing a corporate BYOD (Bring Your
Own Device) policy, has yet to create a policy, or perhaps has one out of date, the following
which are some tips to help solve IT security, IT services, application usage, and other
components, such as Figure 1.

1. Specify only allowed devices : The old days were simple and clear. You have a blackberry
that you take with you to work and nothing else. However, employees are spoiled for choice,
with a wide variety of devices from Android phones to iOS-based mobiles. Above all, it is
important to specify what exactly 'BYOD' means. Should you be told to bring your iOS device
and not your Android device? Or should you say don't bring your other gadgets, except your iPad
? You need to clarify which devices are available, and which devices are acceptable to the
business.

2. A strict security policy should be established for all devices entering the area: Often, device
users refuse to move to lock passwords and screens on their devices. They face barriers to ease of
access to their device content and also to their devices. However, this is not a valid complaint. A
lot of sensitive information can be accessed by connecting phones and other devices to corporate
servers. If employees are interested in adopting the BYOD initiative, they should configure their
devices with complex passwords for protection. A long and strong alphanumeric password
should be set - not just a four-digit one.
Information Systems for Managers

3. Defining a clear service policy for devices under the BYOD system is a must: Management
must set boundaries when it comes to questions about employees' devices and solving problems
there. Policy makers need to answer the following questions, so they can implement it :

What are all the policies for supporting personally owned applications? What support should be
provided for devices that may be damaged? Will your management limit the Helpdesk to
calendar ticketing problems, email, and other personal information management type
applications?

4. Clear requirements of all types of communication that apply to who owns which apps and
data: While it looks logical for the organization to own the rights to personal information that
stored on servers, problems will certainly arise when wiping the device in case of theft or other
deficiencies.

As with the conventional system, when a device is wiped, all digital elements of the device are
also wiped, which may include personal items that the individual may have paid for. Sometimes,
these things are irreplaceable.

Thus, a valid question arises - will the BYOD policy in place allow the wiping of the entire
device carried on the network?

Answer 3b

BYOD or Bring Your Device is the latest IT trend in town. This is a practice where, employees
are encouraged to use their devices to access business systems and data. As a small part of the
larger trend of 'IT consumerization ' - where the customer's software and hardware are allowed
on the organizational premises - BYOD is a movement that affects from the CEO to the hourly
worker, i.e. every individual of the company.

The IT department's struggle to keep up with the ever-changing technology is fierce even today.
The system emerged as a growing desire for employees to bring their own devices for accessing
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corporate data. The umbrella term BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) also refers to many other
initiatives such as BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology), BYOPC (Bring Your PC), and BYOP
(Bring Your Phone). These initiatives emerged as empowering workers and also aligning them
with the concept of 'IT consumerization .

The BYOD policy and its Pros and Cons

The Pros: As mentioned above, BYOD has many merits:
 Ensuring employee satisfaction
 Improves user engagement
 Lowers technology costs for farm service companies
 Take advantage of newer tools and their latest features.
 Cost Savings --- Rent or buy tools for each employee.
 Hire hardware and IT support teams.
 Provide training for the use of new devices.
 According to the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group, these savings add up to
$3,150 per employee per year.
 In addition to this, when employees bring their own devices, they take better care of their
hardware and thus save you the additional cost of providing alternative devices.
 Latest Technology --- they tend to be more careful about keeping all their devices,
including laptops up-to-date and installing the latest available updates.

The Concerns
 Regardless of background or situation, problems will always arise. There is no uniform
end-user support available there . There may not be a uniform support system in the
BYOD area, regarding any issues that may arise, since most employees will be working
on devices of different types. It is most important to understand and equally stay aware of
it.
 Security is an eternal concern on all platforms today, and it is no exception for a BYOD
policy, however, it is not impossible to solve this challenge. All it takes is smart
preparation by IT departments to stay alert. Antivirus programs and password protection
should be installed to separate apps and work decks from personal information.
 Data recovery : What happens to the organization's data when an employee leaves the
company? Do they have their phone number? Who will stop their access to your
company's data? What happens if/when clients call that number directly?

For an employee in a sales environment, this BYOD system can be very risky, and BYOD
policies should be well understood and therefore, address this issue. Otherwise, a former
employee may suddenly become a competitor with easy access to client information.

Annexure
Information Systems for Managers