Management Information System and Operations

Question: Discuss about the Management Information System and Operations. Answer: Introduction The management information system of an organization is responsible for storage of various financial and operational information regarding the different operations of the management of the organization. The MIS is also responsible for the publishing of frequent reports containing the performance of the processes whose data is stored in the database. This report analyzes the figures for the online and in-store sales of Apple, Walmart and FNAC for the year of 2015 along with that of Amazon. The report also analyzes the potential benefits of Amazon having physical stores along with the online operations. 2015 figures for Apple, Walmart and FNAC Organization Online sales (in billions USD) In-store sales (in billions USD) Apple 12 223.3 Walmart 13.5 468.6 FNAC 0.25 4.08 Walmart has been struggling to hold its ground in the ecommerce market against Amazon, but recently the organization has seen some growth in its online sales figures. In the year of 2015, Walmart recorded close to 13.5 billion US dollars of ecommerce sales and close to 468.6 billion US dollars of in-store sales. Though the figure for in-store sales is quite good in comparison to the competitors of Walmart, its the lowest for the organization in the last 35 years. Apple recorded close to 12 billion US dollars of online sales in the year of 2015 along with close to 223.3 billion US dollars of in-store sales. FNAC recorded close to 0.25 billion USD of online sales and close to 4.08 billion USD in the in-store sales for the year of 2015. Multichannel or Omni-channel strategy for sales Multichannel sales strategy of an organization defines multiple channels provided to the customers to communicate and interact with the organization to buy the products. This type of sales strategy allows the organization to have sales operations across multiple channels, but in silos. So the experiences of the customers are not uniform or smooth across various channels. The sales figures of Walmart in the year of 2015 clearly shows that the organization implements a multichannel sales strategy and lacks providing a uniform and seamless experience to the customers in both in-store and online buying activities. The Omni-channel sales strategy defines all the channels used by the organization for sales to be equal and one. Hence the sales strategy of such organizations allows them to maintain a seamless experience of the customers across the multiple channels. This allows the customers to have a better buying experience, which in turn increases their loyalty for the brand and the repeat purchases. Apple has achieved an effective implementation of the Omni-channel sales strategy, which allows the organization to have efficient sales operations. The Omni-channel sales strategy definitely holds quite a number of positive points on the multichannel sales strategy. The seamless customer experience along with the presence of the organization within easy reach of the customers, allows the Omni-channel sales strategy to be more efficient in comparison to the multi-channel sales strategy. Amazon.com For the same year of 2015, Amazon recorded close to 80 billion USD, which is close to 74% of the entire sales of the organization in the entire year. The sheer volume of sales of the products sold by Amazon suggests the significance of its presence in the online market. Amazon doesnt have any physical store current adding any value in its value chain. There are a number of factors which led to online operations of the organization instead of having a chain of retail stores. The online operations of the organization avoid the high setup and infrastructure costs in establishing the physical stores. The online operations of the organization also allow the organization to avoid the maintenance costs of the physical stores. The online sales operations of Amazon also allow it to reach a large number of customers over the internet with low costs. Amazon can include the physical store sales activities in its business model to create several values to its customers. As shown in the above picture, Porters value chain defines a number of activities which can generate value for the customers of the organization. The presence of the physical stores of Amazon will allow the management to track the buying behavior of the customers in an up-close manner, which in turn provides insight into the preferences of the customers. The primary value chain activities defined by Porters value chain suggests that the presence of the physical stores of the organization will allow the management to manage the logistics, operations, inventory management and marketing activities in a better way. This in turn allows the organization to have a better information model in the management information system, which in turn allows the organization to realize better values both for the customer and itself. The presence of the physical stores of Amazon will a lso allow the management of the organization to gather better information of the geographic location of the stores and the buying behavior and preferences of the customers present in the corresponding geographic locations. The technological implementation of the MIS across the physical stores of the organization will allow the organization to gather information from various locations with various differences. This in turn can be managed in a centralized database management system in order to generate meaningful insight to enhance the business activities of the organization. Bibliography Fearne, Andrew, Marian Garcia Martinez, and Benjamin Dent. "Dimensions of sustainable value chains: implications for value chain analysis." Supply Chain Management: An International Journal 17, no. 6 (2012): 575-581. Lazaris, Chris, and Adam Vrechopoulos. "From multi-channel to omnichannel retailing: review of the literature and calls for research." In 2nd International Conference on Contemporary Marketing Issues,(ICCMI). 2014. Miller, H. Gilbert, and Peter Mork. "From data to decisions: a value chain for big data." IT Professional 15, no. 1 (2013): 57-59. Pophal, Lin. 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