IT 690 ISS capstone final class final paper

Visual Sound

Ashford University

INF 690: Management of Information Systems

Mark Revels

December 7, 2015

Visual Sound

Purpose

My final paper will be based on my former company Visual Sound. The company uses an enterprise wide system called Filemaker version 12 that is utilized by all departments. However this system is flawed and creates major issues for end-users. I will analyses the current system and identify any discrepancies.

History

I chose my former company Visual sound. I think this company is an excellent choice to dissect and analyses for study. Visual Sound is the second company I had the pleasure of working for over the last several years. The company is owned and run by the President Karen Bogosian; she inherited the company from her father. The company sells audio video equipment for several different manufactures. The internal departments include operations, finance, customer service, engineering, project management, sales, and installation. The company uses a CRM called Filemaker version 12 to manage all the different departments which makes the CRM slow and unresponsive on occasions. I believe the company could increase productivity and revenue tremendously by introducing a new IT infrastructure.

Scope

The scope of the paper will be to review how all the different departments are affected by the CRM. The case will include an analysis of the intended purpose of the current system and its desired outcome. The case will review the external factors that interact with the systems and how employees interact with the system. I will focus on the process flows to see what processes can be eliminated or altered to be more effective to benefit the organization as whole. I will conduct an analysis of how the information flows in the current system. I will look into standards and ways to help standardize processes to help increase productivity. I will look into any security flaws and ways to add more control into the IT infrastructure.

Procedures

The following is a list of procedures:

1. The following reports were sampled:

a) Monthly sales reports, Annual sales reports, Expense reports, Pipeline reports, Back log report, Marketing statistics,

2. The following documentation was studied:

b) White papers, Filemaker Documentation

People interviewed: President – Karen Bogosian, CFO Mark Parcoci, Head of Engineering – Ramon Olivarez, Clinton Santos – Director of Project Management, John Hicks – Systems Developer, John Walsh – Senior Account Executive, Mark Indi – Customer Service

Rob Worth Operations Manager, Helen Cole – Receptionist and External Vendors Creston and Smart

Methods:

Overview of Current Systems Operations

System Participants

Managers

Karen Bogosian – President

Mark Parcoci - CFO

Ramon Avers – VP of Engineering

Clinton Santos – Director of Project Management

John Hicks – Systems Developer

John Walsh – Senior Account Executive

Mark Indi – Customer Service

Rob Worth Operations Manger

Non-Direct users

Helen Cole – Receptionist

Other Affected Departments

Outside Vendor – Creston

Outside Vendor – Smart

System Environment

The system we studied can be broken down in the following subsystems:

Customer Relationship Management – application used to contain and manipulate customer data

Shipping – the process of providing the customer with the merchandise.

Billing System – creates an invoice to record the transactions

Process order –initiates the

Product catalogue – customer facing documentation for inventory

Order management

Credit checking – approval process for terms

Data warehouse – data depository

Printing – the printing of labels for shipping

The systems are organized as illustrated in Figure 2a:

2a.

Analysis of the Current System

The system currently in use is has been around for over 15 years. The original system was created with inside developers. The system introduced to the company was called Filemaker. Filemaker is currently on version 14, however the company uses Filemaker version 12. The outdated system is out of compliance and the support has been discontinued for 2 years. The system lags at different peak times, randomly erases data, randomly crashes, and normally operates slower than normal. The system is not user friend and difficult to navigate hard to understand which extends the training process for new employees by 2 months.

Transaction: Proposal Generation

Throughput: The average turnaround time for the completion of proposal current

Response Time: Average turnaround time 3 – 4 weeks

Anticipated Growth: 12%

Problem: The proposal takes up to 3 weeks for completion. The average time should be 2 – 3 days

Effect: This causes proposal to be sent to the customers after the due date

Opportunity: An opportunity exist to increase productivity by reducing system complexities

Benefit: increased productivity, morale and revenue

Possible Improvements: Introduce a new Oracle cloud based CRM and database

Information and Data Analysis

The system produces several reports than are generated upon request. The information contained in the reports are related to sales and centered on forecasting activities. The reports are inaccurate because the information within the database is redundant.

