Management Information System Essay

Maxis Berhad is a leading telecommunication company in Malaysia with more than 11.4 million mobile subscribers, Maxis has been providing a full suite of services on multiple platforms to fulfill the telecommunication needs of individual consumers, SMEs and large corporations in Malaysia. Other than that, Maxis Berhad is offering on postpaid services under the Maxis brand and via prepaid formast under the Hotlink. It uses the dialling prefix identifier of â€Å"012†, â€Å"014† and â€Å"017†. The uses of different brands are to support each other by synergy value. It helps Maxis Berhad to maintain and develop prepaid businesses while keep on maintaining their growth in postpaid field. Maxis Berhad is the first telecommunication company who build up integrated communication service and launched 4G LTE which is the highest internet speed in Malaysia. Besides that, Maxis Berhad is a trendy company that brings in iPhone, BlackBerry and Samsung Galaxy to the local mar ket compare to the other telecommunication companies, it helps local users to catch up their technology knowledge with other countries. In addition, Maxis Berhad is having customer service center throughout the countries, which provides conveniences to the customers for paying bills, signing up, and reporting problems. Customers are now able to reach Maxis service representatives via telephone, web and social media platforms. Maxis Berhad had significant growth and strong track record of bringing innovation and excellent customer service. Maxis Call Centre was awarded the ‘Best of the Best’ honor at the 2012 Customer Relationship Management and Contact Centre (CCAM) Annual Awards. They are the only service provider that awards scholarships to children of their own postpaid customers. Maxis Berhad had awarded as Malaysia’s Top Ten Companies: Ranked 1 – Asia’s 200 Most Admired Companies, The Wall Street Journal Asia in 2006. Morten Lundal was appointed as a Director of Maxis on 1 October 2013. Maxis Berhad currently is streamlining its organisational structure into four business areas, each with its respective head in order to strengthen their core business areas for future growth. The first area, enterprise solutions, it manages the company’s enterprise, government and SME business. For the second area is about consumer business. It is responsible for the end-to-end management of all mobile and fixed business for the consumer segment. Sales and service, the third area, focuses on customer service and channel and  supply chain management while the fourth, digital services, oversees the development of Maxis’ innovative digital media and cloud-based services including mobile apps. The four business areas will be supported in their day-to-day operations by the information services, network, finance, human resources, corporate affairs, regulatory & government affairs and legal divisions. In telecommunication industry, there are many companies to choose with, but finally our group end up with Maxis Berhad because we found that it is perform better when compared to its competitors. The primary reason that we choose Maxis Berhad as our company is due to Maxis Berhad has maintained their leadership among the telecommunication companies. They have approximately 13 million of customer during the year end 2013. They were also the first company that launched 4G LTE which is the highest internet speed in Malaysia. They always seek for new ideas and innovations by putting a lot of effort and capital on the R&D investment. Next, Maxis Berhad has achieves many awards and recognitions throughout its operations period. There are two awards we have to emphasize here due to these achievements have truly lead them to be more well known. Maxis Berhad has won the prestigious 2011 Global Telecoms Business Innovation Award for the Missed SMS Notification service in the Wireless Network Infrastructure Innovation, SMS network innovation category. Maxis is the first in the world to provide this service in partnership with Acision. Besides, Maxis Berhad has received the award, â€Å"Asia’s Best Employer Brand Award at the second Asia’s Best Employer Brand Awards year 2011† which was hosted by the Employer Branding Institute of Singapore. It succeeds in creating a culture of contribution and innovation at work and its belief in consistent improvements in Human Resources policies. Maxis was also recognised for its role in developing future leader. Part 2: Types of e-commerce used Electric commerce is commonly known as e-commerce, and it is defined as the exchange of goods, services, and money through electronic mediation using Internet technology. There are seven types of e-commerce we learnt, which are business to consumer (B2C), business to business (B2B), consumer to consumer (C2C), consumer to business (C2B), government to business (G2B), government to government (G2G), and government to consumer (G2C). First and foremost, one of the types of e-commerce used by the Maxis Berhad is the business to consumer (B2C) e-commerce. Based on the research made, there is a 80% of the internet user has looked for the goods and services to purchase in the internet, however, only 30% of them has really purchased the goods the services online as they may worry about the security system of the online payment. This trend has been observed by the Maxis Berhad and thus, the company has made a strategic decision to have collaboration with the PayPal, a popular online payment