INFORMATION SYSTEMS FOR MANAGERS

1. Farokh Motorwala is the CTO at D'Costa Cosmetics in Hyderabad, Farokh wants to

revamp the firm's IT Infrastructure and align it to the Corporate Strategy.

In order to do this, what are the Technical and Business Considerations for Farokh? What
are the Laws of IT Infra which Farokh must keep in mind?

Ans: Farokh is eager to modernise and match the IT Infrastructure of D'Costa Cosmetics with the
corporate strategy. Therefore, he must investigate the reality that the gap between business and
IT is so culturally apparent that it reads like the punchline of an office joke. The company
personnel believe that technology only entails turning on or off PCs as needed, and the tech-
savvy staff are unaware of the business's vital organs.

Those who work in traditionally defined business units and those who work in IT are naturally
separated. Initially, this separation was deliberate; but, as the significance of technology grew, a
demand arose for local and worldwide enterprises, and this separation is now viewed as an
obstacle and nave. Companies now realise the need of aligning business and IT. A recent Gartner
analysis estimates that by 2022, fifty percent of global enterprises will have achieved enhanced
IT-business cooperation. However, alignment between IT and business is not simple to establish.

IT and Business: problems experienced in the current scenario.

The majority of businesses believe that IT and business are not cooperating as closely as they
could to maximise their product delivery service. What is the often-mentioned reason?
Technology operates extremely differently than conventional business divisions. There are
further reasons why stereotypes propagate misunderstandings about how IT views business and
vice versa. Non-IT-savvy employees believe that IT is too complex to grasp, and they may fail to
notice that IT is involved in revenue-generating operations like as customer support, sales, and
marketing. In the 21st century, however, these preconceptions are shifting, and as a result,
diverse fields have their own incentives, languages, cultures, goals, and skill sets. For this reason,
some individuals like working with spreadsheets and figures, whilst others prefer writing.
Despite the elevation of positions like as CIOs and CTOs, tech leadership continues to
experience substantial difficulties when collaborating with business divisions. Consequently,
there is always an evidently troublesome business-IT interaction of one form or another. This
shows that these variances are detrimental to many organisations, as they frequently manifest
unusual issues such as:

 Expensive investments yielding unanticipated returns.

 Limited success and/or underperformance. Obstacles impeding service delivery, such as
buggy or sluggish deployments.
 Unprofessional or confused customer service
 Obstacles (perhaps open conflict) between solutions and procedures. Inadequate
assistance and communication for prospective clients and end users.

Obstacles

Today, regardless of the service or product you provide, every organisation is in the
technology business. This change is inevitable, and with it comes the notion of IT business
alignment. Therefore, IT aids business and business drives IT initiatives. Therefore, both
generate money, and neither is less essential.

Definition of “alignment” for business and IT

The notion of business and IT alignment stems from the long-standing fact that business and IT
personnel have been unable to bridge their communication, knowledge, and skills gaps in order
to enable successful service delivery.

Benefits of aligning IT and business

· The reductions in IT expenses (even a minimum of 10% of IT spending, hardly benefits

any of the business goals)
 Aligning business with IT always results in innumerable benefits:

Increases collaborations

Fine-tunes investments and improves ROI

· Accentuates visibility into problem areas

· Speeds up time-to-market

· Upskills your employee and industry knowledge

· Synchronizes all units to become agile

· Achieves your strategy

All these boost your bottom line, and benefits result in top customer experiences.

It helps in making smarter decisions in every area, viz. application life-cycles,

infrastructure design, marketing and sales, planning and budgeting, outsourcing,
partnerships, staffing, vendors, etc.

Achieving IT-business alignment is always the best practices

Discussing alignment and then obtaining it are two distinct concepts. Achieving meaningful IT-
business alignment is a challenging task, mostly due to its cultural nature. Encourage department
meet-and-greets and display value-based posters to make culture changes appear simple, but
these initiatives seldom work. Contrariwise, attaining alignment requires a strategy. And this
technique should be an iterative process: this requires specifying one change, implementing that
change, observing its performance, and deciding whether to modify it. Consider the Plan-Do-
Check-Act cycle in order to execute improvements.
Consider these best practices to align IT and business:

Change your actions and thoughts —- Consider your complete business divisions, which must
include technology, in a continuous and strategic loop. Teams begin to comprehend one another
as a result of a shift in their way of thinking, allowing them to perform more effectively,
minimise risk, and boost productivity.

