Management System in Northumbria Country Foods

Question: Discuss about the Management System in Northumbria Country Foods. Answer: Introduction Northumbria Country Foods (NCF) is a company manufacturing chilled ready meals and supplying the product in super market. It was founded by Dr Beth Walker ten years ago. The company has a joint venture with a multinational company, which have invested 4.5 million in NCF for its expansion (Beesley, 2013). There are several issues with the ready meal producer regarding the use of additive content, fats in their products, which are unhealthy, but NCF have overcome the issues with producing healthy products headed by a nutritionist. The demand of the ready meal of the NCF is increasing and they need to upgrade their manual system to a new automatic information system. The report describes the benefits of adopting the information system in the current business process. Some suggestions are given with proper justification regarding the usage of the system and the steps that the company should take to implement the new information system in their business. The next part of the report gives some recommendation about the usage and the implementation of the information from where the company can gain advantage. Benefits of adopting the information system The implementation of the new information system in their business process would help the company to efficiently manage the business operation and gain competitive advantage in the market. The company can gain several benefits with the implementation of the new information system in respect to marketing, supply and handling the customers (Willcocks, 2013). The information system (IS) are designed to collect, process, filter and distribute the data to support the different operation of the organization like decision making, management, etc. The adaptation of the information system can solve different problems with assessment and evaluation of different solution. It reduces the response time and makes an effective and efficient coordination between the different departments of the organization. The information system can efficiently track the organizational activities across all the levels and manage the day to day activities of the organization (Galliers Leidner, 2014). The informati on system can reduce the indulgence of the human power and thus reducing the human errors occurring due to negligence or lack of professional skill. The benefits for the adaptation of the new information system for Northumbria Country Foods can be listed as follows: Retrieval of the information easily The activity of the organization can be analyzed from the information system and the results can be evaluated for the correct of the deviation The information system can create appropriate environment for taking effective decision using the information gathered from the different organizational activity in a less time (Feng, Siu Zhang, 2013). It can help to adopt future strategy analyzing the current market condition with the prospect of the organization and help the organization to take effective precaution to achieve the goals and finding the defects in the business process of the organization. The information system can generate reports for the aggregated information like profit, loss, expenditure calculated monthly, annually or quarterly (Katz, 2012). The historic information of the organization can be kept in record to calculate the growth rate of the organization and act accordingly for sustainable growth of the organization. The information system can also respond to the custom enquiries made by the manager to fetch information from the tables stored in the database of the information system (Letellier Eppich, 2015). The business information system can keep the records of the supplier and the customer in the database and manage the accounting system (Black Muddiman, 2016). The process can be automated and reduce the paper works of the organization and thus it would be easy for the managers to find the any organizational records. Suggestion for using the E-Business system To gain competitive advantage and survive in the market the business organization must implement an effective strategy for the countering of the five competitive forces. Suggestion is given to the organization that it can follow the E-business system following one of five basic competitive strategies, which are based on Porters three generic strategies of broad differentiation, focused strategy and broad cost leadership. The implementation of the E-Business in the current business process would help the organization to build a healthy customer relationship. The customer can access the portal of the organization from any remote location and purchase their ready-made meal they like. They can also post querry and feedback to the admin from the feedback or the support chat option present in the site. The support chat option would help the company to connect lively with the customer. The customer can talk directly with the customer care representatives and solve any problem they are facin g regarding the usage of the site. The porters five competitive strategies consist of: Cost leadership Differentiation Innovation Growth, and The business intelligence can be used for cost leadership and the social media can be involved for growth and capturing the market with advertisement (Jrvelinen, 2013). The alliance with a MNC helps the organization to gain brand value and attract more number of customer. Justification Cost Leadership: The information system can be used by the organization to essentially move the cost of working together or decrease the expenses of business procedures and reduce the overall expenses of providers or clients, i.e., utilizing on the web business to purchaser, e-acquisition frameworks to lessen working expenses and business to plans of action (Alexander, 2013). Differentiation: The developed information system can be used by the organization to create different elements and help the organization to decrease its competitor in the market. From the different point of view, it can be noted that the online service can decrease the effort of the employees in the organization, provide better service to its customer, and efficiently manage the supply chain of the business (Goes, 2014). The implementation of the support chat option and a toll free number through which the customer can contact directly with the organization would help to differentiate the company from its competitors. The information system attracts more number of customers and the registration of the users increases the loyalty of the customer. Innovation: Northumbria Country Foods (NCF) can utilize data frameworks to recognize and make changes or add new features that can help the organization to distinguishable from its competitors. It has been noted that the innovation is the key of success for any company and it has the power to open new opportunity for the business (Fitzsimmons Fitzsimmons, 2013). The innovation can speed up the growth of the company with addition of new activities in the current business process. There development of the information system for an organization is costly and the scope of the improvement of the system always exists in the developed system. The information system can be combined with different organization activity to form a innovative system differing from the other companies (Williams, 2013). In the interim, everybody is associated by means of PCs, tablets, other cell phones connected with the internet and there