platform, to ensure that their consumers (customers) can easily and safely shop online. This will provide the convenience to their customers as the collaboration between the Maxis Berhad and the Paypal will simplify the process of the online shopping today which require the customers to repeatedly fill in payment card and contact details for each transaction or merchant. The customers can enjoy the speed of the online payment with the Maxis-PayPal account. They just need to log in with their Maxis PayPal credentials as well as their phone number to make the payment and the payment option is available online and in all major smartphone platforms, such as iPhone, Android and Blueberry. The most important thing is the customers do not need to worry about their financial details such as credit card number will be exposed to others as the process of the payment is highly secure. Besides, the business to business (B2B) e-commerce is used by the Maxis Berhad. Maxis Berhad offer an online business partnership application to those who are interested in on their main website, https://www.maxis.com.my/en/about-maxis/partnerships/business-partnership.html. On the website, the company show the brief introduction of their business partner, job description and partnership criteria to make the internet users more familiar with the business partnership which the company looks for. There are 3 types of select partners that the company desires, which are application solution provider, content provider as well as system integrator. Furthermore, the types of alliance displayed on the website are technology partners, device and hardware partners, and the consulting partners. As the appliers has been successfully selected, Maxis Berhad will collaborate with the selected business partner (applier) to create a variety of mobile services for the applier’s enterprise. Moreover, the collaboration  will generate repeatable and market-impacting mobility solutions for the selected business partners, within selected industries. There are also some benefits that the selected business partner will gain such as the leverage on the Maxis’s strong branding, leverage on Maxis’s global communications alliances, leverage on Maxis’s communications technology expertise & technology roadmap and so on. Part 3: Identify of the Information System The Information System is explained by the BusinessDictionary.com as a combination of hardware, software, data, telecommunications and trained personnel organized to facilitate planning, control, coordination and decision making in an organization. According to Valacich and Schneider (2014), Information System allows an organization to be more productive and profitable. It also helps the organization to gain competitive advantage towards the competitor in the industry. Most importantly is reaching out to more customers and improve the organization service to their customers. Maxis Berhad as one of the main organizations in Malaysia telecommunications industry, its business nature will generate a huge amount of transactions, each of the transaction contains a specified subscriber’s activity such as phone calls, SMS and data roaming. Maxis Berhad has to use the various information system to help its organization to deal with their customers correctly. 1) Transaction Processing System While any transaction occurs by the subscriber, Maxis Berhad is recording those transactions and encoded into various format. The recorded transactions is called Call Data Records (CDR). The CDRs could be encoded by various formats and protocols, for examples ASN.1, XML and CSV. To allow Maxis’s Transaction processing system to function, first those encoded transaction data will be separated into batches and periodically transfer to the position where this system can process it. The Transaction Processing System is arranged and grouped into batches and periodically to check all the new transactions data batch. The TPS uses standard network protocols to transfer the CDR batch file to the TPS. TPS is responsible in ensuring the integrity of each file transferred, ensuring that no IP network errors renders the file corruption. Other than that, it also ensures the  transaction data are not corrupt and not process more than once. After the error checking complete, those subscriber’s transaction data will back up in a long term memory for future use. Some Governments require that a record of every transaction need to be stored infinitely in its raw format. Once the Maxis Transaction Processing System gathers the batch of transaction data, it will decode the data into human readable format. Followed by, enhances the information within the transaction data regarding the subscriber’s activity and have a duplicate checking. After all the transaction has been processed, it will load into a particular datastore. The decoded CDR batches are then checked for duplicate records. While the intermediate processing on the CDR batches have completed, the CDR will loaded into the specific data store, the Transaction Processing System will summarize the important detail of the CDR and ready to present those details to the Maxis management in order for Maxis management to assess the performance of Maxis Berhad. Lastly, the Transaction Processing System enables Maxis Berhad to present its company performance through the annual report to the shareholder regarding the daily operation. 