Comr2002 : Business Information Systems Assessment Answer

1.Database

 

1.1 Development activities

To develop the database and thorough review of the case study is done to come up with the relations and their attributes. After deriving the relations and their relationships from the case study normalization is done. Normalization involves three steps;

• Normalization to 1NF- Normalization to 1NF involves taking the relations identified from the case study and then removing all repeating groups.
• Normalization to 2NF- Normalization to 2NF involves taking the relations achieved by normalization to 1NF and then eliminating partial dependencies in the relations such that there is only one candidate key and no other combination of attributes can form a candidate key.

 

 

1.4 Impact of using technology

With the current growth in technology, organizations are finding it easy to run their business operations by incorporating technology in their business activities. Most organizations generate very large volumes of data from their business operations. The large volumes of data are generated as a result of normal day to day activities in the organization or its branches. Handling this data using manual methods like use of physical files to store the data leads to a lot of work for the employees thus makes it hard to operate the business efficiently. Retrieving data is a very hard task when there is large volumes of data stored on physical files. To deal with this problem, organizations are using information systems to improve the business process by simplifying the way data is recorded, stored and accessed. Continued use of information systems within an organization leads to a better organization as the activities that are carried out using the information systems are carried more easily and with more accountability.

With the data collected using information systems, organizations are using the data to get business insights from the data by implementing data ware houses to perform business intelligence. The large volumes are not just archives of data but help improve the decision making process of organizations. For the Grand Prix project, the information system will help improve the business process. The business will be able to maintain data for all of its customers. This data will be very useful to the organization as it can help evaluate how the business is performing. The information system will also improve the process of making orders for customers. If the information system is implemented as a web application customers will be able to make orders from the application. The order will be processed and the inventory updated. All this data will be stored in a database thus the organization will have data for all the customers and orders made by customers as well as maintain the inventory. Evaluation of this data can help the organization perform simple business analysis like customer segmentation where by customers with the most orders are identified.

However implementing the information system has an impact on the cultural issues as customers will change the way they make orders to something easy which can be done from a web application. The security of the data will be determined how the secure the information system will be developed. The development of the project should make sure the data is safe from malicious users. This will help protect the privacy of the users because if such information lands on malicious users the privacy of the customers can be violated if the data is distributed. Thus implementing information systems has many advantages for organizations but they should target to use the information system to improve the business but also make sure that the information system will not violate existing laws and regulations.