Implementation Of ERP And Strategic Information System For Commonwealth Bank Of Australia

Strategic Information System

Discuss about the Strategic Information System: Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

Strategic information system or SIS is certain information system, which is eventually developed for responding to the several business initiatives. Each and every business initiative within an organization or company is extremely important and significant for attaining success within the business (Chofreh et al. 2014). Moreover, the organizational objectives and goals are achieved with the help of this strategic information system. It is specified for providing various competitive advantages within the particular company and hence making their business extremely popular and important for everyone. The strategic information system is responsible for delivering all types of products and services for everyone in extremely low price. This particular system mainly focuses on any particular segment of market. The next important benefit of the strategic information system includes helping of organization in becoming innovative by means of providing innovation and perfection to the business processes and operations. SIS or strategic information system is considered as the most significant characteristic or feature in the domain of IT or information technology. The complete categorization, storing, processing as well as transferring of any data or information could be easily done by strategic information system or SIS (Galliers and Leidner 2014). Enterprise resource planning system or ERP system is one of the most efficient and effective methodology that helps in proper integration of every business process or operation of the specific company. Thus, this enterprise resource planning is the particular integrated management of the various important business operations, which are being mediated with the software.

This report explains about the implementation of enterprise resource planning and strategic information system for the most popular banking sector within Australia namely, Commonwealth Bank of Australia or CBA. This report will be outlining the various relevant details related to the selection of the software of ERP. This would help them in executing their business processes successfully and properly. The report would be focusing on the significant research on the various details of ERP.

The business process could be easily defined as the significant set of several inter connected tasks, which search for the end in the delivering all the important and significant products and services to their customers or clients (Amrollahi, Ghapanchi and Talaei-Khoei 2013). This business process is also stated as the significant collection of the various activities and tasks, which will be extremely helpful to any company in achieving their goals as well as objectives as soon as being completed. Each and every business process is inter related within one another and each of them comprises of the similar goals in making their businesses successful and unique in the domain. A proper sequence is being followed when the business activities and processes are executed. All the business processes or operations are frequently displayed through a typical flowchart to show the activity sequence present in it. One of the most significant benefits in using the business process is that the customers or clients are extremely satisfied with the business (Dey, Clegg and Cheffi 2013). Furthermore, the proper agility in reacting over various alterations or changes within the existing market is also improvised.

Enterprise Resource Planning System

Three distinct kinds of business operations are present. These are operational processes, management processes and supporting processes. The operational process helps in defining the major process and creating a preliminary value stream such as manufacturing or taking of an order (Ram, Corkindale and Wu 2013). The management process is responsible for overseeing the operational process by simply including employee oversight, budgetary oversight and corporate governance. The supporting process is responsible to support every operational process.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia eventually contains several significant and important business operations within the banking systems (Sustainment 2014). The most vital business processes of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia are provided below:

1. Lending Loans for Personal Cause: the first and the foremost business process is lending loans for personal causes to the customers.
2. Lending Loans for Business Purpose: the second business process of Commonwealth Bank of Australia is lending loans for business purposes to the customers.
3. Lending Loans for Security Purpose: The next business process of CBA is lending loans for security purpose to the customers (Chiu et al., 2014).
4. Processing of Cheques: The cheques are processed properly and hence it is one of the most important business operations of the bank.
5. Customer Accounting: They even check for customers’ accounting.
6. Payments Processing: The payments are properly processed, being another important business process of the bank.
7. Handling of Cash: CBA also handles cash and thus it is the most important business process of them (Dey, Clegg and Cheffi 2013).
8. Maintenance of Accounts: The final business process of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia is the proper maintenance of the accounts of all the customers.

All the requirements of the business could be easily defined as the several specifications, which when delivered provide value to describe all the features of their system from the viewpoints of systems. This requirement of business is even termed as the stakeholder requirements specification or simply StRS (Ram, Corkindale and Wu 2013). The several products, systems, software and processes are the significant methodologies, which could be helpful in determining in the process to deliver, satisfy and even meet each and every business requirement. All these requirement types are then referred to as or used to properly develop as well as procure the other systems and software.