Consider IT as a tool for business transformation —- If you're inquisitive about how IT can help
other business divisions such as sales, marketing, product development, etc., you're pursuing an
outmoded strategy. Typically, you investigate income streams so that IT may have a direct
influence on the bottom line.

Make the atmosphere of a customer's experience the most important component — it will be
simpler to dismantle old disciplinary divisions if everyone is aligned under a similar set of goals
and terminology that is directly customer-supportive. Ensure that your technical staff may also
focus directly on the client.
Employ a single language — every business and sector has its own jargon. Assist in
demystifying what each team performs by standardising your organization's terminology across
all divisions.

Remain transparent to all departments — Management and executive choices should be

transparent, discontinuing the subject of superfluous secrecy. If it appeared that your CTO relied
solely on his instincts and/or that your boss played favourites, this is a red flag that your
organisation is not as open as it should be.

Infrastructure Law Farokh has to follow

For BASE STATIONS, the deployment of infrastructure must comply with the "Law for the
Strengthening the Telecommunications Infrastructure's Expansion" (i.e. Law No. 29022) and its
related regulations, as well as any necessary amendments, the purpose of which is to establish a
temporary, yet special regime to implement the type of infrastructure required for the provision
of public telecommunications services throughout the national territory, especially in rural areas.

FHWA estimate, i.e. Highway Authorizations Under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
However, Infrastructure Law does not relate to the issues that concern land tenants who occupy a
property or plot without the necessary land title claiming ownership. Overall, the objective of the
Infrastructure Law is to streamline and standardise environmental licencing and land acquisition
processes in transport infrastructure projects.

Conclusion

Farokh's desire to update the IT infrastructure at D'Costa Cosmetics and align it with the
company's strategy must take into account the aforementioned factors. In addition, he is expected
to take care of revolving business and IT employees in order to foster understanding, promote an
inclusive and vibrant culture, comprehend human changes, and develop an alignment plan with
exclusivity.
2. Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) is an Indian government-owned oil and
gas explorer and producer. BPCL's CEO is K. Padmakar. In this role, what is the Focus of
the CEO's role (i.e. Objectives, Kinds of Decisions, the information needed, Timeframes,
etc.)? What are the Primary IS & Supporting IS Used (Description Data Types, Kind of
Data, Type of Processing, which provides data to these IS)?

Answer:

Introduction

Arthur D. Little Company (ADL). Ended 1996 playing a pivotal role in bringing forward a
reform drive at BPCL that began that year. The approach of ADL engaged a cross-section of the
organisation in co-creating a vision for the company. These individuals identified the company's
present reality, theorised the gaps between current reality and vision, and then developed a
change plan to bridge these gaps. This endeavour was dominated by the growth of a customer-
centric perspective. Consequently, the company's change strategy was changed into a programme
named Customer Service and Customer Satisfaction (CUSECS).

SBUs (Strategic Business Units)

In concrete words, the transformation plan resulted in a dramatic and reorganizational delay of
the organisation. It eliminated departmental silos and created six strategic business units (SBUs),
namely Refinery, Industrial and Commercial, Aviation, Retail, LPG, and Lubricants, in addition
to sharing services and support organisations including finance, information systems, human
resources, etc. As opposed to the old seven or six levels, the new structure consists of only four.
According to (Senge, 1990), it required change processes that would transform BPCL into a
learning organisation.
Since the entire change plan required effective integration and had to be predicated on a massive
increase in the organization's information intensity, effective integration was essential. It was
anticipated that IT would play a significant role in achieving this, and so the organization's
information system project was initiated.

BPCL’s IS Plan

The BPCL IS strategy envisioned the establishment of a complete system to support the
company's commercial goals. A small team of nine individuals from the CUSECS and IS
programmes was tasked with mapping the existing business systems (legacy systems) as well as
the future requirements defined by resource optimization, customer-centricity, integration, and
flexibility. The team determined that it was necessary to replace the current "batch-process-
oriented legacy systems" with a "modern ERP system." As part of the selection procedure, the IS
plan team mapped all of BPCL's key processes with the aid of conceptual ideas and individuals
recognised as holding knowledge in their respective business sectors through a series of process
workshops, resulting in over 600 process maps. All four regional offices, namely Mumbai,
Calcutta, Delhi, and Chennai, hosted these workshops. The team distributed a comprehensive
questionnaire, built a detailed requirement-list based on these procedures, and then created
scripts to capture believable business scenarios.

