Tps and Amazon Management Information System

Challenges and Security Issues

Marietta Cheeks

American InterContinental University Online

Instructor: Professor Mathias Fok

Date: August 20, 2017

Abstract

 The report will be comparing the management information system (MIS) for two different organizations. The report will also mention how the information system helps them to make decisions and manage operations. Then the report will also talk about how the organizations use information systems to their competitive advantage in the market, possible security breaches and consequences of using such technology.

         Today, many organizations use MIS such as transpacific software (TS) and Amazon.com. These companies use comparative MIS to achieve their objectives in the market. IS helps them to make better use of resources at their disposal. MIS helps managers in these organizations to understand what is taking place in the departments they lead.  This company uses Management Information Systems to report about production, sales and revenues collected thus the company can keep track of what is taking place.  These reports are produced at fixed intervals or on request to enable the company keeps track of its performance.

        TPS and Amazon use different MIS to help them make decisions and manage their internal operations by improving its techniques of marketing and contributing to making efficient their distribution channels.  These allow them to be competitive in line with the increasing use of technology in the retail industry that is posing stiff competition.  Manager's use Management Information Systems to gather and scrutinize different aspects of the company.

         TPS has much experience in maintaining and building commerce portals for consumer goods like the color store, jewelry, and diamond products.  On the other hand, Amazon uses management information systems to offer the personalized shopping experience for every customer by incorporating the one-click shopping and other community features like wish list and list mania which helps customers to identify and discover new products and thus allow them to form informed purchasing decisions.  Amazon uses S3 - Simple storage service and their Website names are Amazon Web Service.  It allows Amazon to even advertise products for other companies on their web site (Lee, 2009).

        In a retail business, competitive advantage means that have something cheaper or of high value than the competitors.  Firms try and strive to achieve this competitive edge by being cost leaders in the market and offering the best quality goods.  TPS and Amazon have used MIS to be cost leaders.  Cost leadership is a situation where the business changes their mode of working.  TPS has managed this by selling many their goods online despite having some physical shops. They decided to do this because most people want to purchase products from the comfort of their homes and thus online selling allows delivery to the customers.  Amazon has managed to be a cost leader by the way they d3liver goods to the customers.  For instance, if a client buys a prime membership and the products purchased to qualify for it the goods will be delivered within two days no matter what.  That gives customers satisfaction and thus makes the online company a customer's choice.

          Information technology also plays a vital role when they want to expand their business. The business can be run more efficiently with the use of MIS and expansion can be achieved quickly.  The companies use website tracking so that information collected in an extensive database where they will be reminding the customer to go and buy a given product again they do this by sending emails and ads so that the client remember their products.   Then this is likely to create regular customers leading to more revenue and thus the growth of the company (Gupta 2011).

         Computer crimes are increasingly becoming the number one crime around the globe. Just the UK alone has more than 32 billion dollars of damage annually in cyber-crime (CCRC, 2006). Cybercrimes entail more than just stealing someone's identity.  Cyber-fraud comprises of hacking, phishing, viruses, identity theft and much more.  All of which usually end up the same for the user loss of time and other resources. So where does data fall in the realm of Cybercrime?  Well, cyber-fraud exists due to information technology, but technology has done more good than harm.  Let us look at target they have dealt with many security breaches where hackers stole all of the customer's credit card information and mailing address and use them to purchase things.  So what has target done to change this?  Target has overhauled their security program, using encrypted software that sometimes can make it buy things on their website a little annoying but well worth it to not have identity fraud.  Amazon being just an online retailer was slightly more ready for the cyber-attacks since they knew the potential of what was happening. Many of the stores make customers not only have just a username and password but also to have security questions that the customers have to answer.  Amazon went through an entire security overhaul in 2000 and spent 200 million dollars making sure everyone is more secure online (Imran, 2014).  Amazon and Target both have outside sources that do internal auditing to make their online stores more secure.