Three important reasons are present to acquire all the business requirements. These are the understanding each and every business requirement, meeting the output criteria of business and finally fulfilling the demands of stakeholders and customers (Antero 2015). All the requirements of the business must be of higher level to provide the higher quality services and products. When the requirements of business are of lower level, there is a high chance that the services and products would fail drastically.

Several business requirements are present within the business of Commonwealth Bank of Australia. These business requirements of Commonwealth Bank of Australia are provided below:

1. i) Better Personal Credit: the first and the foremost requirement for the business of Commonwealth Bank of Australia is the better personal credit. This type of credit is easily evaluated over the loan application for their business. The most significant face of the business is over their normal market (Van Der Aalst, La Rosa and Santoro 2016). All the characters as well as records for paying the debts of their parent bank are the major reflection over the business. As, this personal credit is much better than any other bank in Australia, Commonwealth Bank of Australia is considered to be the most efficient and effective bank amongst all others.
2. ii) Better Business Credit: The second important business requirement of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia is the good credit of their business. When the organization started their operation, their business would be having a valid credit score, which is solely linked to the legally incorporated tax ID number and name annually (Becker, Kugeler and Rosemann 2013). This report of credit depicts every debt as well as obligation, which are eventually linked to the bank and even depicts every record of their payments. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia subsequently needs a good credit to consider a better loan for their business.
3. iii) Large Assets Base: The third important business requirement of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia is the large base of assets. All the business loans have become properly secured against the specified assets (Hoch and Dulebohn 2013). The bank has put all the assets for bringing the better position in the business by simply taking loan from their parent bank. It has been extremely helpful for them to acquire all the business operations significantly
4. iv) Solid Business Planning: The next significant requirement of business within the Commonwealth Bank of Australia is their solid and proper business planning. This type of business plan reflects each and every calculated profit for the business, which is supposed to occur in the coming few years (Rosemann and vom Brocke 2015). This specific kind of plan is helpful in obtaining all the finances of this particular organization eventually and hence providing an expected return on investment rate for their capital. When this business expands, their business plan need to alter or change periodically.

System requirements refer to the various systems that needed for the proper execution of business processes. The popular Australian bank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia do require some of the major system requirements in their business (Laudon and Laudon 2016). Every software program needs typical elements of the hardware or any important resource of the software to be present within their computer system. Each and every prerequisite is termed as the computer requirements or systems for this specific business. All these requirements are eventually used as proper guidelines and thus are opposed to every basic rule (Seo 2013). Two significant types of requirements of systems are present. These are the recommended and minimum sets. There is a high power for processing of the resources within the most advanced versions of software. The system requirements tend to increase over timely manner. The other significant definition for the requirements of systems could be that it is responsible for providing every requirement, which is to be completed in designing a specific system or a sub system (Zeng and Skibniewski 2013). The system requirements are the most important requirements for their business processes and operations.

Business Processes in Commonwealth Bank of Australia

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia would be dealing with their customers as well as the money and thus all the requirements of systems are extremely vital to make the processes work properly. The various systems requirements of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia are given below:    i) Requirements of Hardware: The most important requirements of hardware are termed as the hardware compatibility list or HCL (Bijan et al. 2013). All these hardware requirements are required to make these operating systems working for this bank. The various important hardware requirements of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia are as follows:

a) Architecture: All the computer operating systems are properly designed to the particular computer architectures. All of the software applications are limited to the typical operating systems, which would be running on all the architectures of computer. When the computer architecture is absent, the operating system is not working.
b) Processing Power: The CPU or central processing unit must comprise of the most basic processing power to make their systems work over it (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta 2016). Furthermore, the speed of clock of this CPU even defines the power of processing.
c) Memory: The next hardware requirement of Commonwealth Bank of Australia is RAM or random access memory. It is responsible for storing the confidential data or information.
d) Requirements of Software: The second type of systems requirements is the requirement of software. It can be defined as the various prerequisites, which are installed within the system to provide perfect functionalities to this system (Laplante 2017). It is responsible for providing several functions for the system. The several software requirements of this particular bank are provided below:
e) Platform: The most important software requirement is platform. It is responsible for providing a specific software framework to the bank.
f) Web Browser: The web applications and the software that is dependent on the technology of Internet (Leon 2014). The default browser is utilized in this case.