Information overload. Some formatting

Information accuracy. Because of data redundancy the information because customer information is something missing.

Information timeliness. The information

Information format. Some formatting produce too much information which complicates decision making

Information redundancy.

Lack of information. The system often lacks certain pieces of information crucial to the customer proposal.

The outputs are listed and identified as follows:

Output: Forecast Reports

Format: Bar graph

Frequency: Daily

Problem: Inaccuracy

Cause: Data redundancy

Effect: Bad decision making

Opportunity: When the new IT system is introduced the data will be migrated and accessed via the cloud.

Data Analysis:

The stored data are listed and identified as follows:

Data Stored: Customer Information and Vendor Information

Number of records:

Anticipated growth: 17% over 5 years

Medium:

Organization: Records are currently being contained in a proprietary database

Problem: Slow, unreliable, unresponsive

Cause: Old technology and outdated infrastructure

Possible Improvements: Consolidate and migrate the data to the cloud

Economic Analysis

In the current environment there are 3 programmers who earn an average of $120,000 per year. A hosted CRM would allow the company to reduce the cost of salary expenses by a total of $360,000. The new savings can be allocated to the marketing budget to help increase market share which is consistent with the company’s long term vision.

Problem: Additional expenditures

Cause: Reluctance to try new technologies

Opportunity: Cost savings

Benefit: Increase in revenue

Possible Improvements: Moving to a cloud based CRM will remove the internal maintenance of the sales application which should free up additional resources. Oracle offers a complete cloud based solution that integrates sales, marketing, outlook and mobile technology into one easy to use platform.

Control and Security Analysis

Problem: The database is a proprietary system developed by internal employees in the IT department over 15 years ago. Using this database causes the system to run slow during peaks work hours 8am – 10am and 3pm – 5pm. The database is currently out of compliance.

Opportunity: A new hosted database would shift the responsibility of compliance to the hosted company, Oracle.

Possible: The possible solution is to migrate the data to an off-site hosted database provider.

Efficiency Analysis

Problem: Currently there are 3 different employees who receive high annual salaries

Opportunity: This process can be fixed by removing or re-allocating the 3 employees

Possible Improvements: Migrating to a cloud base platform will reduce the complexities of the IT infrastructure and reduce the personal.

Cause: Reluctance to embrace new technology

Service Analysis

The current system will sometimes mix the addresses inside the records which causes shipments to be mailed to the wrong address. There is no back up of the system this makes the system vulnerable to loss of information. The system being utilized is an older version. This creates problems because this causes the system to be out of compliance it also removes the option for support.

Problem: Out of compliance and slow

Opportunity: There is a real opportunity here to change systems and increase the reliability of the system. Hosted infrastructures provide 24 hour availability, stability and failover in case the system crashes. The documentation for the system is useless because it does not address the specific problems the company is experiencing. The system has 7 different departments that access the database and this creates a serious lag and extremely long delays with photo uploads. The system GUI is not user friendly, this increases the training time required for new employees. The system will sometimes force you to revert back to a starting point erasing all the data you previously entered. This causes frustration among employees and it has a negative effect on morale. There are places for the engineer to signal to the sales person that he has received the job, however no signal exist to inform the salesperson the engineer has completed the job. This creates delays in proposal being sent to customers.

Possible Improvements: I recommend the oracle Cloud Database because it helps to leverage existing technologies and best practices to deliver an enterprise wide database solution. The database is more stable and offers a high degree of automation and self-management (oracle.com).

References

McKeen, J.D. Smith, H.A. (2009). IT strategy in action. Upper Saddler River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

http://www.visualsound.com/about/company-overview/

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/security/index.html