Need to Incorporate Information Systems at Strategic and Tactical Essay - 1

Need to Incorporate Information Systems at Strategic and Tactical Level - Essay Example The research will prove to be useful for all business organizations that are eligible to implement strategic management systems in their infrastructure. It can be suitable for any organization that offers a product and service and possesses a set of competitors in the market. To analyze the performance of a strategic management system, an actual implemented system will be evaluated for its productivity and benefits to the organization. The organization that has been chosen is a regional office of a global shipping company. One of the problems that might be apparent here is that the strategic management system of the chosen company is not as productive as predicted or as communicated by them. This will mean a waste of our resources and time. Therefore another organization shall also be chosen as a backup plan in case the first organization does not provide sufficient results. One of the success factors of any MIS or strategic management system is that the top management executives of that company are fully supportive of the transition to this technological infrastructure. Therefore the sponsors in a real-life scenario would be the top management. The main contribution of this research will be to devise an effective guideline for the organizations to ensure that their strategic management system are providing benefits to them rather than just increasing their expenses and overheads. Few evaluation techniques shall be discussed that have used by organizations over the past years to evaluate their systems and then alter their way of doing business based on those results. It is also very commonly witnessed that strategic plans fail even though they have been formulated with the support of the top management and are directed towards the vision of the company. Such causes of failure will be discussed in detail. Lederer et al (1996) explained that information systems can be considered as a set of modules or applications that provide aid to an

Management Issues and Policies Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Management Issues and Policies - Case Study Example Globally, the firm is rated the ninth merchandising corporation. Additionally, Costco has been regarded the largest seller of fine wine entirely in the world, since October 2007. In the United States in particular, the main challengers operating membership stores are companies such as Sam's Club as well as BJ's Wholesale Club. Between the two competitors, Sam's Club actually has more warehouses than Costco as a matter of comparison. However, Costco does register superior overall sales volume (Costco Wholesale company profile 8). This informs Costco's ability to employ roughly 142,000 employees on full- and part-time basis, including even the seasonal workforce. Costco had about 55 million memberships by September 2009.[update] For financial year 2009, the Costco's sales summed to $71.42 billion of which $1.28 billion formed the firm's net profit. This huge profit margin particularly has been boosted by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) which crowned Costco the best in retail store industry and further rated it with an achievement of 83 in Q4 in the year 2008. Financially, Costco is doing well. In fact, like all other merchandisers, Costco do make fundamental decisions. These decisions are two fold: first, they pay keen attention at the price at which it sells its products. Second, they also do consider the degree of service it provides to its consumers. With regard to these two key decisions, the firm usually involves relevant departments to establish workable policies. For instance, a department store might be needed to set the price of its merchandise at a relatively higher level and at the same time provide a great deal of service. On the other hand, a discount store might be tasked to price its merchandise at a relatively low level and duly provide limited service. Their commodities or products are also playing a great role to their huge sales volumes. This argument is actually informed by the type of discount they offer to their customers. Their discount stores for example do require a customer to purchase memberships which intern p ermits them to make their purchases in bulk and yet at a reduced wholesale prices hence affordable. According to Needles, B.E. et al (291) in their joint book Principles of Accounting, Costco's financial efficiency and effectiveness are also propelled by their purchases of merchandise in bulk from a number of suppliers. In addition, Costco do put their purchases on racks in its own warehouse-like stores and in turn vend the goods to customers at quite low prices, with negligible individual services. COSTCO'S FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS Operating Results (In million) Fiscal-Year Ended August 28, 2005 August 29, 2004 Change Net revenue $ 52,935 $ 48,107 10.0% Cost of sales 46,347 42,092 10.1 Gross margin $ 6,588 $ 6,015 9.5 Operating expenses 5,114 4,630 10.5 Operating income