is lots of scope for the organization to gain competitive advantage over i ts competitors and gain a leading position in the market. Growth: Northumbria Country Foods (NCF) can utilize data frameworks to extend local and universal operations for the differentiation and incorporation of different services and products. i.e. setting up worldwide intranet and global stage of operation. It helps in building Omni-channel technique to accelerated growth (Omni-channel system takes a gander at utilizing favorable circumstances of both the web and disconnected or non-computerized channels) (Ward Peppard, 2016). Alliance: The organization can utilize data frameworks for upgrading and making relations those accomplices with the means of applications, for example, inter-authoritative data frameworks and creating virtual associations. The alliance of the company with third party call centers would help the company to manage less number of employees and manage the customer with less effort given in the management process of the business. The organization can use the social media to promote their business, reach more number of peoples, and expand their business throughout the world. The creation of a fan page on a social media would help the organization to track the number of followers and the likes and dislikes would help to find the reaction of the people about the company. The judgment of the reaction would help the company to change its current business strategy and survive in the market. The Business Intelligence (BI) applied in the system help the organization to take better decision and implement better strategy for the growth of the business. The implementation of a good decision would help to align the information system with the business and helping the company to gain competitive advantage and gain a leading position in the market. Steps taken to undertake the new system For the implementation of the new information system in Northumbria Country Foods (NCF) the steps needed to be taken are as follows: Identification of the key stakeholders associated with the project and the business process. Identification of the list of the actors i.e. the roles of the stakeholders to interact with the system Identification of the use case list which includes description of the interaction made by the actor. Identification and listing the scenario that is describing the sequence that are needed for the completion of the use case (Schwalbe, 2015). Identification and listing the steps where a detailed description of the steps is developed and the scenario is described completely. Identification of the list objects or classes and description of the models and designing and implementation of the properties and methods needed to complete the steps (Katz, 2012). Managing the work and products where the artifacts are collected and delivered to the client for during the development of the project. Explanation Identification of the list of stakeholder: The list of all the peoples who are associated with the new information system of the organization directly or indirectly are required to be listed. The peoples who can influence the system with their position and power are the stakeholders and building the list of the stakeholders is the first objective for building an efficient information system (Reich Benbasat, 2013). Identification and listing the actors The actors are the abstraction that helps in grouping the stakeholders and it can be developed describing the expectation that is expected from the actors. The building o the set of actors helps to get an idea of the overall system and the functions that are needed to be developed (Laroche, Habibi Richard, 2013). The actors involved must be able to state their requirement to the development team such that a fully functional system is developed. Identification and listing the Use cases A detailed analysis is made on the requirement of the organization and the use case design is prepared. The use case is the most important step and it presents a complete view of the system that shows the functionality of the system (Beesley, 2013). The use case can also be used for capturing future ideas that can help the system to deliver more functionality to the business process. Identification and listing the scenario The developed use case can be broken down into more number of steps that the actors execute. The actors can follow more number of pathways that are identified in the use case. The different paths are known as the scenario and all the scenario are not required to be defined only the normal scenario are required to be defined where the intended execution is shown (Willcocks, 2013). The scenarios are imagined as a flow chart and their pathways are described in the use case. Identification and listing the steps The progress of each of the scenario are required to be recorded and for the developed used case each of the steps are required to be defined clearly (Katz, 2012). The identification of the steps helps to track whether the step has completed successfully or not. Identification and listing the objects or the classes For the execution of the each of the steps in the use case the internal objects of the business organization are required (Galliers Leidner, 2014). The actual classes and the objects are defined during the design phase and the coding is done based on the developed design. Managing the working of the products During the development of the information system the progress of the work must be noted in the project workbook (Letellier Eppich, 2015). The work book also consists of the requirement, roles and responsibility and the development practice and the standards carried out by the development team and helps to manage the project efficiently. Advice given to NCF for future growth of the organization (Recommendation) The information system implemented in the current business process of the organization must be able to meet all the requirements. Some of the recommendations are given to the Northumbria Country Foods (NCF) for aligning the information system with the current business process of the organization. The developed information system should be capable to efficiently process the order and supply chain of the business ad produce automated report for the placed order. The developed system must be decentralized and should be capable to solve local problems and the system must be responsive to the operational requirements. The system must be user friendly and full of functionality and NCF should focus on implementing innovative strategies to gain competitive advantage over the market. The developed information system should have the scope of modification and new functional modules can be added to increase the efficiency or it can sustain the requirement change and serve the business for a long period of time. Conclusion Northumbria Country Foods (NCF) have gained the advantage of the recent market trend and issues with the other ready meal producer acting sustainably on their business. Thus they planned to implement a new information system in their current business process to efficiently manage the business operation. In the above report some advice regarding the implementation of the information system in the organization is given. The benefits that the organization gain implementing the information system is discussed in the report and some suggestion of using the Business intelligence system, E-business system and social media in the business are given. 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