ERP or enterprise resource planning software would be the best selected software for this particular organization of Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The bets vendor for this organization would be SAP or Systems, Applications and Processing (Cao, Nicolaou and Bhattacharya 2013). SAP is considered as one of the best vendors for enterprise resource planning and also for the various important applications of this company. The ERP system of this bank subsequently would be allowing all of them in running the various business operations such as accounting, finance, sales, human resources and production within the specific integrated environment. The integration is required to make a steady information flow from any one component of SAP ERP to the next (Leon 2014). The redundant data entry is not needed here and hence the legal, controls of processing and financial data are enforced properly. The other significant benefits of the SAP ERP software for the particular organization of Commonwealth Bank of Australia mainly involves proper use of resources such as production capacity, capacity of manpower as well as various machines.

Systems Requirements

There are several important benefits and advantages of the SAP ERP software for the organization of Commonwealth Bank of Australia. They are provided below:

i) High Competition: the first and the foremost benefit of the SAP ERP software is higher competition (Kasemsap 2015). This competition would be enhanced by SAP and various competitive advantages would be obtained by them.
ii) Higher Efficiency: The second important benefit of the software of SAP for CBA is to provide high efficiency to the business operations or processes. Streamlining of processes is yet another benefit.

iii) Better Collaboration: Another important advantage of the SAP software for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia is the better collaboration of every department (Shaul and Tauber 2013). The centralization of data is done with the software properly.

iv) Cost Effective: The fourth important advantage of the SAP ERP software for the organization of Commonwealth Bank of Australia is that it is extremely cost effective in nature. Hence could be afforded by all.
v) Scalability as well as Flexibility: SAP ERP software is extremely scalable and flexible in nature and thus is extremely popular and famous for every business (Laudon and Laudon 2016).
vi) Information Integration: The sixth important advantage of this particular software is the proper information integration. The information is properly integrated and hence customer relationship management is enhanced properly.

vii) Streamlining of Processes: All the processes of the business are properly streamlined with the help of this SAP ERP software (Galliers and Leidner 2014).

Hence SAP ERP vendor would be the best and the most suitable for the organization of Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

There are three specific ways to use the SAP technology within the Commonwealth Bank of Australia to improve the business efficiencies. These are provided below:

1. i) Incrementing the Productivity: The productivity is eventually improved in the implementation of SAP ERP software within the business of Commonwealth Bank of Australia (Chiu et al. 2014). This is the most important way in using the SAP software. The various functionalities of this bank such as finance, sales, human resources and purchasing and many others are integrated into one function. The complexities are reduced properly.
2. ii) Improvement of Efficiency: The efficiency of the business of Commonwealth Bank of Australia is properly improved by the implementation of SAP ERP software. The overall business efficiency is improved (Matende and Ogao 2013). The business data is properly stored with this software and hence reducing the complexity of the maintenance of data manually.
3. iii) Improvement of Decision Making: The process of decision making is also improved with the software of SAP ERP within their business.

The implementation of the SAP software in the business of Commonwealth Bank of Australia would eventually improvise the efficiency level of the business. The efficiency level could be evaluated (Shen, Chen and Wang 2016). The proper evaluation of the bank efficiency level is given below:

1. i) Customer Satisfaction: The first and the foremost measurement is through customer satisfaction. Since, SAP would streamline the business processes, the management would be easier and thus customers would be satisfied.
2. ii) Good Control on Business: The business could be controlled in a better way and hence it would be benefitted from SAP software (Hoch and Dulebohn 2013).
3. iii) Increased Profits: The third significant factor is that the profits are eventually increased in the process by SAP implementation and thus Commonwealth Bank of Australia is solely benefitted.

