Assignment Sample on BBS-4-MIS Management & Information Systems
Introduction
This project aims to address the different perspectives of a business and its challenges faced in the modern era. For case research and studies, the Sainsbury’s, UK is chosen. The report totally focuses on the structuring of the business and its management. The challenges faced by Sainsbury’s is discussed with their impacts on their business. The information and cyber security challenges, impacts, threats and solutions are provided in the report for better observation. Project discloses the ethical and non-ethical compliances along with the human and technological cyber security safeguards that through light on the analysis of the strategies of business which are adopted by Sainsbury’s.
1. The type of business and the services and goods it provides.
Sainsbury plc. which is generally known as Sainsbury’s is the second largest supermarket chain and food retailer in the whole UK. Sainsbury’s was established as a partnership in the year 1869 with an aim to provide the products at a lower price. It has almost 16%share in the supermarket sector. The company is known to be a pioneer in the sector to develop its own brand which was provided with national brand along with lower price which attracted the market. On 29 September 2010, the company opened one of its largest shops in the UK and within 2019, it achieved the goal to establish almost 1428 shops (Fengyi, 2021). The company does not compromise with the quality and brand of goods that help them to achieve success.
Building strong brand heritage and reputation for their quality products are well known which helped them to access the biggest supermarket and grocery stores all-over the UK. According to Sainsbury (2020), the company employs 145000 employees which is a huge number. The main source of their turnover is the retail food chain that encircles the country. It should be noted that Sainsbury first hired women employees during the world war. It has different big stakeholders Qatar Holding LLC etc.
2. Business organisational/management structure.
Being one of the largest supermarkets, the company has some corporate structure that helps it protect from outer competitive mechanism attack. Their mission is to provide the consumers the best choice of food products with a lower competitive cost that is beneficial for better growth and gaining trust in the company. It can be stated for a business organizational and management structure that it operates in a hierarchical structure where there is a series of employees working at different levels with different types of responsibilities but in a narrow span. The main management team consists of 6 non-executive directors, a group commercial director, a senior independent director, a group development director, a chief financial officer and the chief executive officer of the company (Guo et al. 2019).
The structure is also a matrix structure that is adopted by the company that allows it to tackle various types of situations which may be unprecedented. The strategy provides the employees greater security in their undertaken tasks. In the case of consumer reliability they do not compromise with non-branded foods for serving (Maston et al. 2020). They have encouraging leaders who provide great communication and business relations between consumers and Sainsbury’s along with accepting an effective enterprise oriented routine for collecting some non-replicated customer information.
Challenge of the business.
3. Type of challenge:
Being a competitive market, Sainsbury’s has faced some challenges that have created some impact on overall operation of them throughout the market. The most important and serious challenge that the company has faced is the extension problem. This implies the activation mainly in the markets of the UK. Now, the different types of shifts in the retail and grocery market in the country leaves a great impact on the resource gaining and inventory management of Sainsbury’s (Taylor Buck et al. 2017). Another problem is the technical problem which occurred in 2008 that led to huge loss in goodwill of the company for suspending tasks for two days consequently.
The competition of the UK market is the biggest challenge that the company faces. There are many retailers that have similar features like Sainsbury’s. The expanded range of retailers in the market tends to have the theory that when consumers are not satisfied with products and services provided by Sainsbury’s, there are a lot of competitive rivals to capture the market. The rising cost of labour in the UK is generalised as a challenge faced by it though the company maintains the regulations related to the minimum wage implications and the needs of employees but still, it is considered as a challenge in a competitive market like the UK.
The impacts this challenge is having on the business.
The company has several problems and their impacts on the company’s functioning are huge. According to Cohen (2017), the competitive advantages of Sainsbury’s are not small terms to be dealt with but increasing risk of merging and remaining retailers that possess similar types of key features also keep the chosen company in great pressure. One of the biggest things is customer satisfaction. There are many retailers who are ready to grab the market of Sainsbury’s. The company faced an almost 1.6% downturn in the sales which indicated weakness on the strategic functions and their impact on sales.
