Question

Implementing Enterprise Information Management System

Purpose

The purpose of this assignment is to help you learn more about the concepts related to the role of System Analyst.

Brief Introduction

A large direct health and insurance medical provider needed an enterprise information management system to enable enterprisewide information management and to support the effective use of data for critical cross-functional decision making. In addition, the company needed to resolve issues related to data redundancy, inconsistency, and unnecessary expenditure. The company faced several information challenges: The company data resided in multiple locations, the data were developed for department-specific use, and there was limited enterprise access. In addition, data definitions were created by individual departments and were not standardized, and data were being managed by multiple departments within the company.

Action Items

• Given the situation, What solution would you propose for this company?
• Discuss the role that data modeling would play in a project to solve this problem.
• Support or Oppose the above statements with arguments

Answer 1

Considering the current situation first we need to

1) Identify the business structure i.e. business units operating within the company

2) Collect the information related to all the business unit in whatever format is available (different format of excels we will get)

3) plot the sales & expenditure at header level for each business unit (like material cost, cost of sales other than material cost, Selling and General administration cost)

4) After this analysis we will come to know the whether there is problem of under absorption if material cost percentage is less and giving decent contribution margin

5) However if material cost is very high close to 90% and above then we need to check the design of product to reduce the material cost of the product

6) If material cost is in line with the expectation then we need to solve the problem of under absorption and higher selling & general administration cost

7) For under absorption we can target more sales by giving some discount and capture more sales by spending of marketing and business development activities.

8) However for long term we need to have proper ERP system like SAP or Oracle as per business requirement and budget of the company.

9) This standardize ERP system will resolve the problem of data redundancy & inconsistency

10) If we have data in standardize format then it will be very easy for management to take decision with respect to under absorption, cutting down higher selling & general administration cost etc.