2) Management Information System According to BusinessDictionary.com, Managing Information System (MIS) is refers to an organized method to understand the information needs of an organization’s management at every level in making operational, tactical, and strategic decisions. This system objective is to design and implement procedures, processes, and routines that provide suitably detailed reports in an accurate, consistent, and timely manner. In management information system, modern, computerized systems continuously gather relevant data, both from inside and outside an organization. This data is then processed, integrated, and stored in a centralized database (or data warehouse) where it is constantly updated and made available to all who have the authority to access it, in a form that suits their purpose. Managing Information System (MIS) is one of the commonly used information system by Maxis to verify the customers, recover pending bills, and distribute the bills to their customers. The information prov ided by MIS enable managers to plan and control the different strategies of Maxis in order to make better decision for the business. The purpose of MIS is to meet information needs for decision-making of all the managers in Maxis. The next objectives of MIS is  provide and set strategies and goals. Those processed data received will be used for different purposes in Maxis. Computer based MIS helps Maxis to gather process and information efficiently. Maxis using the concept of information technology to improve their overall performance and working capacity. Normally MIS is used by Maxis to process their data and present the output in different types of reports used at regular intervals. Different level of managers of Maxis is using the information to recognize the purpose of the organization, its policies, programs, plans and goals. Maxis mainly focus in Customer Verification, Recovery and Bill Distribution. Without using MIS, Maxis will face problems to check the status of customer verification, recovery or bill distributed to the customer. While using the concept of MIS, Maxis can easily determine the status and situation stated above. By developing TAT (Time Allocation Table) in MIS, the MIS executive gives predefine time to each customer verification executive to complete the case. The TAT will complete the verification case by showing the case, assigned executive, date of case allocated to executive and date limit. By using such TAT, the MIS executive or manager is able to check the status of performance of verification easily. In conclusion, MIS is one of the effective systems for collecting and managing the data for Maxis. The development of MIS for organization enables Maxis to find several types of report like pendency at executive level, pendency at agency level, the overall performance of Maxis in an effective way. 3) Electronic Commerce system According to Valacich and Schneider (2014), Electronic Commerce is defined as the exchange of goods, service and money among firms and their customers, and between customers, supported by communication technologies such as the Internet. From the previous study given, the business to customer e-commerce system (B2C) is used by Maxis Berhad. Maxis Berhad has made a world first strategic collaboration with the PayPal, the the world’s leading online payment solution provider to provide their customer a better and efficient online service. With a Maxis PayPal account, the customers can carry out the online payment faster and conveniently. They did not need to go to the Maxis store/department purposely to set off the payment, but instead, they just need to log in with their Maxis PayPal credentials or  their phone number to make the payment and this changes will provide the convenience and save the time of the customers. Besides, there are major smartphone platforms where the payment option is available, such as as iPhone, Android and Blueberry. Furthermore, the customers do not need to have the security concerns about the system and their financial details such as credit card number will be protected under the system as the process of the payment is highly secure. Morever, the business to business e-commerce system (B2B) is also implemented by the Maxis Berhad to ‘communicate’ with the potential partner. Maxis Berhad has created their own website and in the website, there is a webpage of online business partnership application which is used to attract the potential partner. The potential partner (webpage viewer) can get the enough information and details about the partnership in the webpage through the B2B system, thus, it will make them to be more confident in doing the business with the Maxis Berhad. Part 4: S W O T Analysis Strength (a) Quality of Internal and External Communications A good information system must be supported by electronic data communication network systems which are the extranet and intranet. With the proper application of intranet and extranet for their company communication management, both inside and outside party of the company especially among the staffs, customers and suppliers can exchange information more effectively and efficiently. By now, Maxis is no longer relied on papers, telephone and faxes to further convey their information to the public. (b) Quality of Planning Planning is an essential process for every business. Maxis use Management Information System (MIS) which is a computer systems used for data managing to make searching, analysing data and spring information easier. MIS are widely used by Maxis to