Assignment 1(MIS)Company Reflecting IT/IS

Our first assignment in Management Information System, facilitated by our facilitator Dr. Randy S. Gamboa, we are asked to choose a local companies or organizations and study about the usage of the Information System and the importance of it on their company, but we must first consult our teacher if the local organizations or companies will be fit or applicable to our studies. All companies nowadays are using Information System so that their companies or organization will be well organized or well planned. This study will help us understand and gather more information about our subject MIS. I suggest four local companies that can be found here in Davao and send it to our facilitator for approval but only two among them are approved, this are the Concentrix Davao SYNNEX Corporation Company and the Wilcon Builders Depot. Among the approved local companies I choose the Wilcon Builders Depot. I choose this company because i'm curious about this kind of company(lol).

Here are some overviews or information about the company I choose…

Build anything. We have everything...

Wilcon Builder's Supply was founded in 1977 in Quezon City, Manila and has since then expanded to several retail outlets within strategic locations in Metro Manila and one in Davao City. The company has revolutionized the construction industry by creating convenience shopping for its customers through its air-conditioned shops, delivery service, and commitment to excellent service. Their 30 years expertises have propelled this once small company to become the pioneer and leader in supplying finishing materials for the building industry.

In 2003, a sister company, Wilcon Builders' Depot was launched with its first outlet in Las Piñas, Alabang. Bigger in size and with more product lines to offer the customer, the company continues to offer the same services that have made Wilcon a household name in the construction supply industry and will be expanding to cater to more customers in the Philippines. Complimenting its smaller shops, the already established Depot outlets are scattered all over the metro offering a wide variety of items for a truly convenient one-stop shopping experience. As of 2009, Wilcon already has a total of 7 traditional Wilcon Supply outlets and 12 well-known Wilcon Depots all over the Metro and one in Davao City.

sources: http://www.wilcon.com.ph/static/web_pages/aboutwilcon1-1.asp

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Here are also some information about the usage of IT/IS in this company and the software company that manages their system...

Wilcon Builders` Supply Signs Software Deal With Lawson

Philippine-based home building and construction supplier sees IT investment as a long-term strategy to support growth ST. PAUL, Minn.--(Business Wire)-- Lawson Software (Nasdaq: LWSN) today announced that Wilcon Builders` Supply signed a contract to implement the Lawson M3 Enterprise Management System to help support the company`s business and distribution operations. The Philippines-based company signed the contract during Lawson`s second quarter of fiscal 2009, which ended Nov. 30, 2008.

The Lawson M3 Enterprise Management System provides a number of integrated business application suites that cover core and supporting business processes, including financial management, customer relationship management, supply chain planning, supply chain execution, business intelligence, and mobility. The Wilcon project will include a comprehensive implementation of the Lawson M3 system and will initially support approximately 140 users throughout the company.

"This new relationship with Wilcon is more evidence that we are becoming the obvious choice for retail/wholesale and distribution companies by delivering industry-specific functionality that helps deliver greater value and a strong return on investment," said David Hope, vice president and managing director for Lawson Asia. "And with more than 800 employees in the Philippines, we are in a great position to support our customers in the country and across the region."

"We are investing heavily in cutting-edge IT in spite of the current economic climate, because we see technology as a platform to enhance and support the growth of our business," said William Belo, president and CEO of Wilcon. "For instance, automating warehouse processes, enabling shop floor mobility and gleaning reports using Lawson Business Intelligence can help us improve our customer service levels, especially when there is the potential of regional expansion in the future."

Wilcon`s decision to select Lawson came after an evaluation of competing offerings from other enterprise software providers. "After listening to what all the vendors had to say, we felt Lawson offered the best overall solution fit in terms of the size of its operations in the region and the depth of its expertise in distribution and retail. This is also reflected in the numerous references Lawson has in the industry, which was a key driver in our decision," added Belo.

sources: http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS151774+14-Jan-2009+BW20090114

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INFORMATION SYSTEM AND BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS

The Importance of Information Technology and Information Systems

All medium to large organizations depend on Information technology for their continued survival. Consider organizations like British Gas, British Telecom, the Power and Water companies having to manually calculate, millions of customer bills every month or quarter! Clearly the clerical effort involved would make it difficult if not impossible for the organization to make a profit. Similar arguments apply to many other organizations such as the high street banks, central and local government. A recent article in the Daily Telegraph IT supplement suggested that many large organizations could last no longer than 24 hours without IT support! There should be little wonder that attitudes to the development of information systems have changed over the years from an ad hoc almost cavalier approach to a professionally managed, disciplined, planned, and engineering approach.

