Inventory and Billing System

In the world of business, information technology strategy has been overlooked by owners for they are so focused on marketing strategies. Keeping up with the use of information technology is in just about all types of industrial process and just as important. It has been a proven fact that it contributes to the development of strategies and tactics when developing a product or service. During the twentieth century the accelerated progress in information technology has developed a large variety of technologies for the collecting and storage of information such as the Internet, software companies, and personal computers.

SMW’s current accounting information system is a cutting edge relational database system through Microsoft Access with internal controls set to adequately prevent and detect errors and fraud. This relational database system tracks sales orders, shipments, accounts receivable, cash receipts, purchases, accounts payable, cash disbursements, inventory levels and other relevant accounting information. The system’s output is compliant with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). The database processes currently in use at SMW are described below.

4. What problems under the old system are solved or mitigated by the new system?

Information system is a combination of hardware, software, infrastructure as well trained personnel who organized and facilitate planning, control, coordination and decision making within an organization. Information systems are also able to implement a vital integrated set of components for collecting, storing, and processing data. With this, it provided organizations with the necessary information, knowledge, and digital products needed. Information system bring the meaning of business applications that manage their operations, compete in the market place, manage accounts and human resources. This system have a vast variety of components that are crucial for a enterprise, business to function at his highest level, IT software is responsible that all system are reliable and up to date.

Information systems (IS), technically are a set of interrelated components that collect and retrieve information, process and store it and support the organization in decision making. Information Technology (IT) is a shared technology and provides the platform for specific information. It consists of hardware and software for a business to achieve their objectives. Included is the computer systems, the computer, any hand-held devices, software the company needs to operate and storage. (20)

Accounts payable, accounts receivables can all be updated to a more efficient system eliminating needlessly labor intensive tasks such as compiling invoices at the end of the day and manually putting the information into the computer. Currently much of this is being done with paper invoices that are carried from department to department. Paper invoices are being hand delivered and all data is manually added to the data base at the end of the day. Currently there is a separate system for customer billing and shipping and inventory and inventory is only taken once a month. The delay leaves a greater chance of error and either running low on supplies or having too much. The current inventory management system is different for each plant makes accurate communication between each facility difficult. Having a system in place across all locations will simplify customer billing and

Information Technology (IT) is a foundation for conducting business today. It plays a critical role in increasing productivity of firms and entire nation. It is proven that firms who invested in IT have experienced continued growth in productivity and efficiency. Many companies' survival and even existence without use of IT is unimaginable. IT has become the largest component of capital investment for companies in the United States and many other countries.

At first, identifying the potential problems. Though I will pay more attention to the top three classical problems, it is necessary to analyze other potential problems in specific project by investigating similar IT projects that is “Failure” or “Success” before kicking off project. The “similar” can be explained in many aspects, such as same goals, cost, scope, same industry, background and so on. I need to investigate how such similar project fails. For example, we assume that a company want to launch an ERP projects recently. In this area, there are many companies did it before. Failure of high-profile ERP projects is common. In order to avoid mistakes that usually occurs in such IT project, it can investigate many failure projects, such as Airforce, Saudi Telecom and so on. The project failure of Airforce due to the following reasons: weak teamwork & composition and lack of top management support. The Saudi Telecom’s failure attributes to lack of top management support, inadequate of company culture, and huge system customization (Aldammas & Al-Mudimigh, 2011). As you

(TCO B) List three organizational factors that can prevent a firm from fully realizing the benefits of a new information system, and provide examples of each.

An information system is a base in today’s business world. Everything is electronic. In various businesses, the survival and ability to succeed strategic business goals is challenging without extensive use of information system. Businesses improve the efficiency of their operations in order to accomplish higher profitablity. Besides that, information systems are important tools available to managers for achieving higher levels of efficiency and productiviy in business operations. For an example, Zara uses the PDA technology to gather customer feedback and input.

The main problems with the existing system and goals for the future system identified as below:

The problem faced by the company is they do not have any systematic system to record and keep their inventory data. It is difficult for the admin to record the inventory data quickly and safely because they only keep it in the logbook and not properly organized.

Information Technology (IT): The hardware and software technologies a firm needs to achieve its business objectives (Kenneth C Laudon and Jane P Laudon., 2010).

As the new technology and fast evolution of software, keeping information system efficiency became a challenge. On the enterprise side, the company’ operation, inventory, and logistics systems are the key to success. On the customer side, the high quality and satisfied experience from the user interface is very important. Moreover, the establish and develop a new technology is costly and different.

4. How will a four-step method for business problem solving help you solve information system-relations problems?