mis mrs fields' cookies
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Q1. Describe the Information Systems Requirements of the organization at three managerial levels.
A1.
Hierarchy @Managerial Levels
Store Level (Operational)
1. Store Manager
Managerial Level
1. DSM (District Sales managers)
2. RDO (Regional Directors of Operations)
3. Senior Regional Directors
Strategic Level (or corporate)
1. Store Controllers
2. Vice President of Operations
3. Debbi (Owner)
At the Store level, the store manager required:
1. Menu specific projections of achievable sales target for the day.
2. Continuous review of projected sales as per customer count.
3. Time clocks: How many batches to mix and when to mix them.
4. Labor scheduler
5. Inventory management: Computation of supply needed
6. Interview scheduling & resume scanning
7. Skill testing and electronic and voice communication with the HQ
8. Sales recording
At the Managerial Level
1. District Managers need lots of data about the sales, number of customers, their time of visit,
and item-specific demand. The Info system needs to compile this data for the district managers.2. Analysis tools: The Information systems needs to generate trends based on the data collected
(as mentioned above). This is needed for setting quotas.
3. The information system should also be able to come up with store based predictions of future
growth prediction which would assist the regional managers to devise appropriate marketing
strategies.
4. It helped in calculating cash underages and outages.
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At the Corporate or Managerial level
1. Centralized system to compute performance of store managers.
2. Information system should transmit all information from the store and the operation
department to the main HQ.
3. Information system should be able to replicate ‘Debbi’s’ standards. It should be able to virtuallyconnect Debbi to each store manager.
4. The information system should be able to route Debbi’s message to the particular store and vice
versa. And messages would be both written and voice ones.
5. Financial analysis of data generated from all the stores, and consequent trend predictions.
6. Physical property management
7. Systems development: improving processes; increasing sales; Strategic efficiency.
Q2. Discuss how MIS provided the top management personal control over dispersed operations in the
company.
A2. The MIS was designed in a bottom-up approach where we have lots of information from the base
level which then filtered, analyzed and interpreted. This is then utilized to help in decision making which
would provide a strategic edge to the company. Strategic means promoting sales and controlling labor
and food costs. And the MIS did just that!
The MIS controlled almost everything that was mechanical in nature:
1. It decided the baking schedule of each day, suggested when to do sampling and also maintaining
quality checks. This helped maintain Debbi’s control over each of her operations and maintain
‘quality’.
2. It allocated quotas to each store manager.
3. Hourly goals were set based on real time sales.
4. Managers could communicate with Debbi via electronic mail and even voice mail! Debbi herself
responded to each voice message directly sent to her, within 48 hours of receiving it. This made
managers ‘feel’ her presence even in her absence.
5. The centrally connected servers transmitted information about sales to the HQ daily, hence the
top management knew immediately which store was not meeting its objectives and was able to
respond quickly.
6. Sales were usually automatically entered thanks to the automated cash registers. This
eliminated chances of manipulation of data.
7. The electronic communication system also retrieved mails for the respective store managers to
their PCs automatically.
8. The HR functions were also closely controlled. The automated resume scan function helped in
short-listing employees who matches Debbi’s requirement, rather than what the store manager
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may want. However, it also gave some handle to store managers but not complete control over
selection of candidates.
Q3. Explain how store managers, regional directors and controllers used MIS to focus more on strategic
aspects than administrative functions.
A3.
Strategic aspects include promoting sales and controlling labor and food costs.
Store Managers: The MIS helped them avoid paperwork related to recording sales, calculating
inventory, deciding on which and how many cookies needed to be baked, and other specification related
to quality checks. Even labor allocation was decided by the MIS. This made the store managers focus
more on the customers and on selling cookies. Rather than calculating sales targets for the day, theyfocused on achieving them. This promoted sales and reduced wastage.
Regional Directors: The MIS helped them in many ways. It collected all the data from the stores under
them and then filtered, analyzed and interpreted it to make it useful for them. The main focus of the
directors was to study the reports to come up with plans for the future. The local marketing decisions
were made by them on the basis of the reports generated by the MIS and their subsequent validation.
Controllers: The controllers job was to manage anywhere between 35-75 stores. The MIS helped them
by collating all the data, product, date and store wise. They had access even to the cash overages and
underages on a daily basis, and they contacted the field managers for explanation. The MIS was so quick
that within 24 hours of the store controller’s review, Debbi had access to every controller’s report at an
aggregate level. The MIS also helped them analyze unusual trends, problems and conditions.
Q4. How MIS helped the Managing Director to operate each store as a profit centre?
A4. A profit center is a section of a company treated as a separate business. Thus profits or losses for a
profit center are calculated separately. A profit center manager is held accountable for both revenues, and
costs (expenses), and therefore, profits. What this means in terms of managerial responsibilities is that the
manager has to drive the sales revenue generating activities which leads to cash inflows and at the same
time control the cost (cash outflows) causing activities.