analyse and facilitate strategic and operational activities to generate information to improve efficiency and effectiveness of decision making. (c) Quality Control and Supervision Maxis with the Transaction Processing System (TPS) and Management Information System (MIS) are built and maintained properly in their management, the activities within the business environment are constantly monitored. This is because monitoring is certainly an impact on improving control over every procedure and activities occurring within the company. By this, Maxis is able to reduce the loss of information and keep a better record of the management. (d) Quality and Responsiveness of the Competitors’ Condition Aspect of business intelligence is very important since a long time with a variety of formats and needs. Maxis in order to reach the point of rapid and appropriate response on the dynamics of the competition, they rely on the Management Information System (MIS) to require, collect, analyze and compile the information needed by decision makers in the company. With the help of information system, Maxis is able to grow and remain competitive in the telecommunication industry. (e) Customers’ Satisfaction Maxis able to easily detect the activities and behaviour of their customers with the help of Transaction Processing System. Besides, Transaction Processing System (TPI) will speed up the process so that, the time required to serve a customer can be faster. This not only helps to improve the effectiveness and efficiency in operation but also increases their customers’ satisfaction of their services. Weaknesses (a) High Maintenance Fees Information Systems such as Transactional Processing System (TPS) and Management Information System (MIS) need a high cost to maintain its operation from day to day as the company need to hire maintenance team for the maintenance to run the system smoothly. Maxis Berhad has to hire employees or technical who can accurately maintain the operation of computers, company website, and other Information Systems as well. It means that Maxis Berhad has a huge budget on the wages and maintenance fees. For example, the organisation has to hire expert technical with high wage to monitor the systems and repair it when it is broke down. This would lead to the increasing of the labour cost and directly increase the company expenses. (b) Lack of internal securities control Information outflow is one of the serious problems faced by Maxis Berhad. Customers’ information is the top priority needed to secure for the telecommunication company. Maxis Berhad has approximately 13 million of customer during the year end 2013. For example, the outflow of confidential information of Management Information System (MIS) will cause the competitors to gain competitive advantages over Maxis and directly lead to the loss of the profit. The existing of the information outflow for Maxis Berhad are when their database system attacked by the outsider or taken from the inside employees. It is because the price for the information is very high. Besides, this is a very strong weapon for the competitors. (c) Unstable Services of the Information System Maxis Berhad has launched 4G LTE, which is the highest internet speed in Malaysia. However, Maxis Berhad has received some complaints from the customers about its 4G and 3G services. Even though the quality of Maxis service has been deemed to excellent in Malaysia, but, the services is yet to be enough stable to reach the customers expectation. The network service of Maxis often drops to edge, and sometimes is very slow and even has no connection. The 3G service still has not fully cover in the Malaysia and for the new 4G service; it only covers for the few particular place. Besides, information system may not be always function perfectly. It may cause by system break down, operations interruptions and so on. (d) Poor customer services Although the distribution of the Maxis outlet is very wide and available in many places, but, not all the Maxis outlet is able to provide the sufficient customer service. For example, some of the Maxis centre is only able to let customer make the payment and deal with some small case, and customers need to travel to urban areas to get further services. For example, the small Maxis firm is unable to help the customer if the customer has loss his simcard and want and get back the number, he might need to go to the Maxis centre in order to get this service. The most important thing is the customer even need to pay for the services. Opportunities (a) Increasing Visibility to Outsider By using the e-commerce system, the message regarding to the sales can be  transmitted to the public by Maxis Berhad more effectively compared to the other communication companies. In that case, the customers can get the latest sales information of Maxis Berhad all the time through their website, those users able to get most accurate data whenever they need. E-commerce system offers different ways to present data. Therefore, Maxis Berhad is more user-friendly when it adding more features to their website. (b) Decision Making of Investment Decision making of investing Maxis Berhad can be made through the reports provided by the Managing Information System (MIS) of Maxis Berhad. Decision supported with faultless information combined with the intelligence of the company’s directors can lead to unexpected opportunities. Maxis Berhad provides their financial report to the public, so their potential