Strategic Information Systems Planning

Organizations typically develop rolling business plans, they are constructed by taking into account the current business, the external influences on the business (e.g. the economy, government policy and technological advances), and the aims and objectives of the most senior levels of management. The strategic business plan describes how the organization will strive to move from the current business to the target business.

In the past information systems were developed simply to improve the efficiency of specific business functions. More recently information systems have been viewed as tools for obtaining competitive advantage. Avison and Fitzgerald (1995) have discussed the following ways in which information systems can help to achieve competitive advantage

"Redefine the boundaries of particular industries
Develop new products or services,

Change the relationships between suppliers and customers,

Establish barriers to deter new entrants to marketplaces."

Porter (1980) identifies five competitive forces that any organization needs to consider:-

1. Threat of new entrants.

2. Bargaining power of customers.

3. Threat of substitute products or services.

4. Bargaining power of suppliers.

5. Rivalry among existing firms.

Earl (1989) extends Porter’s work by illustrating the strategic role that Information Technology (IT) can play in addressing these forces. The result of Earl’s work is a ‘multiple’ methodology. The methodology adopts a three pronged approach to strategic information systems development. The first prong involves the top-down analysis of business objectives using Critical Success Factors (CSF), SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis and Porter’s five forces. The second prong involves bottom-up analysis of existing systems and the third prong emphasize the creative use of IT.

Bullen and Rockart (1984) have produced a strategic information systems methodology based on CSF analysis. The methodology involves the analysis of business goals and objectives and the factors critical to achieving those objectives. The next stage is the identification of the information systems required to support these CSFs.

The discussion so far has emphasized a holistic approach, looking at high level business objectives rather than detailed functional requirements. These approaches emphasize the importance of shared corporate data, an issue which will be discusses in detail in the next section.

sources:http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/pages/staff/tdhutchings/chapter1.html#head2

...reflecting on this researches and ideas, this will satisfy how the Wilcon Depot uses the information system for their business strategies. Information Systems support is necessary to achieve the strategic business plan, such as (Wilcon Builder Depot) so the business plan feeds into a Strategic Information Systems Plan, which describes how the current IT systems are intended to evolve into the target IT systems. A 'big bang' approach is infeasible; therefore a project based approach is used. The output of the it is a series of development projects which will either involve modifying existing systems or developing new systems (which are likely to have to interface or integrate with existing systems).

!God Bless!!!

M.I.S. Reflection Learning

One of our subjects for this semester is the M.I.S. (Management Information System) handled by
our teacher Dr. Randy S. Gamboa. According to him he is now the President of the IT association which
now i believe that he is. He is a very very strict teacher specially on uniform and time management. There is a punishment to every students who violated his rules. Some punishment is that you need to have a talent portion such as "singing" or "dancing".

Here are some information about M.I.S.:

Definition: Management Information Systems (MIS) is the term given to the discipline focused on the integration of computer systems with the aims and objectives on an organization. The development and management of information technology tools assists executives and the general workforce in performing any tasks related to the processing of information. MIS and business systems are especially useful in the collation of business data and the production of reports to be used as tools for decision making.

We did a question and answer portion about Management Information System(MIS), and the question is, "Is it correct that Management Information System (MIS) is the right course description?", according to our facilitator Dr. Randy S. Gamboa, by separating the "M" from "IS" which is "Management", the word management according to si Gamboa has four description (Planning, Directing, Organizing, and Controlling), and "IS" which is Information System.

