Information Systems Report
Part B
Animal Adventures 2013 Semester 1
Authors
Wenting Duan
Abdulrahman Allhuidan
Jiasheng GUO
Ying Chen
Yuying Zhen
STUDENT ID: 1309148
STUDENT ID: 1406941
STUDENT ID: 1338076
STUDENT ID: 1396029
STUDENT ID: 1360184
Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 3
Problems in current system................................................................................................... 3
Enterprise Systems ................................................................................................................... 4
e Commerce ................................................................................................................................. 4
Decision Support System ........................................................................................................ 6
Emerging Technologies ........................................................................................................... 7
Our recommendations ............................................................................................................. 9
Reference ................................................................................................................................... 10
2
Introduction
The management department of Animal Adventures is considering expanding the
company by moving into the Australian market. The company needs not only a new
database system, but also needs to strengthen the information systems. Our group is
going to analysis the data that we collected from the interview of different
departments of Animal Adventures and figure out the system issues in the current
situation. We will focus on the Enterprise Systems, e Commerce, Decision Support
Systems and Emerging Technologies aspects of the Animal Adventures information
systems. We will recommend our solutions for the system as well in the following
parts of the report.
Problems in current system
Sales Rep

Short of sales reps to keep up with customer demand

No adventures information, no trip advice and no product selling systems
online

Sales stuck in answering the phones for customer order could involve losing
customers
Marketing Manager

Not easy to access sales and budget data for informed decision making
General Manager

Not easy to access the information from all stores

Facing competitions
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Enterprise Systems
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems is the type of enterprise systems and
there are a large number of ERP systems available. The features of an ERP system
are that it provides real time access to data from across the organization to those
who need it. SAP is the high-end example of ERP system and it aimed to large
organizations. As in this case, the marketing manager can’t easily get access to sales
figures and budget data to make informed decisions. We will recommend that SAP
Business One, an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for Animal
Adventures and it is software. According to SAP Business One (2013),” This software
assists companies by providing support for sales, customer relationships, inventory,
operations, financial and human resources.” It is good for manager to access to all
corporate information, sales figures and budget data.
Secondly, SAP Business One can help manager better manage every aspect of Animal
Adventures, such as sales and customer relationships to financial and operations.
This software can increase employees work efficiency because manager can get all
sorts of important data from other department to more effectively manage the
business. By using SAP Business One, Animal Adventures can maintain a competitive
advantage in their industry because manager can access all sales and budgeting data
from all stores in a fast way. Except SAP Business One, manager can choose
Microsoft Dynamics AX, which is part of the Microsoft Dynamics family for Animal
Adventures. Microsoft Dynamics AX is a business solution and it function are
financial and human resources management. By using Microsoft Dynamics AX,
manager can get right information follow-up processes and sales activities.
e Commerce
There are two problems hindered the development of Animal Adventures. First, Web
traffic is not enough to provide trip advice. Leading to the company only rely on sales
reps to sale their services, customs have not any other way to get information and
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advises. Customer loss may happen by lacking of sale reps to keep up with the
customer demand. Second, using phone is the only way to order. Which means that
most of sales reps are stuck working in the office answering the phones instead of
out finding new customers.
There are some solutions that I suggest to use in Animal Adventures. First of all, to
buy a new plan getting more Web traffic, and unlimited broadband is more suitable
for a whole company. Which sale reps could work with the website, to post
company’s information and give trip advices online. More information can be found
on company’s website by customers themselves, that less sale reps are required.
Sales reps can keep up with customer demand through this way.
Second, using e Commerce to market. Animal Adventures belongs to Bricks and
Clicks business model. Which means this business have both a physical presence and
a website. Animal Adventures can use search engines, to add a free site, like making
a site in Google. Having a high Google ranking is an important thing for a business
with a web presence. And also using click through ads, viral marketing and social are
other marketing method as well. Animal Adventure can via those marketing method
to do advertising, and to attract more customers. The number of customers will be
increased by more information of Animal Adventures are available online.
Third, using eCommerce payment to allow paying online. Creative a website to allow
customers pay online instead of paying via call, such as PayPal. But at the same time,
Animal Adventures should install an antivirus software program on their company
system, such as Norton, to avoid customers details are stolen. Moreover, Animal
Adventures can adopt mobile payment method for customers to pay. Both ways can
reduce the number of sale reps to answering phone, and more sale reps can apply
themselves to finding more customers.
5
Decision Support System
Decision Support Systems (DSS) is designed to provide assistance in determining
and evaluating alternative courses of action and acquiring data from the bulk of
routine transactions of a firm to extract meaningful information. (Bis, 2013)
The Decision Support System will benefit both the sales rep and marketing manager
to effectively analyse their customers’ needs monitoring their supplier to meet the
changing needs of the business clients.

The Marketing is currently experiencing difficulty in making informed
decisions because of restricted access to sales figures and budget
data. Decision Support System will help the Increase decision maker
satisfaction of the marketing manager. DSS may reduce frustrations of
decision makers; help influence the decision makers of Animal Adventures of
being satisfied with their decisions. (Bis, 2013)

Cost saving from labor savings in making decisions and from lower
infrastructure or technology costs since Animal Adventures will be moving to
Australia where their currency rate is higher than New Zealand. This will help
reduce the burden of increased overhead costs.