investor will make decision whether to invest Maxis Berhad. (c) Speed time-to-market for new products B2C e-commerce of Maxis can introduce their new telecommunication plans more efficient in the market. When Maxis publishes their plans online, it is faster for the information to reach their customers in the market because it eliminated the time consuming processes such as printing and distributing the hard copies, flyers, leaflet and brochures to the customers. In order to compete with other potential competitors like DiGI and Celcom, Maxis have to be first letting the information of their products reach the customers. This way can lead them to have competitive advantage. (d) Focus on Market Segment Using Managing Information Systems (MIS) enable Maxis Berhad to analyse specified market, and narrow the target market in the telecommunication industry. This Managing Information Systems help organization to analyse consumers’ buying behaviour so that Maxis Berhad can efficiently advertising and marketing their business plans to the target market. (e) Lower procurement and distribution costs When there is a direct online interaction between Maxis and its customers, so this company able to understand the market better. The formation of  relationship with the customers will lead to subscribe services or purchase electronic devices from Maxis directly. As a result Maxis can get rid of the middleman; it will result in reduction in cost. At the same time, customer of Maxis will be beneficial from the reasonable price. Threats (a) Strong Competitors In telecommunication industries, there are a lot of other strong competitors such as DiGi, U-Mobile, Celcom and so on. Strong competitor is one of the threats that almost all firms will experienced. Strong competitors will offer much more benefits to the consumers which might influence Maxis’ customer choices. This will cause Maxis to suffer loss on their sales and customer. For example, consumers will prefer a lower cost telecommunication network in order to save more expenses. (b) Malicious Emails Electronic messages enable easy communications between Maxis and their customers in B2C e-commerce but most of the electronic messages today cannot be easily trusted. This is because most of the emails were sent by anonymous and they might attach some phishing links in the messages. With an accidently click of the phishing link will lead Maxis’ computer software defects bugs which will automatically infect computers without further action. (c) Identity Theft and Internet Frauds The bigger the size of the organizations and the more advance information systems used, therefore Maxis will expose to more risk regarding the frauds on the Internet. For example, Maxis will face loss of important information if they fall into the trap of identity theft that uses false credentials to obtain information, services and credit while Maxis using Transaction Processing System (TPS). When TPS is processing the transaction data, the data might be alter and be stole in the process of encoding and decoding. Leak out of important information will give a big impact to Maxis as they might lose the competitive advantages in the telecommunication industry. (d) Blended Attacks Blended attack happens when the criminals use multiple methods to beat even the best security in order to get the confidential information of a company.  Since the competitive advantages are so strong in the telecommunication industry, the hackers might hack into the Managing Information System (MIS) to obtain Maxis’ various confidential reports, Maxis will be the next victim to be hacked as the criminals leak their company’s confidential information to the competitors. Maxis will face losses of their confidential information which might affect the company’s future performance and shareholders’ confidence in their company. (e) Delivery Risk Business to Customer (B2C) as one of the e-commerce using by Maxis. While having online businesses, Maxis facing a very important issue which is how this company deliver the electronic devices. Company must be very careful in choosing the delivery methods to ensure the product reach the customer in time and no damage should be found or to minimize the damages that can be caused. For example, when Maxis deliver handphone device like Apple or Samsung to the customers, they have to ensure the deliver cost be minimized including the damages that might happen in the process of delivery. Part 5: Recommendation Weakness (a) High Maintenance Fees In the telecommunication services market, it is hard to reduce the production costs to set lower price in order to pay for the maintenances fees and compete with the others competitors such as Digi, Celcom, and U-mobile. Maxis Berhad may concentrate to focus on the product innovation and product features in order to fulfill the customer needs. For example, the launched of the 4G LTE services have huge increases in their profit. Besides, Maxis Berhad can apply for funds, discount or allowance from the government to minimize their maintenance fees. (b) Lack of internal securities control Maxis Berhad need to always update and improve their securities system in order to prevent attacked by the hackers and viruses. Maxis Berhad can hire security agencies to monitor and protect their system all the time. Besides, Maxis Berhad has to strengthen internal control policies, processes and procedures as well as monitor their employees which are responsible for the customer’s