According to wikipedia, Management in all business and human organization activity is simply the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives. Management comprises planning, organizing, directing, and controlling (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources and natural resources. Management can also refer to the person or people who perform the act(s) of management. "IS" which is the acronym for "Information System" and according to wikipedia in a general sense, the term Information System (IS) refers to a system of people, data records and activities that process the data and information in an organization, and it includes the organization's manual and automated processes. In a narrow sense, the term information system (or computer-based information system) refers to the specific application software that is used to store data records in a computer system and automates some of the information-processing activities of the organization. Computer-based information systems are in the field of information technology. The discipline of business processing modelling describes the business processes supported by information systems.

Sir Gamboa gave us some equation about this course MIS, according to him:

IS = IT + PW
it stands for Information System = Information Technology + People Ware

IT = HW + SW
it stands for Information Technology = Hardware + Software

so the eqaution could be simplefies as:

IS = HW+ SW + PW
it stands for Information system = Hardware + Software + Peopleware

now to base on the question, "Is it correct that Management Information System (MIS) is the right course description?", we gather some information that management is not the right word in the course decription because Information system includes people ware and people ware cannot be manage. But for me, MIS is right course description because IT should be manage. It is that, people ware is included "IS" because only people could manage the IT and only people could revolve the system of information. Some students said that Leading is the right word to replace the word Management but for me it is not the right one because Hardware and Software or simply the IT are just human made and cannot be lead. Yes, Management describes as (planning, directing, organizing and controlling) and you cannot direct, control, organize and plan people, but the main reason there is how people manages the Hardware and the Software so that the INFORMATION SYSTEM will continue to revolve.


GOD BLESS!!!

Leadership Roles(CSC)

Changes in both information technology and competition
continue to change the role of the information systems
executive. CSC (1996) has suggested six new IS
leadership roles which are required to execute IS’s future
agenda: chief architect, change leader, product developer,
technology provocateur, coach and chief operating
strategist. These roles are described in table 1. Although
these roles were produced by the CSC consultancy firm
without any scientific approach, they seem very well
tailored for scientific investigation into IS leadership roles.
People who fill these roles do not necessarily head up new
departments or processes, but they exert influence and
provide leadership across the organizational structure.
When Stephens et al. (1992) selected CIOs for
observation, they applied the following criteria:
· Highest ranking information technology executive
· Reports no more than two levels from CEO, i.e., either
reports to the CEO or reports to one of the CEO's
direct reports
· Areas of responsibility include information systems,
computer operations, telecommunications, office
automation, end-user computing/information center
· Responsibility for strategic planning of information
resources.
six leadership roles (CSC, 1996)

1. Chief architect. The chief architect designs future possibilities for the business. The primary work of the chief architect is to design
and evolve the IT infrastructure so that it will expand the range of future possibilities for the business, not define specific business
outcomes. The infrastructure should provide not just today's technical services, such as networking, databases and desktop operating
systems, but an increasing range of business-level services, such as workflow, portfolio management, scheduling, and specific
business components or objects.
2. Change leader. The change leader orchestrates resources to achieve optimal implementation of the future. The essential role of the
change leader is to orchestrate all those resources that will be needed to execute the change program. This includes providing new
IT tools, but it also involves putting in the place teams of people who can redesign roles, jobs and workflow, who can change beliefs
about the company and the work people do, and who understand human nature and can develop incentive systems to coax people
into new and different behaviors.
3. Product developer. The product developer helps define the company’s place in the emerging digital economy. For example, a
product developer might recognize the potential for performing key business processes (perhaps order fulfillment, purchasing or
delivering customer support) over electronic linkages such as the Internet. The product developer must "sell" the idea to a business
partner, and together they can set up and evaluate business experiments, which are initially operated out of IS. Whether the new
methods are adopted or not, the company will learn from the experiments and so move closer to commercial success in emerging
digital markets.
4. Technology provocateur. The technology provocateur embeds IT into the business strategy. The technology provocateur works
with senior business executives to bring IT and realities of the IT marketplace to bear on the formation of strategy for the business.
The technology provocateur is a senior business executive who understands both the business and IT at a deep enough level to
integrate the two perspectives in discussions about the future course of the business. Technology provocateurs have a wealth of
experience in IS disciplines, so they understand at a fundamental level the capabilities of IT and how IT impacts the business.
5. Coach. The coach teaches people to acquire the skillsets they will need for the future. Coaches have to basic responsibilities:
teaching people how to learn, so that they can become self-sufficient, and providing team leaders with staff able to do the IT-related
work of the business. A mechanism that assists both is the center of excellence - a small group of people with a particular
competence or skill, with a coach responsible for their growth and development. Coaches are solid practitioners of the competence
that they will be coaching, but need not be the best at it in the company.
6. Chief operating strategist. The chief operating strategist invents the future with senior management. The chief operating strategist
is the top IS executive who is focused on the future agenda of the IS organization. The strategist has parallel responsibilities related
to helping the business design the future, and then delivering it. The most important, and least understood, parts of the role have to
do with the interpretation of new technologies and the IT marketplace, and the bringing of this understanding into the development of
the digital business strategy for the organization.