Helps save time. This can be an advantage as it may help the Animal
Adventures be productive in other departments of their business to
contribute to the growth in the Australian market

Also the General Manager was weary of a new competitor that had emerged
in Australia and was providing similar services to Animal Adventures. DSS
will benefit Animal Adventures as it will provide a competitive advantage in
such a way to improve their customers service and aware of the market
conditions in Australia e.g. inflation, interest rates
We recommend the Animal Adventures to use an Intelligent Agent such as Shopping
Agent. Price-spy is a website (www.pricespy.co.nz) where it provides prices of a lot
of products. The Price -spy mobile apps are available with iPhone and Android
Smartphone’s. These mobile apps enable people to search for product names, check
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product details, and find nearby stores which selling the products. These kinds of
Sopping Agent could help Animal Adventures customer decision-making process
easier and attract more customers to get interested in their products. In addition, in
the current situation of Animal Adventures, they could use a support page on its
company website as their expert system. For example, Animal Adventures could
answer the commonly asked questions on the customer support page with out
asking the sale reps via phones. These questions can answer from the expert system
to help customers to make their decisions.
Emerging Technologies
Development of technologies has been considered as a challenge for businesses
around the globe in the past several decades. According to (“Top Ten Problems faced
by Business,” n.d.) technology is considered as the top fifth problem that
organisations face today. Emerging technologies are an innovative technology that
could alter the nature of organisations and social environment. Moreover, these
involve the improving ones or will be enhanced in the next 5 years or a decade such
as information technology and biotechnology.
Improving the Animal Adventure Company emerging technologies aspects is an
opportunity of gaining competitive advantages for our company in the current New
Zealand and Australian market. The growing customer demand of our products
encourages us to implement new tools to our business so we can satisfy our
customers. What is more, the Australian market is more competitive than the
current one and the fast changing technology improvement force us to think smarter.
Therefore, a long-term technology strategy should be made. Furthermore, up to date
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emerging technologies that would give us competitive advantages and increase our
market share is recommended below.

Developing a smartphone application that provides information for our
customers about our company and allows them to buy our products by a
credit card could solve the sales reps issue.

Improving the company’s website to a satisfying stranded that include a
buying options for our products such as with a credit card and PayPal.
Furthermore, all the essential information for our products should be
updated regularly such as special deals to help us save time for our company
employees and customers. By implementing this change we can increase our
sales capacity. For instance, if the company can sale 20 deals in an hour by
the phone serve we would be able to increase this capacity.

The previous step should be supported with the step because it will solve the
company website small amount of traffic issue. Creating accounts for our
company in the social networking websites which are Facebook, Twitter and
Instagrams could help us to link people to our business, keep them updated
and increase their awareness about the changes in the company’s website.

Internet telephone and smart phones applications can be used to help us
advance our current system. For example, Viber and Skype are the most
increasing apps in the Internet telephony market. Thus, the company must
catch up with this technology to increase our uniqueness in the marketplace
and allow our customers to contact us by these programs.

All of our sales reps should be given a Tablet computer that is an Ipad 4 with
4g. This tablet computer has an access to the Internet by a SIM card so our
sales reps can have three Advantages. Firstly, information on demand for our
employees will become much easier than before because they have an access
enormous quantity of information at their fingertips. Secondly, sales
employees’ productivity will be enhanced because it will make it easier for
sales employees to find track and manipulate information. Finally, The
capability to impress customers with a high quality presentation and it will
also make them equipped for meetings.
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Our recommendations
Firstly, we recommend using SAP Business One and Dynamic Ax to help the manager
access to all the useful data easily and improve management efficiency. Secondly, in
e Commerce aspect, we recommend
Animal Adventures to develop an unlimited
broadband website to help sales reps to work flexibly and to crate company website
with online payment system. In addition, the company needs to install an antivirus
software program to protect customer personal details and online payment
environment. Moreover, in decision support system we recommend to use a
shopping agent and expert system to support customer decision-making. At last, we
recommend developing a smart phone application, which includes all the products
informational, and with payment function to solve the sales reps issue in emerging
technologies aspect. In addition, Animal Adventure should crate a Facebook account
and keep update the product information and promotion news there. Moreover, we
recommend using smartphone Skype and Viber to communicate with customers and
providing Animal Adventure’s sales reps Ipad 4 with 4g to enhance employee’s
productivity.
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Reference
SAP Business One. (10, June 2013 ). Retrieved from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_Business_One
At
Home
(n.d.).
Retrieved
from
http://compass.rtrk.com.au/?scid=164843&kw=1009081:161498&pub_cr_id=
20264117696
Norton
(n.d.).
Retrieved
from
http://us.norton.com/now/en/pu/images/Promotions/2013/20596/ch0.htm
l?s_tnt=58027:44:0
Business Dictionary(nd). Retrieved from:
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/decision-support-system-DSS.html
Bis(January 23, 2013).Decision Support System[Weblog post]. Retrieved from:
http://dsssystem.blogspot.co.nz/2010/01/advantages-of-decision-supportsystem.html
Targit (nd). Retrieved from:
http://www.targit.com/en/LandingPages/DecisionSupportSystem/DSS
Decision Support System: Chapter 2(nd). Retrieved from:
http://samik.freeshell.org/edu/iit/hll/thesis/chapter2.html
Top
Ten
problems
Faced
by
Business.
(n.d.).
Retrieved
from
http://www.bmgi.com/problem-solving/articles/top-ten-problems-faced-business
10
Top
ten
problems
Faced
by
Business.
(n.d.).
Retrieved
from
http://www.bmgi.com/problem-solving/articles/top-ten-problems-facedbusiness
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