SYMBIOSIS CENTER FOR MANAGEMENT STUDIES (UG), NOIDA

Global Business Environment Project On

Automating, Managing and aligning business decisions in a modern digital enterprise

SUBMITTED TO SYMBIOSIS INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY, PUNE

Towards Partial Fulfillment of Requirements of Bachelors of Business Administration

Project Guide: Dr. Chitra Kasana (Project Guide, SCMS (UG))

Submitted By: Karan Beri (BBA IVth Semester)

Symbiosis Center for Management Studies (UG), Noida (Constituent of Symbiosis International University) Sector 62, Block A, Plot No. 47 & 48, Noida 201301 Tel.+91-120-2405067 | +91-120-2405065, Fax No. +91-120-2405066 E-mail: [email protected]

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I Karan Beri, express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Chitra Kasana for guiding me and giving me the opportunity to work under her guidance on the project Automating, Managing and aligning business decisions in a modern digital enterprise.

Date: 19-01-2012 Place: Noida

Karan Beri

INTRODUCTION

DECISION MAKING:
Decision-making is a crucial part of good business. Decision-making increasingly happens at all levels of a business. The Board of Directors may make the grand strategic decisions about investment and direction of future growth, and managers may make the more tactical decisions about how their own department may contribute most effectively to the overall business objectives. But quite ordinary employees are increasingly expected to make decisions about the conduct of their own tasks, responses to customers and improvements to business practice. This needs careful recruitment and selection, good training, and enlightened management.

Types of Business Decisions

1. Programmed Decisions: These are standard decisions which always follow the same
routine. As such, they can be written down into a series of fixed steps which anyone can follow. They could even be written as computer program 2. Non-Programmed Decisions: These are non-standard and non-routine. Each decision is not quite the same as any previous decision. 3. Strategic Decisions: These affect the long-term direction of the business eg whether to take over Company A or Company B 4. Tactical Decisions: These are medium-term decisions about how to implement strategy eg what kind of marketing to have, or how many extra staff to recruit 5. Operational Decisions: These are short-term decisions (also called administrative decisions) about how to implement the tactics eg which firm to use to make deliveries. Linear programming models help to explore maximizing or minimizing constraints eg one can program a computer with information that establishes parameters for minimizing costs subject to certain situations and information about those situations. Spread-sheets are widely used for what if simulations. A very large spread-sheet can be used to hold all the known information about, say, pricing and the effects of pricing on profits. The different pricing assumptions can be fed into the spread-sheet modeling different pricing strategies. This is a lot quicker and an awful lot cheaper than actually changing prices to see what happens. On the other hand, a spread-sheet is only as good as the information put into it and no spread-sheet can fully reflect the real world. But it is very useful management information to

know what might happen to profits what if a skimming strategy, or a penetration strategy were used for pricing. The computer does not take decisions; managers do. But it helps managers to have quick and reliable quantitative information about the business as it is and the business as it might be in different sets of circumstances. There is, however, a lot of research into expert systems which aim to replicate the way real people (doctors, lawyers, managers, and the like) take decisions. The aim is that computers can, one day, take decisions, or at least programmed decisions (see above). For example, an expedition could carry an expert medical system on a lap-top to deal with any medical emergencies even though the nearest doctor is thousands of miles away. Already it is possible, in the US, to put a credit card into a hole-in-the-wall machine and get basic legal advice about basic and standard legal problems.

Levels of Decision-Making

The Decision-Making Process

Constraints on Decision-Making INTERNAL CONSTRAINTS

These are constraints that come from within the business itself. - Availability of finance. Certain decisions will be rejected because they cost too much - Existing Business Policy. It is not always practical to re-write business policy to accommodate one decision - Peoples abilities and feelings. A decision cannot be taken if it assumes higher skills than employees actually have, or if the decision is so unpopular no-one will work properly on it.

External Constraints
These come from the business environment outside the business. - National & EU legislation - Competitors behavior, and their likely response to decisions your business makes

- Lack of technology - Economic climate

Quality of Decision-Making
Some managers and businesses make better decisions than others. Good decision-making comes from:1. Training of managers in decision-making skills. See Developing Managers 2. Good information in the first place. 3. Management skills in analyzing information and handling its shortcomings. 4. Experience and natural ability in decision-making. 5. Risk and attitudes to risk. 6. Human factors. People are people. Emotional responses come before rational responses, and it is very difficult to get people to make rational decisions about things they feel very strongly about. Rivalries and vested interests also come into it. People simply take different views on the same facts, and people also simply make mistakes. Business Thinkers -John Pierpoint Morgan & Good Management Self-Assessment

Interdependence
Businesses are highly interdependent on each other, their suppliers and their customers. Decisions are not taken in isolation. The effects of any decision will depend critically on the reactions of other groups in the market. These have to be, as far as possible, taken into account before decisions are made.