references:

http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:gYmbzKD8kRUJ:csdl2.computer.org/comp/proceedings/hicss/2000/0493/07/04937055.pdf+six+IS+leadership+roles(CSC)&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ph

Managerial Roles (Mintzberg)

Managers undertake activities to achieve the objectives of
the organization. Mintzberg (1994) notes a number of
different and sometimes conflicting views of the manager's
role. He finds that it is a curiosity of the management
literature that its best-known writers all seem to emphasize
one particular part of the manager’s job to the exclusion of
the others. Together, perhaps, they cover all the parts, but
even that does not describe the whole job of managing.
Mintzberg's role typology is frequently used in studies of
managerial work [e.g., 57].
Describing the manager's work has been an ongoing
pursuit of researchers and practitioners. The manager's
work is characterized by brevity, variety, and
fragmentation of tasks, a preference for action (as opposed
to reflection), and a preference for verbal communication
over formal reports [51]. Managers in organizations are
continuously confronted by an array of ambiguous data
and vaguely felt stimuli which they must somehow order,
explicate and imbue with meaning before they decide on
how to respond [46]. Kotter (1999) identified two main
roles for executives: agenda setting and network building.
While agenda setting is concerned with figuring out what
to do despite uncertainty and an enormous amount of
potentially relevant information, network building is
concerned with getting things done through a large and
diverse group of people despite having little direct control
over most of them.
A number of models describing the manager's work
have been proposed including functional descriptions such
as planning, organizing, directing, controlling,
coordinating, and innovating. Similarly, frameworks based
on the methods used to accomplish these functions, for
example, Mintzberg's role typology, have been proposed.
According to Mintzberg (1990), the manager's job can be
described in terms of various roles:

1. Informational Roles. By virtue of interpersonal contacts, both with
subordinates and with a network of contacts, the manager emerges
as the nerve center of the organizational unit. The manager may not
know everything but typically knows more than subordinates do.
Processing information is a key part of the manager's job. As
monitor, the manager is perpetually scanning the environment for
information, interrogating liaison contacts and subordinates, and
receiving unsolicited information, much of it as a result of the
network of personal contacts. As a disseminator, the manager passes
some privileged information directly to subordinates, who would
otherwise have no access to it. As spokesperson, the manager sends
some information to people outside the unit.

2. Decisional Roles. Information is not an end in itself; it is the basic
input to decision making. The manager plays the major role in a
unit's decision-making system. As its formal authority, only the
manager can commit the unit to important new courses of action;
and as its nerve center, only the manager has full and current
information to make the set of decisions that determines the unit's
strategy. As entrepreneur, the manager seeks to improve the unit, to
adapt it to changing conditions in the environment. As disturbance
handler, the manager responds to pressures from situations. As
resource allocater, the manager is responsible for deciding who will
get what. As negotiator, the manager commits organizational
resources in real time.

3. Interpersonal Roles. As figurehead, every manager must perform
some ceremonial duties. As leader, managers are responsible for the
work of the people of their unit. As liaison, the manager makes
contacts outside the vertical chain of command.

reference:
http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:gYmbzKD8kRUJ:csdl2.computer.org/comp/proceedings/hicss/2000/0493/07/04937055.pdf+IS/IT+leadership+roles(Computer+Science+corporation)&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ph

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