CS Inter :: Management information systems and Corporate comunications : June 2005

The year 2004-05 was not very good for TGPCL, a company in the business of providing technical services and solutions for power transmission and distribution. The company lost some new contracts even from their existing clients to their competitors. Sundram, the managing director, was disturbed due to it. On investigation, it was found that there was unprecedented increase in clients’ complaints and some of the complaints were not addressed timely. Sundram called for ‘TGPCL Clients Meet’. The following important observations and concerns of clients were identified during the Meet :

—	Clients who are mainly power generators, transmitters and distributors work 24 hours a day, seven days in a week, while the TGPCL works from 9.30 AM to 5.30 PM (generally upto 7.00 PM) 6 days in a week. Clients have no mechanism or channel to get necessary service during holidays and beyond office hours.
—	The company has an automated phone system which attends calls from clients. It is alleged that such a system lacks ‘human-touch’ and provides solutions of a routine and obvious nature. The clients are found to be dissatisfied from this arrangement.
—	It is alleged that the website of the company does not provide any mechanism to the clients to get their complaints redressed.
—	During 2004-05, some parts of India including Mumbai had very heavy rains during the rainy season. As a result, on one side the clients’ complaints increased and on other side the Mumbai office was forced to close for 2-3 days 4 times in the period of July-September. This phenomenon led to a high degree of dissatisfaction among the clients.
—	Clients have also become highly demanding in terms of ‘quick redressal’ of their complaints. They would not mind paying extra money for the same.

Sundram took all these observations to the Board meeting. The Board members took a serious note of the same. The Board decided to constitute a committee which will look into information technology related solutions for taking care of calls received beyond office hours and during holidays and provide necessary redressal mechanism for the same.
Draft a short write-up incorporating possible information technology solutions to this problem

BestMatch is an international recruitment company that helps companies (their clients) to find employees who fit their needs
BestMatch added a fully automated website where employers can post job descriptions and job seekers can post their resume for a small fee. This fee includes the ability to search the on-line database for potential matches. This database with on-line submitted resumes and job descriptions is separate from the internal one. The website had not been the success the company thought it would be. There was much good textual information on the site, and clients could scroll through page after page of written documentation. It took a bit longer to get to some pages because clients had to go through other pages to get to the one they wanted, including the home page. Sometimes the home page took a while to load due to the ten graphics file on that page.

Clients could e-mail the company, but the e-mail feature was on the last page and could only be accessed by going through four other pages.
Outline the concepts overlooked while building the e-commerce site of BestMatch, stating your reasons for the same.

Assume that you have just been hired as the Vice-President of information systems for the Navi Mumbai University Centre. One of your immediate assignments is to determine whether to acquire and deploy an ‘enterprise resource planning’ (ERP) system within next 18 months to handle the administrative tasks of the six affiliated colleges and the University. State the advantages to the colleges in adopting ERP.

When determining the network architecture for an information system, one can choose among centralised computing, a distributed presentation, a two-tiered client/server configuration or a three-tiered configuration. You are required to define each of these four network architectures.

System conversion is concerned with changing old systems to new system. Name four main types of system conversion methods. For the following independent scenarios, which conversion method would you recommend and why :

(i)	Implementing a new computer-based payroll system that provides many more features (such as queries, reports and data analysis) than the previous computerised payroll system. The same hardware will be used; only the software will be changed. The firm has about 2,500 employees on the payroll.
(ii)	Implementing an on-line corporate information system that provides detailed corporate information in real time when a stakeholder places a call to the Registrar of Companies. The old system was a manual system in which a clerk in the Registrar’s office had to obtain the corporate file from a filing cabinet.

New Vision Co. is interested in providing an on-line service to its users. You are required to provide information to the company about different types of on-line information services.

Assume that you have established a small factory that manufactures a single product which you sell to various distributors in Northern India. You purchase raw material from several vendors and employ 5 full-time employees. The production is done by the contract labour. Suggest which business functions you would certainly computerise.

Innovation operates at two levels – radical and incremental, and both are important although the skills needed for each are different. Identify whether the following innovations are radical or incremental and give reasons :

(i)	A pharmaceutical firm decides to outsource 80 percent of its research and development work.
(ii)	A project management company introduces 'programme evaluation and review technique' (PERT) and 'critical path method' (CPM) for project implementation.
(iii)	A railway company moves from being owned by the public to being a commercial business.
(iv)	A telecom company adopts performance linked incentive scheme for its employees.
(v)	A hierarchical organisation removes several layers from its structure and empowers each front-line employee.

As a Human Resources Manager of Good Health & Co., a BPO company in Bangalore, write a memorandum announcing the new non-smoking policy based on the following information :

—	Total employees : 700
—	Smokers : 70%
—	Out of the smokers, smoking at workplace : 45%
—	Government is planning to legislate against smoking in workplace in next two months.
—	Good Health & Co. adopts pro-active approach to proposed legislation.
—	Smoking permitted in one room to begin with
—	No smoking in canteen and within 50 metres of building's entrance
—	After a month, total prohibition on smoking
—	Company committed to help employees to quit smoking.

"Letters are ambassadors of any business house." In the light of this statement, suggest what all are to be kept in mind while writing an effective business letter