The MIS was designed to tackle accounting in a straightforward way. No corporate expenses were
allocated to stores and only expenses incurred in the store were charged to the store, thereby laying the
foundation of running stores as profit centers. Also, each store’s data was available at the click of a
button and all analysis could be done on that store’s data, making the job of the MD easier.
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Q5. Briefly discuss the following
Tracking financial performance
Scheduling of activities
Marketing Support
Interviewing Activities
A5.
1. Tracking Financial Performance: A key job of the MIS was to track the financial performance of the
cookie stores.
1. The first job was to treat each store as a profit center (discussed in A.4).
2. Automated cash registers linked to the MIS.
3. Inventory evaluation application ensured no discrepancy was there in COGS.
4. Hourly sales quotas
2. Scheduling of activities: The MIS scheduled many activities, such as deciding on the quantity of
cookies to be baked per hour based on the types of cookies entered by the manager. It also told the
number of batches to mix and when to mix them! And to maintain quality, the dough’s useful life would
also be mentioned after which it would have to be discarded. Inventory checking system automatically
came up with the supply to be ordered. Interviews were also scheduled.
3. Marketing Support: Regional directors got all sort of data and trends and it was on the basis of these
forecasts and trend analysis of each store individually, and demographically, that they were able to
come up with store focused marketing strategies.
4. Interviewing Activities: The MIS helped the managers make better hiring decisions. After conducting
initial interviews (screening), the information about the candidates was entered into the system, whichcompared it with the records of previous applicants who had been hired. This helped Mrs. Debbie Field’s
recruit those employees who were similar to those with whom she had started her cookie store in Palo
Alto, California. The focus was on attributes such as honesty, punctuality, values, education, experience,
knowledge, and attitude. This helped in achieving a better Person-Job fit, as well as a Person-
Organization fit. This was followed by an interview conducted interactively with the computer, the
answers of which were compared with those of existing employees and were made a part of the
database.
*The manager could override the system’s final recommendations
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Q6. What is the advantage of developing information systems keeping in view managers’ perspectives?
A6. It is very important to develop information systems keeping in view manager’s perspective as no
organization can afford to delink its systems from its human resources as the human resources are the
ones who actually do the selling and interact with the customers. It’s also vital to keep in mind that thedata analysis and suggestions being churned out by the MIS are in tune with the capabilities of the
employees (I don’t mean that targets or quotas should be cut down, but the data should be presented in
a way which looks achievable or doable to the employee.
Q7. What are the roles and responsibilities of MIS organization?
A7. The MIS is an integrated man-machine system designed to help managers in strategic planning,
management control, and operational control activities of an organization.
Operational Control: Operational activities are the day to day activities of an organization, such as daily
sales targets, employee shift management, data recording, automatic cash registeretc. The MIS’s
purpose is to automate these activities to give the employees more time to do ‘meaningful’ activities
which can be done only by humans.
Management control: Planning work such as local marketing strategies, employee compensation, trend
forecasting, quota setting, etc are decisions which are taken by the second rung employees, i.e. the
managers. The MIS’s role is to analyze all the data from the various stores and to present it in a way that
can be interpreted relatively easier to comprehend. It also has to predict any unusual activity or trend
and immediately raise a warning.
Strategic planning: This is concerned with promoting sales and controlling labor and food costs. The MIS
should always be ready with a system which can generate an ad hoc cost-benefit analysis of a system or
a process and be able to justify it on the basis of whether it can:
1. Cut costs (or increase savings)
2. Increase sales
3. Insightful decision making
Q8. What is an expert system? How expert systems provided decision support to managers?
A8. An expert system is a computer system that emulates the decision-making ability of a human
expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning about knowledge, like an
expert, and not by following the procedure of a developer as is the case in conventional programming.
An expert system has a unique structure, different from traditional programs. It is divided into two
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parts, one fixed, independent of the expert system: the inference engine, and one variable: the
knowledge base. To run an expert system, the engine reasons about the knowledge base like a human.
Expert systems help in enhancing the quality and amount of knowledge available to decision makers.
Also, the expert systems are equipped with self learning capabilities.
Q9. Keeping in view the expansion of the company, what types of systems are recommended for the
company?
A9. Since it has acquired LPB which is a large company and whose systems are not in sync with the
current MIS of Mrs. Fields, it needs to first sync the MIS of LPB with its own.
Then, it needs to have ‘Operation Support Systems’ as the product range of LPB and its operations
process are different from those of Mrs. Fields. These would includeTransaction Processing System
which would track all transactions of LPB and Mrs. Fields. Process Control System would also be neededto ensure quality is in sync with Mrs. Fields standards and that wastage doesn’t take place. It will also
need to update the capacity of its Enterprise Collaboration System to ensure seamless communication
between all the new units.