Management Information Systems MSCI 2130

Management Information Systems MSCI 2130

85 marks

Answer each question. You may answer questions in point form. You will be graded on your depth of understanding in applying the material. If you just repeat what is in the text/slides, without demonstrating understanding, you will not achieve a good mark. You will be submitting your midterm with SafeAssign activated. Read all questions carefully.

Scenario:

Your family owns a company that makes personal protective equipment for industry. There are 100 employees. Last year, your net profit was 1.5 million dollars. Your grandfather has been the CEO for the last 30 years and has been very resistant to spending money on information technology. You do not have an internal network, and people are connected to the Internet, individually, using an external provider. Your grandfather has stepped down and your mother is the new CEO. She has asked you to create an MIS strategy and plan for the organization. You are currently taking an MIS course and have covered the first four chapters of your text. You will consider the current (mid-June, 2020) business environment and what can be predicted, for your business, going forward. You will also contemplate how you can integrate MIS into an organization with the following departments: Human Resources, Accounting, Purchasing, Shipping and Receiving, Supplies and Warehousing, Maintenance and Manufacturing. Currently, you use a safety supplies distributor to sell your products. See Appendix 1 for an organizational chart. Because there has been intense competition from Asia, your company has concentrated on a customer-oriented strategy of competition. You will need to consider available funds in arriving at any recommendations (any recommendations need to meet your needs without being too extravagant – you won’t be providing pricing at this time).

Based on your understanding of the course, to date, you will provide the following:

1. Discuss business pressures within your organization and industry and how IT improvements will be of benefit. This should use relevant material covered in Chapter 1 as a framework for your discussion (25 marks)
2. You are recommending a database and are going to demonstrate how it could help organize HR, as an example. You will provide an entity-relationship diagram using the modelling method described in Chapter 2. You will have entities for employees, payroll and benefits. See Appendix 2 for the salary structure. Note that all employees receive extended health, pension, education and vacation benefits. Employees at level 3 and above receive car allowances and profit-sharing benefits. Please state any other business rules that you apply to your drawing. Each entity will have five attributes, including the primary key. Add intersection tables, with at least one attribute plus key attribute(s). You may draw this by hand and scan or photograph. I will not accept Access E-R diagrams. (25 marks)
3. Give your recommendation on including a data warehouse or a data mart, along with the final database, and explain why or why not for each of them. (5 marks)
4. Describe how your specific organization could benefit (or not) from using a digital dashboard (5 marks) and GIS/geospatial data (5 marks).
5. Describe the hardware that your company will need to acquire a network. You can assume that everyone who needs one already has a computer with a built-in network card, so you need only describe additional requirements. Why would you recommend a network (or not)? Discuss your reasoning. (20 marks)

Appendix 1

PPE Incorporated

Organizational Chart

Appendix 2

Pay Structure