The increased risk of huge competitive rivalry from the advanced performance and rise of Aldi and Lidi, the German discounters made a severe impact on the business strategic improvements mechanism and market observation process through communications in order to tackle rival companies. Being a non-extensive company, Sainsbury’s may face a great impact on their market capture which is totally limited within the UK (Tonini et al. 2018. The revenue and cost optimization in different parts of the world has kept other companies in more competitive advantages but less in the case of the chosen one. These are the impacts of different challenges on the company’s strategy.
Discussion and analysis of the proposed IS solution:
5. Introduction to the IS solution and its benefits.
IS solutions or information system solutions are referred to an integrated and incorporated set of components that are widely used for gathering, sorting an application for digital products which help a company to achieve higher growth rate. Business firms and other companies from various sectors and industries depend on this information base for better management solutions and provide them ease during the interaction between consumers and employees (Pop et al. 2018). The ISS or Information system solutions are used by the corporations and other professional organizations for processing some financial and economic accounts, managing their human resources, developing different strategies aligning with the achieved data sources and data sets to reach their potential customers with some online, social and media promotion.
There are enormous benefits of using information system solutions which can dramatically improve the performance of a company along with their efficiency in the market. The IS solutions provide the needed information to the firms or completing their tasks. The IS provides the data for helping them in decision making which is crucial for strategy management. The company may need some raw data at a specific time. They help to reduce the cost, help in betterment in customer services for improved trust and make data available continuously to the person. It also helps the company to access the data for reports and analysis of business.
6. Impact of the IS solution and its limitations.
Speed in access to information keeps a great impact on the information sector of companies to allow them to achieve their goal in a short time. Purchasing sectors also are impacted by this speed which creates positive feedback from the consumers of the company. It is also helpful for creating a start-up which needs a high community access to information. It helps the companies to achieve better sustainable and logical progress in the future through the customer satisfaction which is achieved by the use of information systems solutions. They also are helped with this system in a major way-cost effective way (Diesch et al. 2020). The internet and access to data saves a huge amount of expenditure of the budget that reduces the cost of the company for accessing information. Though it does not provide healthy business competition along with mass layoff which tends to unemployment and reduction of cost in this digital era of globalization.
Sainsbury’s also has access to information technology and its solutions. He company had adopted a participative approach which is used through “soft” OR methods for generating management ownership. The evolving strategy though has taken larger costs than estimated after exceeding all the budget constraints.
7. Ethical and social compliance and its non-compliance issues.
Compliance and ethics are related to the company’s conformity with the relevant laws and regulations. They should obey the rules which are set by the government (Aleksandrova et al. 2020). The importance which is given on the compliances are also said to have an impact on the consumers of the products produced by the company. Many companies allot lawyers in order to tackle different compliance issues as corporate culture is more or less logistic culture and the enforcement of law is very important for better performance. Audits often take place to ensure the data of social compliance that is the actions of a company for protecting the health and rights of the employees along with the community. This often works as a distribution chain. Ethical issues often occurred due to some extent when the lawyers are needed for their assistance.
Assessing the resources and allocation of them in an honest manner can eradicate the risk of having ethical issues. Establishing a strong foundation and culture of integrity is known for its effectiveness also. Sainsbury’s also keeps a strong relation between the customers and employees through ethical and other types of securities which help them maintain the ethics of the corporate world.
8. Cyber-Security threats and their impact on the business.
In a growing and established company, the most random and horrific threat is the malware and cyber security threat. This not only adjusts the performance of the company to reduce its effectiveness but also keeps a great impact on the reputation of the company for which the trust of consumers may fall in danger. Among most of the scams and threats, the malware threat is most risky for a retail market. It causes the loss of productivity and costs a huge amount for building the systems again with replaced hardware.
