hi everyone,

I knew this site is for learning so could you help me please. My teacher is so mean. he give us a horrible task to do without explaining it and we should do it by our self and whole class can't understand this ask and no one can do it. se please can you help us to do it by explaining it to us please. please we need it ergently because we should submit it during this week.

regards,

Silver Coin

this is the TASK:







Sahi Yogurt Company is a market leader in the expanding UAE market for yogurt and related health products. Sahi is now experiencing some issues with its Management Information Systems and has commission you as a consultant to advice it. The growing interest in low-fat, low-cholesterol health foods, tripled Sahi's sales over the past five years. At the same time, however, new Saudi competitors, offering fast delivery from Abu Dhabi production centers and lower prices, are challenging Sahi for retail shelf space with a range of new products. Without shelf space, products cannot be retailed in the UAE, and new products are needed to expand shelf space. Sahi needs to justify its share of shelf space to grocers and is seeking additional shelf space for its new yogurt-based products such as frozen desserts and low-fat salad dressings. Sahi's biggest challenge, however, has not been competitors, but the sweep of the second hand. Yogurt is a very short shelf-life commodity. With a shelf life measured in days, yogurt must be moved very quickly.
[FONT='Times New Roman','serif']Sahi maintains its corporate headquarters in Dubai. Corporate headquarters has a central mainframe computer that maintains most of the major business databases. All production takes place in local processing plants, which are located in Al Ain, Sharja and Ras Al Kaima. Each processing plant has its own minicomputer, which is connected to the corporate mainframe. Customer credit verification is maintained at the central corporate site where customer master files are maintained and order verification or rejection is determined. Once processed centrally, order data are then fed to the appropriate local processing plant minicomputer.Sahi has 8 sales regions, one for each Emirate, and one for Muscat in Oman. Each region has approximately 30 expatriate sales representatives and an Emirati regional sales manageress. Sahi has a 12-person marketing group in corporate headquarters and a corporate director of sales and marketing, Ms Fatima al Khwanajee. Each salesperson is able to store and retrieve data for assigned customer accounts using a terminal in each regional office linked to the corporate mainframe. Reports for individual salespeople (printouts of orders, rejection notices, and customer account inquiries) and for sales offices are printed in the regional offices and mailed to them.
Sometimes the only way to obtain up-to-date sales data is for manageresses to make telephone calls to subordinates and then piece the information together. Data about sales and advertising expenses and customer shelf space devoted to Sahi products is maintained manually at the regional offices. Each regional office maintains its own manual records of customer shelf space and promotional campaigns. The central computer only contains consolidated, companywide files for customer account data and order and billing data. The existing order processing system requires sales representatives to write up hard copy tickets to place orders through the mail. Approximately 100 workers at Sahi corporate headquarters open, sort, keypunch, and process 100,000 order tickets per week. This order information is transmitted each evening from the mainframe to a minicomputer at each of Sahi's processing sites. This daily order specifies the total yogurt and yogurt product demand for each processing center. Each processing center then produces the amount and type of yogurt and yogurt-related products ordered and then ship the orders out. Shipping managers at the processing centers assign the shipments to various transportation carriers. Rapid growth, fueled by Sahi's "health" image and by branching into new yogurt-based products, has put pressures on Sahi's existing information systems. By mid-2002, growth in new products and sales had reached a point where Sahi was printing new tickets for the sales force every week. The firm was choking on paper. For each order, a salesperson filled out at least two forms per account. Some sales representatives have more than 80 customers.
As it became bogged down in paper, Sahi saw increased delays in the processing of its orders. Since yogurt is a fresh food product, it could not be held long in inventory. Yet Sahi had trouble shipping the right goods to the right places in time. It was taking between four days and two weeks to process and ship out an order, Dubai Women’s College BADM 340 Nov 2006 2 depending on mail delivery rates. Sahi also found accounting discrepancies of $1.5 million annually between the sales force and headquarters. Communication between sales managers and the sales representatives has been primarily through the mail or by telephone. For example, regional sales managers have to send representatives letters with announcements of promotional campaigns or pricing discounts. Sales representatives have to write up their monthly reports of sales calls and then mail this information to regional headquarters.Sahi is considering new information system solutions. First of all, the firm would like a system that expedites order processing. Management would also like to make better use of information systems to support sales and marketing activities and to take advantage of leading-edge information technology.
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1. What are the problems faced by the company with its current information systems?

2. Explain the flow of sales information between the various departments in a company such as Sahi Yogurt Company.

3. Assume you are advising the sales manageress, Ms Fatima, what information reports would you like to see for the purposes of planning, controlling and decision-making?

4. How can Sahi Yogurt Company achieve a strategic advantage by investing in new information systems solutions? Explain clearly by relating one or more strategies that you have studied.

This seems quite straight forward. They are asking you to evaluate the current processes (which have been well defined) then comment on the problems as you see them and suggest a solution. Making yourself aware of present technologies, whether internet links to data bases, or telephone based processing systems, you could certainly find ways to reduce or eliminate paperwork, discontinue duplication of ordering systems, and free up time for representatives so that they could cover a larger customer base. Installing a real time ordering system could be be linked to a real time processing system and the order would be shipped within 24 hours if not the same day.

Good luck with your studies.

he said you shoul do it under Management Information Systems (MIS). So, do anyone know how to do it, please.

The questions mention advising the sales manageress - but really, the whole company needs overhauling, modernising, and re-strategising - an issue for the CEO, It all needs a top-down shake-up, IMO.