Validating or pre-selecting the ERP products

The questionnaire and requirement list helped to validate or pre-select ERP products for
comprehensive evaluation, while the scripts were utilised for the final product review. While the
team prepared for the objective evaluation of the ERP solutions, the supporting functional
entities and SBUs had to take responsibility. According to one member of the IS team, "the sheer
magnitude and inherent complexity of ERP software packages constituted a daunting issue in
and of itself, but the greater problem came in including all stakeholders in the decision process."
Entity/SBU chiefs and their teams participated in a series of educational courses on topics
ranging from fundamental ideas to architectural details of ERP products.
Later, these lectures were expanded to a broader cross-section of the organization's personnel.
After determining the potential ERP suppliers, each vendor was tasked with presenting to a
group of over one hundred business professionals. The purpose of these presentations was to
enable key personnel to dispel their concerns, comprehend the operation of ERP systems,
develop a sense of need, and ultimately commit to implementing ERP in their particular firms.
By following this procedure, each firm obtained the qualitative and quantitative advantages
anticipated, which constituted the foundation for the project's acceptance.

A rigorous technical selection procedure was conducted for the purpose of identifying the 'best-
fit ERP software for BPCL's present and future needs' For the deployment of this optimal ERP
system, SAP R/3 software was chosen.

Project ENTRANS

The project that built their SAP R/3 system was given the acronym ENTRANS, which is an
abbreviation for Enterprise Transformation. The name reflected the goal of BPCL's top
management to reform the company and create a new BPCL. BPCL's ERP deployment is
distinctive in that it has been a robust business endeavour from the project's inception. This
display of pride or egotism from the head of IT at BPCL is strangely notable.

In spite of the fact that BPCL's IS had to assume the position of process anchor during the
software selection phase due to the importance of technological concerns, the implementation
phase was headed by a non-IS individual. Mr. Shrikant Gathoo, who oversaw the project at the
end, was an HR specialist. Only 10 members of the IS plan team were from the IS discipline,
while the remaining sixty were from diverse business disciplines. As members of the PSC
(Project Steering Committee), the heads of HR, IS, SBUs, and Finance were appointed. The PSC
was tasked with validating decisions made by the project team, making decisions on Entity /
inter-SBU issues, identifying and soliciting decisions from the Apex Council (formed by the
working members of the board of directors) on issues with broader organisational /strategic
implications, allocating resources, and evaluating the project's progress. The PSC used to
convene at least once a month and more frequently if matters required immediate attention.
Conclusion

The two-phase implementation plan for BPCL was designed to deploy nearly all SAP R/3
modules. Two phases were planned for the implementation. The first phase consisted of
Conceptual Design and Planning (CDP), whereas the second consisted of Detailed Design and
Implementation (DDI). The requirement of enlisting an external agency — a SAP
Implementation Partner with pertinent knowledge and experience — was widely acknowledged.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) was selected as the implementing partner for the CDP phase
after a competitive bidding process.

3. Jennifer Roberts has just been hired as the CIO at Hawthorne Investments. During her
interview, Vijay Ananth, the CEO, tasked Jennifer with the responsibility of revamping the
firm's IT Infrastructure. Now that Jennifer has come on board, she is keen to get started on
the Infra Revamp initiative and has targeted BYOD as her first initiative.

a. What is BYOD? Explain the three (3) levels of BYOD. (5 Marks)

Answer:

Introduction

Jennifer Roberts is eager to move on with Hawthorne Investments' Infra Revamp effort and has
begun her journey by targeting BYOD as her first endeavour. As a prerequisite of the project, I
must emphasise a few essential Tips for developing a successful BYOD policy inside the
organisation.
Whether Jennifer is in the midst of implementing a corporate BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)
policy, hasn't gotten around to it yet, or has an outdated policy, the following guidelines will
assist in addressing IT security, IT service, application use, and many other components, as
shown in Figure 1.