Endpoint attack is another type of threat which occurs in those companies who gather their most valuable information into the cloud (Al-Dhahri et al, 2017). The suppliers-chain attack also has a bad impact for stealing the information from the database of the company which forces the firm to face a huge loss of revenue as well as reputation. Sainsbury also had a severe cyber security threat which had a huge impact on its functioning. As per Ključnikov et al. (2019), being a cloud first organization, ensuring an IT decision for business strategies can increase the safety of the company but clouds are indeed important for tackling seasonal trends which are one of the most important drivers of the company’s revenue.
9. Human & technological Cyber-Security safeguards.
Human cyber security safeguards play a major role in tackling the threats. Human safeguards involve the people with the process components of the information systems which can be divided into three main categories, the employees safeguard, non-employees safeguard and the account administration. For the employees safeguard, the company must include separate privileges for employees which can even create effectiveness. According to Stewart et al. (2017), document security and their sensitivity should be measured by the, for realizing the sensitivity of the data that may help to reduce any type of risky involvement. It should be a rule that employees must be aware of their task and security policies and they must have some types of security training that help the company to make a secure position. In business, they may need some opening information which will involve in achieving temporary data access which are public.
In technological safeguards, the Unique User Identification is required for better security along with the Emergency access procedure for establishing the necessary ePHI during any emergency (Susanto et al. 2018). Companies must understand the importance of automatic log off and encryption and decryption. Sainsbury’s employees often are offered with training involving these safeguards so that they do not face any vulnerable positions in any technological system threat.
Conclusion:
The report suggests the different ideas which are included into the business strategies, their implications and importance and security threats with their solutions. Sainsbury’s is a massive company that has major revenue and profit margin which also makes them face some challenges including the competitive market with high rivalry, greater scope of similar products substitution and others. The technological and information systems solutions are discussed and they assess the effects of using some safeguards in the company. Human and technological safeguards play crucial roles which are described in the report for better understanding the situation of the company in the UK.
Reference List:
Al-Dhahri, S., Al-Sarti, M. and Abdul, A., 2017. Information security management system. International Journal of Computer Applications, 158(7), pp.29-33.
Aleksandrova, S.V., Vasiliev, V.A. and Aleksandrov, M.N., 2020, September. Problems of Implementing Information Security Management Systems. In 2020 International Conference Quality Management, Transport and Information Security, Information Technologies (IT&QM&IS) (pp. 78-81). IEEE.
Cohen, F., Glachant, M. and Söderberg, M., 2017. Consumer myopia, imperfect competition and the energy efficiency gap: Evidence from the UK refrigerator market. European Economic Review, 93, pp.1-23.
Diesch, R., Pfaff, M. and Krcmar, H., 2020. A comprehensive model of information security factors for decision-makers. Computers & Security, 92, p.101747.
Fengyi, Z., 2021. The Analysis of Asda-Sainsbury’s Merger/Acquisition. Journal of Finance Research, 5(1), pp.1-6.
Guo, L. and Wang, Z., 2019. Ratio analysis of J Sainsbury plc financial performance between 2015 and 2018 in comparison with Tesco and Morrisons. American Journal of Industrial and Business Management, 9(2), pp.325-341.
Ključnikov, A., Mura, L. and Sklenár, D., 2019. Information security management in SMEs: factors of success. Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues, 6(4), p.2081.
Maston, G., Franklin, J., Gibson, A.A., Manson, E., Hocking, S., Sainsbury, A. and Markovic, T.P., 2020. Attitudes and approaches to use of meal replacement products among healthcare professionals in management of excess weight. Behavioral Sciences, 10(9), p.136.
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Sainsbury, D., 2020. Toward a dynamic capability theory of economic growth. Industrial and Corporate Change, 29(4), pp.1047-1065.
Stewart, H. and Jürjens, J., 2017. Information security management and the human aspect in organizations. Information & Computer Security.
Susanto, H. and Almunawar, M.N., 2018. Information security management systems: A novel framework and software as a tool for compliance with information security standards. Apple Academic Press.
Taylor Buck, N. and While, A., 2017. Competitive urbanism and the limits to smart city innovation: The UK Future Cities initiative. Urban studies, 54(2), pp.501-519.
