Closing Case Study One

Closing Case Study One Information Systems in Enterprise (ISYS – 3001 – 3) Group B Participants-Matthew Gilliss, Arlene Gulley, Renee Hicks Kemara Mcintyre, and Andrew Ginn Walden University February 10, 2013 Abstract This will be a paper that has been a group effort with Matthew Gilliss (organizer and website account setup, homepage and student webpage template), Arlene Gulley (editor/poster), Renee Hicks (compiler), Kemara Mcintyre (summary), and Andrew Ginn (editor). The URL of our website is http://faboulousgroupb. weebly. com/.

Our goal will be to respond to specifics questions in regards to two case studies; the first, being Ben & Jerry and secondly, Bigelow Teas. Ben & Jerry’s produce 190,000 pints of ice cream and daily. It has 50,000 stores in the United States and 12 other countries. The company uses an Oracle database and BusinessObjects for tracking of business operations. They perform various transformation steps to organize long term goals for the business. It prepares strategies to stay line with technological advances.

They have applied this technology to storing and manufacturing ice cream with energy efficiency warehouses. This new strategy enhances customer satisfaction, minimize inventory, and reduce manpower. (Haag & Cummings, 2009). Closing Case Study One Question #1 To redesign Ben & Jerry’s data warehouse the dimensions of information include frozen yogurt, ice cream, merchandise, locations, sales and shipping. This company should track all the different types of ice cream and yogurt flavors.

They should also monitor these areas with the highest and lowest sales to make adjustments to save money. There should be information gathered on the merchandise being sold by Ben & Jerry. Ben & Jerry will monitor sales from stores in other locations ensuring the right merchandise is being shipped to the right location. The different dimensions are merchandise and locations. (Haag & Cummings, 2009). Question #2 When looking at Ben & Jerry’s ice cream stores, they would have to have a record of the different types of ice cream and frozen yogurt they offer.

Along with the different products they would have to be able to track individual sales, the dates of those sales, and the store locations where the sale was made. When looking at primary keys you can see that the store number, order number and truck number could be primary keys. When looking for foreign keys to connect with the primary keys, you can see that store numbers, truck numbers, and order numbers can all be seen to be foreign keys. These are important because they would allow for Ben & Jerry’s to locate the exact order files of what they shipped, who drove it and where it went.

Also then they could take the primary keys even farther and connect directly to the store and get other feedback that is directly correlated with the store. (Haag & Cummings, 2009). Question #3 Because of their familiarity of Microsoft Excel, it was easier to learn Business Objects and they were more inclined to learn the new way of using the Business Objects. They were able to substitute different functions on the Business Objects with Microsoft Excel, which created a more familiarity to them and they were able to be more comfortable with the task.

Because of the area of their job, they were required to use spreadsheets, rather than using word processing software. (Haag & Cummings, 2009). Question #4 Bigelow Teas could continue to use Business Objects and they cooperate with each other so they can better understand its in-house and outside strengths and weaknesses. Bigelow Teas should make sure that their suppliers and resellers are part of the information partnership. This would allow the suppliers and resellers to be in contact with each other and to make the necessary adjustments or changes that are required. Haag & Cummings, 2009). According to (Haag & Cummings, 2009), “business intelligence is collective information –about customers, your competitors, your partners, your competitive environments, and your own internal operations—that gives you the ability to make effective, important, and often strategic business decisions. ” (p. 87). Bigelow Teas’ would not want their suppliers or resellers to know about their strategic business decisions. (Haag & Cummings, 2009).

There might be a person who is a supplier or reseller who might take this information and use it for themselves and/or sell the information for a profit. The suppliers and resellers should only have information that will help Bigelow Teas in regards to implementing cost reduction, and be helpful with their resources. Question #5 Neil Hastie’s belief that most organizations decision making is a lot of trial by error. In a sense that could be true, but good decision making comes from the top and makes it way down.

Let’s not lose sight on what decision making really is; finding a logical choice of decisions from available options. A CEO or even management of any kind of organization would have to be good at decision making. If you were to turn Neil’s statement about decision making into a positive one, then one would agree that an organization or whoever is running the organization would need to keep an open-mind. Keeping an open-mind would include training, presenting timely information and everyone’s wide assortment of data-mining tools. Haag & Cummings, 2009). Conclusion This assignment was both a learning experience and growing experience. As a group we were able to come together and tackle our case study and the creation of our group webpage. We were able to look at the information about the two companies and use the knowledge that we have acquired with the class discussions and assignments and come up with responses to each question. We were able to: determine what tables and files that Ben & Jerry’s should use and what primary and foreign keys they should use.

With Bigelow Teas we took a look at personal productivity software tools and how best they could open up business intelligence with buyers and suppliers. Also we were able to take a general statement made and turn it into one that could be used in the everyday business world. Overall, this experience allowed the members of the group to get closer looks into different industries and allowed the group members to use the information that we have acquired so far in our studies. Reference Haag, S. , & Cummings, M. (2009). Information Systems Essentials. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.