The organization of Commonwealth Bank of Australia has faced several significant security risks and breaches within their business and information systems. This would have been the most dangerous risks or threats for the bank (Meyer et al. 2013). The several security threats and risks within the business of Commonwealth Bank of Australia are provided below:

i) Distributed Denial of Service Attacks: The first and the foremost security risk in the business or information system of Commonwealth Bank of Australia is the distributed denial of service attack or DDoS attack. It is considered as the most significant security risk or threat (Bijan et al. 2013). Here the attacker gets into the system and makes it eventually unavailable for any authorized user. The users are unaware of the attack and do not get the data access even being authorized. The network resources are blocked and all the services are eventually disrupted.
ii) Phishing: It is another important security threat that attempts to get access of the various significant data or information such as usernames or passwords or the credentials of bank account and credit cards (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta 2016). This particular type of security risk mainly occurs while the perpetrator disguises himself as a trustworthy entity.
iii) Trojan Horses: The third important security risk is Trojan horses. It is the type of malicious program of a computer, which significantly misleads every authorized user. Trojan horse is spread by social engineering such as tricking any user like clicking on the malicious electronic mails.

iv) Insider Attacks: a person, who attempts to steal or breach the data of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, is claimed as the insider attacker (Meyer et al. 2013). This is extremely dangerous for any bank or banking system.
v) Wrong Segregation of Duties: All the duties or responsibilities should be divided accurately and if this is not properly, issues can arise.
vi) Misalignment of Application Controls: All the application controls of Commonwealth Bank of Australia help in controlling the various applications of the system (Nofal and Yusof 2013).
vii) Insufficient Process of Vendor Management: The other significant issue within the Commonwealth Bank of Australia is the insufficient process of vendor management. This should be resolved properly for avoiding accurateness.viii) Security Vulnerabilities to Infrastructure: the infrastructure security vulnerability is another important security risk and should be properly maintained (Rosemann and vom Brocke 2015).

The SAP vendor of the software of enterprise resource planning is perfect for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The major guidelines to mitigate all the security risks and data breaches are provided below:

1. i) Aligning Application Controls: The application controls is aligned properly with SAP for mitigating the various risks (Nofal and Yusof 2013).
2. ii) In-Built Cyber Security: There is an in built cyber security system within the SAP software and thus it would be extremely important for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. All the security risks and threats are easily resolved with this software.
3. iii) Solving Insider Attacks: The software of SAP also solves the insider attacks and thus the responsibilities of the employees could be segregated with this ERP vendor (Ha and Ahn 2014).
4. iv) Management of Infrastructure: The bank infrastructure is properly secured with the software of SAP and hence Commonwealth Bank of Australia should implement SAP vendor.

Conclusion

Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that, strategic information system or simply SIS is the proper collection of several guidelines or rules, which could be used by every company or organization in setting their respective plans or strategies according to those principles that are already existing. One of the most important or vital goal for proper incorporation of the kind of strategic information system or SIS is that this particular system could be easily used to properly enable the company in assessing any change or alteration within the environment and hence using the change as the benefit or advantage for the company. Generally, the strategic information system can be further sub divided within three important sub divisions. These sub divisions are strategic division, operational division and financial division. This is completely dependent on the business type that whether strategic information system should be incorporated or not. One of the most important advantages of the strategic information system or SIS is that the entire procedure of decision making is much easier with this system. When the strategic information system is eventually integrated with all the support systems, the various business goals and business objectives are properly streamlined and this information system is properly aligned with each and every strategy. Apart from this, the SIS or the strategic information system is also responsible to provide various solutions to each and every short term and long term business goals. The latest information is eventually dug out with the strategic information system. Enterprise resource planning is the significant business management software, providing proper integration to each and every application type. All these types of applications could be easily collected, managed, interpreted, stored and manipulated by the specific enterprise resource planning software. The area of the case study, which is being chosen in the typical report, is for the popular bank in Australia, namely Commonwealth Bank of Australia. This report has clearly mentioned every requirement for the implementation of enterprise resource planning software within the business of this organization. Significant details are provided.

ERP Software Selection for Commonwealth Bank of Australia

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