1. Specify only the permitted devices

The past was basic and uncomplicated. Your only work-related device was a blackberry.
However, employees have access to a wide range of devices, including Android and iOS-based
smartphones. Above all, it is essential to define precisely what is intended by "BYOD." Should
you instead instruct individuals to bring their iOS device and not their Android device? Or
should you say bring no other electronic devices besides your iPad? You must specify which
devices can be utilised and which are acceptable to the enterprise.

2. A strict security policy should be established for all devices that enter the premises.

In general, device users are unwilling to move to lock passwords and screens. The ease of access
to the content on their device and the functionality of their devices are hindered. However, this
complaint is not particularly valid. By connecting phones and other devices to corporate servers,
a great deal of sensitive data becomes accessible. If employees are interested in adopting the
BYOD initiative, they must protect their devices with complex passwords. Not just a four-digit
password, but also a lengthy and robust alphabetical password must be implemented.
3. Defining a clear service policy for devices under the BYOD system is a must

It is imperative that management establishes boundaries when it comes to queries regarding staff
devices and resolving issues with them. To be able to accomplish this, policymakers will need to
respond to the following questions:

What procedures will be in place to support privately owned applications? What assistance must
be offered for potentially damaged devices? Will your management restrict the Helpdesk to
difficulties with calendaring, email, and other apps for personal information management?

4. Clear needs of all forms of communication to be applied on who owns what apps and
data.
While it may seem logical for the organisation to hold exclusive rights to the personal
information stored on the servers, issues will arise when wiping the device in the event of theft or
other complications.

Conclusion

According to the conventional system, when a device is wiped, all digital elements on the device
are also removed, which may include paid-for personal information. Occasionally, these items
cannot be replaced.

Thus, a valid question arises as to whether the BYOD policy created will permit the complete
wiping of any device brought into the network.

b. What are the Pros & Cons (2 each) of BYOD? (5 Marks)

Answer:

Introduction

Bring Your Own Device is the newest IT fad in town. It is a technique in which employees are
encouraged to use their own devices to access company systems and data. BYOD is a movement
that may touch everyone in the business, from the CEO to the hourly worker, since it is a subset
of the greater trend of "IT consumerization," in which the customer's software and hardware are
permitted within the firm's premises.

Even in modern times, the IT department's efforts to keep up with continual technological
advances are arduous. Employees that carry their own devices to access business data have
expressed a growing interest in the system. BYOD (Bring Your Device) has expanded to
encompass various additional programmes, including BYOT (Bring Your Technology), BYOPC
(Bring Your PC), and BYOP (Bring Your Phone) (Bring Your Phone). These initiatives have
evolved as a means of empowering the workers and bringing them in line with the notion of "IT
consumerization."

The BYOD policy & its Pros and Cons

The Pros

BYOD offers numerous benefits, as was already mentioned:

1. Assures worker satisfaction

2. Increases user engagement;

2. Increases user engagement;

4. Benefits from the modern features and advantages of newer devices.

5. Renting or buying gadgets for each employee would result in cost savings.

6. Employing hardware and IT support personnel.

7. Giving instruction on how to use new gadgets.

8. These savings total $3,150 per employee per year, according to Cisco Internet Business
Solutions Group.

9. In addition to these, employees who bring their own devices take better care of the hardware,
which saves you money by avoiding the need to purchase more devices.

10. Current Technology — They are likely to be more diligent about keeping all of their
equipment, particularly laptops, current and applying the most recent update.

The Issues
1. Issues will always develop, regardless of the circumstances or the background. There is no
standard end-user assistance offered. Due to the fact that most employees will be using various
types and manufactures of devices, there might not be a standardised support mechanism in place
for BYOD-related difficulties. It is crucial to comprehend and keep this in mind at all times.

2. Security has become a constant issue for all platforms nowadays, and a BYOD policy is no
different. However, it is feasible to overcome this difficulty. All that is necessary is for IT
departments to be prepared and vigilant. Apps and work decks must be kept separate from
personal information by using antivirus software and password protection.

3. Data retrieval: What happens to firm data when a worker departs the organisation? Are they
able to be reached by phone? Who will stop having access to your business's data? What would
happen if customers dialled that number directly?

Conclusion

This BYOD system becomes incredibly dangerous for a salesperson, thus BYOD regulations
need to be studied very well and addressed as a result. If not, a former employee may suddenly
become a rival with simple access to client information.