DIGITAL ENTERPRISE
Today, sales teams, human resources departments, corporate communications departments and other entities use digital assets to support their evolving objectives. Internal users, external partners and customers are also creating their own digital assets that must be captured, accessed and distributed in multiple formats. And as usage has increased, so has the need to more efficiently manage digital files and their associated workflows.

TYPES OF SOFTWARE FROM IBM:

ECM software from IBM
IBM is a leader in the development of content management solutions for todays demanding businesses. The software is designed to manage the entire life cycle of virtually all electronic contentnot just multimedia files, but also electronic documents, scanned and digitized document images, electronic forms, e-mail, Microsoft Office documents, and XML and Web files. ECM solutions from IBM provide the content repository and infrastructure necessary for digital asset management, performing the heavy lifting of providing security services, database management, storage management and a foundation for application programming interfaces (APIs).

Ancept Media Server software for digital asset Management

Ancept has been an IBM Business Partner since 1997 and a leader in the digital asset management software space with its Ancept Media Server (AMS) software for media production, management and distribution. The software provides a single interface for asset management tasks, including: Video and audio indexing and transcoding. Searching and viewing of stored assets. Content distribution. Content editing. Workflow and business process management. AMS software includes powerful tools for organizing and editing content from a single interface, but it is the softwares ability to create customized workflows and support business process management according to business requirements that sets it apart from other offerings. For example, the processes for requesting permission to use an image or create multiple file formats of an audio file can be clearly and graphically defined, and user roles can be established with the software. AMS software then automates the routing of actionable information and associated files to appropriate users based on those roles. The AMS interface can be personalized so that users only have the functionality necessary to their jobs, and rich reporting features can help administrators and IT managers track user activity and further improve workflows

Marketing and brand management

Advancing your brand requires aggressive control of your content. But as the number of marketing channels increases, the size and variance of the audience grows, and the level of interaction with consumers becomes more complex, brand management becomes increasingly difficult. Efficiently managing and supplying content in a consistent manner with a high level of

quality in this environment is the big challenge. Without a comprehensive content management approach, access control and digital rights are difficult to manage and costly

Communication and collaboration

Systems that allow employees, partners and customers to communicate and collaborate are a necessity. To further improve collaboration, businesses are increasingly utilizing rich media Webcasts for reaching broad audiences, multimedia presentations for delivering comprehensive messages and videoconferencing for improved collaboration. ECM solutions from IBM, supported by AMS software, can provide the ability to schedule, manage and deliver this rich content. The solutions allow content to be searched, viewed and repurposed later, while supporting your compliance efforts.

Education and training

The Internet has revolutionized education and corporate training, as text-based coursework delivered by the Web has given way to interactive, highly personalized multimedia programs. Organizing and delivering the right content at the right time (and scaling to accommodate a single student up to several thousand students) requires a robust ECM system for capturing, indexing and distributing not only media files of the courses themselves but also supporting files and documents. Digital asset management and ECM solutions from IBM are already helping leading educational institutions worldwide meet the challenges of distributing knowledge to dispersed and highly mobile student bodies. Corporations, too, are using solutions from IBM to support various training requirements, such as product information deliveries, sales training events and human resources materials

Content production
Efficient production of contentwhether video, graphic arts or multimedia depends on robust collaborative capabilities, sophisticated workflow and business process management, a scalable repository and integration with critical systems. Without such systems, communication, collaboration and organization of content must be done manually, resulting in significant costs and protraction of production cycles. ECM solutions from IBM have the workflow and business process management capabilities needed to support content production processes ranging from simple review and approval cycles to very complex, comprehensive production cycles.

OTHER SOFTWARES:

EXECUTIVE INFORMATION SYSYTEM :

An executive information system (EIS) is a type of management information system intended to facilitate and support the information and decision-making needs of senior executives by providing easy access to both internal and external information relevant to meeting the strategic goals of the organization. It is commonly considered as a specialized form of decision support system (DSS).

IT IS USEFUL IN:

Manufacturing
Basically, manufacturing is the transformation of raw materials into finished goods for sale, or intermediate processes involving the production or finishing of semi-manufactures. It is a large branch of industry and of secondary production. Manufacturing operational control focuses on day-to-day operations, and the central idea of this process is effectiveness and efficiency.

Marketing
In an organization, marketing executives role is to create the future. Their main duty is managing available marketing resources to create a more effective future. For this, they need make judgments about risk and uncertainty of a project and its impact on the company in short term and long term. To assist marketing executives in making effective marketing decisions, an EIS can be applied. EIS provides an approach to sales forecasting, which can allow the market executive to compare sales forecast with past sales. EIS also offers an approach to product price, which is found in venture analysis. The market executive can evaluate pricing as related to competition along with the relationship of product quality with price charged. In summary, EIS software package enables marketing executives to manipulate the data by looking for trends, performing audits of the sales data, and calculating totals, averages, changes, variances, or ratios.