information to prevent information outflow. The information of  the customer needed to fully secure to protect the company’s image. (c) Unstable Services of the Information System Maxis has to concern about the unstable services. Most importantly, Maxis must spend for the regular upgrade and maintenance for the unstable services although the cost is very high. Besides, 3G and 4G services available place should be expanded in order to get more customers who stay at rural areas. It is because nowadays the 3G and 4G is very important, customers tend connect to internet wherever and whenever by using the services, so, the stability of 3G and 4G will be the important criteria for customers in choosing the telecommunication service. With a better 3G and 4G services and wider coverage, Maxis will have the competence to compete with the strong competitors, for example P1 wimax is a competitor of Maxis who offers cheaper packages. (d) Poor customer services Customer service plays an important role in the business especially in the telecommunication industry, with good customer service, it’s able to retain the existing customers and attract more potential customers to subscribe the Maxis services. Maxis has to make the Maxis centre become one-stop service in order to facilitate the customers and make them to be more satisfied with the Maxis service. Besides, Maxis has to promote their services and offer free services to the customer in order to attract more customers and improve company’s image. Threats (a) Strong Competitors The business nature of Maxis Berhad is oligopoly competition, which is a type of market form in which the industry (telecommunication) is dominated by a small number of sellers. Competitive relationship between the Maxis berhad and other companies is strong. Therefore, the Maxis Berhad have to aware of the actions of others and make the most suitable decision based on the decision of other company. Thus, we will recommend that the Maxis Berhad could implement the market research and analysis system to investigate their competitors as well as deploy the job costing system to control and minimize the cost of production, and indirectly, they could adjust and lower their pricing in order to gain the competitive advantage. (b) Malicious Emails The other threat is the malicious emails. In this case, we would recommend that the Maxis Berhad could create their own unique symbol or signature on the email they sent to the customers in the B2C ecommerce transaction in order to differentiate it with the malicious emails. (c) Identity Theft and Internet Frauds The identity thief and internet fraud is also one of the threats the Maxis Berhad faces. In our opinion, the company could deploy the information security management system (ISMS) to provide an additional protection on the company information to make it secure. (d) Blended Attacks The other threat is the blended attack. In order to manage the blended attack, we will recommend that the Maxis Berhad should master the urge network administrators to make it more vigilant about patch management, employ server software to detect the malware and keep updating and using the firewall products. (e) Delivery Risk The delivery risk is also a threat the Maxis Berhad needs to concern about. In our opinion, the Maxis Berhad should implement the service delivery risk management (SDRM) to enable the Maxis having a better understanding on their client profitability, cost and revenue drivers, and exception management and governance process. Part 6: Conclusion In the beginning, our group decide to choose Maxis Berhad based the company’s performance and its achievement. From the part of the type of e-commerce used by Maxis, our group found that there are two type of it which is business to consumer (B2C) and business to business (B2B). There are three type of information system used by Maxis which is transaction processing system (TPS), process all the routine transactions in the business which is necessary and able to track consumer behaviour at the same time; Managing Information System (MIS), system that produce detailed information to help manage the firm; electronic commerce system (ECS), system enable customers to buy goods and service from Maxis. From SWOT analysis above we recognise the strength part include Quality of Internal and External Communications,  Quality of Planning, Quality Control and Supervision, Quality and Responsiveness of the Competitors’ Condition and Customers’ Satisfaction. As the weakness part of the information system brings to Maxis which is High Maintenance Fees, Lack of internal securities control, and Unstable Services of the Information System and Poor customer services. The opportunities are Increasing Visibility to Outsider, Decision Making of Investment, Speed time-to-market for new products, Focus on Market Segment and Lower procurement and distribution costs. In addition, there are also five threats of the information system assist Maxis which Strong Competition, Malicious Emails, Identity Theft and Internet Frauds, Blended Attacks and Delivery Risk. Reference Artem Evgenovich Babenko, h. (2014). E-commerce Systems. ITSource. It-source.net., from http://it-source.net/en/E-commerce/ Khurana,. (2014). Is Ecommerce Right for Your Business? 36 Pros and Cons. About., from http://ecommerce.about.com/od/eCommerce-Basics/tp/Advantages-And-Disadvantages-Of-Ecommerce.htm MalaysianWireless,. (2011). 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