Case Study The Dilemma of Dairy Farm Group

Question: Case Study: The Dilemma of Dairy Farm Group Between Redesigning of Business Processes and Rebuilding of Management Information Systems. Answer: Analysis Evaluation The Dairy Farm Group (DFG) is considered as a main food and drugstore retailer in the Asia-Pacific locale but now facing problems with the existing systems of the organization. Hence, the profit margin of DFG has also inflated as compared to that of the competitors due to the major issues that are arising in the business operations. In the provided case study by Ng et al. (2002), analysis on the existing systems and problems faced by the organization are also evaluated so that the appropriate system can be chosen for the organization to run their business operations. The evaluation on the analysis of the existing systems in DFG presents that those were only meant for business functions as delivering of information regarding transactions rather than offering management information or capabilities of decision-making. The analysis on the organization illustrates that there were only two systems in the organization as Store and Operational systems (Sikora, Tenbergen and Pohl 2012). The Store systems were deployed to support the business processes of the various business units as retail stores of DFG. The business units of DFG had own operational systems implemented on different equipment and programming stages for promoting, stock and warehousing as they were substantial in scale, complex in operation and business-centric in nature. The major issue that was evaluated from the analysis on existing systems of DFG is that there was no scope for exchange of information between the business functional units of the organization. Many business processes that existed in DFG were manual and inefficient that resulted into slowing down the processing of information as well as decision-making (Conrad, 2014). The store systems of DFG were not capable to store the full details of transactions by the customers and this resulted into lack of knowledge in sensing and responding to the needs of customers. The organization operated by uniting various small companies acquired at geographically dispersed location though the major issue raised as there was no communication network so each of the companies had to operate independently (Gulke et al. 2012). Hence, the business operations of the organization were affected by the issues that were raised due to lack of communication between the business units of DFG. Requirements Validation The analysis on requirements of DFG illustrated that there is a need significantly to improve the operations and profitability of the organization by incorporating a centralized management information system with proper technology and communication systems. The Management information system would support the managers for accessing information related to business process in different ways that in turn facilitates the process of making decisions for the organization (Beuche 2012). The organization needs to develop Ecommerce with business partners and customers to improve sales and satisfaction of customers. The organization also needs that there will be provision for information sharing and integration of all applications within the retail stores as operational units. In DFG, there are also mobile employees such as salesperson along with others in warehouse and distribution functions so the organization also needs to provide platform for remote accessing of corporate information by the employees (Ng et al. 2002). The Technical architecture comprising of core infrastructure services and business units that is required by DFG are presented in the diagram as below: Figure 1: Technical Architecture for the Dairy Farm Group (DFG) In the retail operations of DFG, Inventory was the largest single cost factor with an average inventory holding of 35 days. Hence, there was requirement for proper inventory management solution so that it can manage the inventory and keep track of stockpiling in the organization (Robertson and Robertson 2012). Requirements Management The requirements gathered from analysis of existing systems in the organization can be managed and fulfilled with the implementation of Management Information system for business processes of DFG. The critical necessities of DFG could be accomplished by building a corporate administration data framework, upheld by the right innovation and interchanges foundation. It was broke down that the necessities for store operations can be satisfied by embracing electronic retailing as a subset of its retailing capacity (Li et al. 2012). The application would interface with other useful units connected to the retail operations, for example, the head office, dispersion focuses, sellers, customers, and the money related organizations for settlement of electronic exchanges. The association was suggested that it is imperative for DFG to have an incorporated arrangement of utilizations inside every specialty unit to deal with the trading of data crosswise over business capacities. In such manner, it was prescribed that store applications interface with all the operational frameworks, for example, money, marketing, warehousing and Human Resources. The mobile employees will be provided secure access to corporate information resources independent of location (Asadi et al. 2012). The facilities will be usable, secure, and reasonable and provisioned at satisfactory expense. The improvement of Data Warehouse and Data Marts will encourage information investigation and settling on of choices. It was suggested that get to focuses on the proposed corporate intranet be given to the merchants so that in situations where direct purchasing by the stores was included, store requests could be sent to the sellers in EDI groups. Likewise, merchant solicitations could likew ise be sent to the Central Office in EDI positions. It is suggested that a precise evaluation of the required specialized aptitudes be made, and fundamental preparing arrangements and enlistment plans be graphed to have center ability inside the association (Beuche, 2012). 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