MIS (Assignment 2)

------MIS (Assignment 2)------

EMCOR

EMCOR is a 100% Filipino-owned retail Business Corporation specializing in appliances, furniture, IT products, motorcycles, and money transfer through its network of specialty chain stores in the Visayas, Mindanao, and Palawan areas. With the launching of our online store, EMCOR will now be making its presence known in the online industry and promote its company’s goals and vision to the global community.

What are the Risks associated with Business and IT/IS change at EMCOR? This is the question for the second assignment that we have to relate in our first one for us to give an answer. Anyway, we have thrown a lot of question during our interview with the EMCOR’s MIS/EDP head. And to recall, here are the few facts that we have gathered during the meeting:


Below are the formulated questions regarding the Management Information System (MIS) of the company’s MIS/EDP that was entertained by the personnel manager himself. He was trained in Digital Interface about programming during his early years in the company and was the first user of the computer in their company.

1.) What are the best practices in Management Information System (MIS) in their company?

According to the interviewee, it is hard to point out if what are the best practices that their department has done to attain their goals but he tries to consider some of their practices that he believes would be best. Like those having back-ups of data in case of unexpected disaster that they might encounter. They have a data security that secures all the data. And also having enough programmers and system analyst who are responsible to control, update, and checked whatever errors that might occurs. They have a Disaster Recovery Procedure that will immediately recover the data in any case that the server might have encounter problems.

Security of the data. EMCOR ensure that there data is secure. They give assurance that their data provides a sense of protection against loss, attack, or harm and precautions taken to keep somebody or something safe from crime, attack, or danger.

Daily Backup. There database provides a copy of computer data that is stored, e.g. a copy stored on a floppy disk, compact disk or any writable materials. In case of shutdown, the company has supported data.

Kept the Data Controlled. Kept the data in check and not expressed fully or at all.

2.) What are the advantages of their Management Information System (MIS) in the company?

Since the company has been using VPN (Virtual Private Network) connections, there is an accurate and fast transferring of data from one store to another and also, since it is private, it is not prone to hacking and stealing of important data. Also it reduces cost and it saves time since transactions will happened too fast than usual.


3.) What are the disadvantages?

One disadvantage is the incorrect data uploading and this would happen usually in system migration. Anyway it’s not really a big problem since they are looking for solutions to possible errors.

4.) Do you think, you won't come this far without this Management Information System (MIS)?

The interviewee says that even without technology, MIS would still exist though not as easy and reliable as of this time. There would still be an MIS, maybe dealing with manual system. But having the opportunity to take advantage of the fast growing technology, MIS also evolves into a more accurate and fast applications that helps the MIS department to achieve its goals with the use of high level techniques and implementations.

5.) How and when did the MIS implemented?

EMCOR started its service along 1985. During the year 1987, they were using only one computer to process transactions. (word star and lotus) until they had a contract with Digital Interface where the interviewee was trained. It started then that they hired programmers and system analyst to support their new way of system.

6.)How does the company’s system developed?

The system was developed along 1997 and 1999 in the preparation of the problem met in 2000. The Y2K problem means on how to input the years 2000 and the succeeding ones.

Along 1998, EMCOR is already internet connected. However, their system is not yet online and decentralized but they are planning to materialize the centralized. In a centralized system, one branch can view the business transaction of the other. The customer can also pay their account in the other branches without the tedious process and hassles in part of the accounting personnel. He also mentioned that each stores has its own databases.

7.) What is the company’s approach in Systems building?

The company is developing its system in house or source out. They were also practicing to develop their own system or trying to improve the existing one. And also considering source out and ready made programs.

MIS Department consists of help desk, research and development and the technical. Help desk answers queries, checks transactions, etc. Research and development is responsible for the systems development. Technical is for the hardware failures.

8.) How is it maintained?

It is maintained by their programmers and systems analyst through users, manager’s approval, reports, encoding and debugging processes and others.


In Mindanao, EMCOR branches and stores are connected via internet except Tandag and Ilungos somewhere in Leyte. However, the two have their own servers and reports would be sent through hard disk.

What are the risks in IT/IS change?

The risks to be considered are the possible data loss, disaster and back down, preparation on the errors of the system, the establishment of the accuracy, and the users acceptance on the system. Also some of the difficulties at risk are the possible discrepancies, training time and etc.

To give a technical background, EMCOR started to use a manual operation in the early years. It was during the year 1997 that the systems was started to develop. Before the year 2000 took its final fold, they were able to implement the Clipper 87 software for the receivables and inventory. It was then that they realized that the problem on the coming of Y2K could affect their system. Later, they were able to migrate another system with the FoxPRo as their front-end and SQL as their back-end. They’re using MS Windows environment. Hopefully, the long-planned migration to another system would be realized by the end of this year or earlier. It will be a SAP package (I forgot to ask what does it stands for) that includes Sales and Collection Monitoring System that will have to centralize their database in order to render best services to their clientele. Also, they are planning to establish a disaster recovery site that would deal all the transactions taken in case of unintentional shutdown and data loss.




References:
http://emcor.com.ph/about.php[/justify]