Financial
A financial analysis is one of the most important steps to companies today. The executive needs to use financial ratios and cash flow analysis to estimate the trends and make capital investment decisions. An EIS is a responsibility-oriented approach that integrates planning or budgeting with control of performance reporting, and it can be extremely helpful to finance executives. Basically, EIS focuses on accountability of financial performance and it recognizes the

importance of cost standards and flexible budgeting in developing the quality of information provided for all executive levels.

Decision-Support Systems :
Helping with decisions in:
Supply chain management Customer relationship management Pricing Decisions Asset Utilization Data Visualization: Presentation of data in graphical forms, to help users see patterns and relationships Geographic Information Systems (GIS): Special category of DSS that display geographically referenced data in digitized maps.

 Digital dashboards share business insights at-a-glance

A digital dashboard, also known as an enterprise dashboard or executive, is a business management tool used to visually depict the status of an enterprise, or an enterprise department, via key performance indicators. Digital dashboards use visual, at-a-glance displays of data pulled from disparate business systems to provide employee alerts, change notifications, next steps, and summaries of business conditions. Years of research, development, experience and improvement in enterprise information systems such as business intelligence, OLAP, scorecards, and business event management software are converging to make digital dashboards the final delivery vector for the information these systems manage. Ultimately, the only thing that all of these enterprise information systems have in common is a human that is expected to monitor the data they produce and to make high-quality business decisions based on this information. Digital dashboards are the final manifestation of business information before it is handed back to a human. And if the last link between complex and voluminous enterprise data and the people that manage business performance is a digital dashboard, then these systems assume greater importance.

Benefits of digital dashboards:

Visual presentation of performance measures Ability to identify and correct negative trends Measure efficiencies/inefficiencies Ability to generate detailed reports showing new trends Ability to make more informed decisions based on collected business intelligence Align strategies and organizational goals Saves time compared to running multiple reports Gain total visibility of all systems instantly Quick identification of data outliers and correlations

 ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING :

Systems integrate internal and external management information across an entire organization, embracing finance/accounting, manufacturing, sales and service, customer relationship management, etc. ERP systems automate this activity with an integrated software application. Their purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the organization and manage the connections to outside stakeholders ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems typically include the following characteristics: Installation of the system without elaborate application/data integration by the Information Technology (IT) department.

Finance/Accounting
General ledger, payables, cash management, fixed assets, receivables, budgeting, consolidation

Human resources
Payroll, training, benefits, 401K, recruiting, diversity management

Manufacturing
Engineering, bill of materials, work orders, scheduling, capacity, workflow management, quality control, cost management, manufacturing process, manufacturing projects, manufacturing flow, activity based costing, product lifecycle management

Supply chain management

Order to cash, inventory, order entry, purchasing, product configuration, supply chain planning, supplier scheduling, inspection of goods, claim processing, commissions

Project management
Costing, billing, time and expense, performance units, activity management

Customer relationship management

Sales and marketing, commissions, service, customer contact, call center support

Data services
Various "selfservice" interfaces for customers, suppliers and/or employees

Access control
Management of user privileges for various processes

BENEFITS OF ERP:
Sales forecasting, which allows inventory optimization area of operation. Order tracking, from acceptance through fulfillment Revenue tracking, from invoice through cash receipt Matching purchase orders (what was ordered), inventory receipts (what arrived), and costing (what the vendor invoiced). ERP systems centralize business data, bringing the following benefits: They eliminate the need to synchronize changes between multiple systems consolidation of finance, marketing and sales, human resource, and manufacturing applications They bring legitimacy and transparency in each bit of statistical data. They enable standard product naming/coding. They provide a comprehensive enterprise view (no "islands of information"). They make realtime information available to management anywhere, any time to make proper decisions. They protect sensitive data by consolidating multiple security systems into a single structure. Chronological history of every transaction through relevant data compilation in every

CONCLUSION Thus, through digital softwares and hardwares managing, automating and aligning in an enterprise has become more reliable, more effective and a fruitful source of decision making. Decision making process have improved tremendously thus, in return the enterprise have earned a large amount of profits. Thus, it has also helped in achieving organizational goals .

REFRENCES 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning 2. http://www.slideshare.net/datacleaners11/chapter-13-decision-support-systems 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_information_system 4. http://www.klipfolio.com/satellite/digital-dashboards 5. http://tutor2u.net/business/organisation/decisionmaking.htm