IS System in Woolworths Limited

Discuss About The IS Security Enforcement Woolworths Limited.

In this current era of technology Information System (IS) has become one of the most important technologies which is widely used by the business owners for high level business success. The aim of the report is to identify the IS system and its usage in Woolworths Limited.  In order to run a business successfully, business requires quality level information systems for processing all financial and organizational data statistically. Even after adoption of these particular approaches certain issues are raised those are needed to be mitigated accordingly. Based on those risks and security issues accurate recommendations are also mentioned in this report.

• To identify the IS implementation issues of Woolworth Limited, due to which it has come across the information management problems regarding accuracy, flexibility and reliability that interrupts the general workflow of an organization
• To identify the general management control, application control and respectively their comparison
• To identify the importance of IS auditing, risk management implementation techniques

• To investigate the risks and accordingly assessment of risks, and development of risk control approaches 

Woolworths Limited is one of the most famous Australian grocery shops whose brand value has reached across $10.8 Billion. It has raced ahead of its rival Coles in the brand value stakes, based on to a valuation of the world’s top brand. Currently, the supermarket worth is more than around $10 Billion (Laudon and Laudon 2015).  The mission of the company is to deliver best valued, quality and convenience products and convenience to their consumers’ allover Australia. It has around 3000 stores and 205,000 team members who serve over 29 million of consumers all over Australia (Kerzne and Kerzner 2017).  Woolworths Limited is one of the most trusted brands of Australia among the local farms and manufacturers.  

At the business initiation phase the company has manual data management system. In case of manual data management the rate of manmade error and security issues were highly pointed out. Woolworths deals with selling fresh food products, petroleum and liquor as well and operates in home environment (Galliers and Leidner 2014). The organizational structure of the company is consists of board of directors, management boards, and members of the management committee. Due to lack of technical approaches and managerial aspects Woolworths Limited had started facing several challenges. Due to quality products and reliable services, the numbers of consumers are also growing for Woolworth as a result the amounts of information are also growing accordingly (Power, Sharda and Burstein 2015.). In order to manage large set of information Woolworths implemented Information System in terms of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). After adopting IS the benefits that could be obtained are as follows:

• It gives real time integrated data
• Provides better communication platform to the employees and consumers as well
• Reduces the rate of risk and other errors
• Gives better security and high rage of productivity

In order to achieve brand success and commercial growth most of the large organizations develops and maintains business strategies and goals.  Like other Woolworths Limited is also consists of resources, human and non-human which helps to increase its production and rendering services (Rose, Hawryszkiewycz and Kang 2015). The management control system of Woolworths is consists of action control, administration, duty separation, acceptable action definition etc. the sole of the organization is the action decision maker. The role of the management board forms part of these identified elements. The decisions taken by the management board influence the actions of other employees (von Briel and Recker 2017). Besides this, it involves different units those are not each time required similar management.

Application Control Systems in Woolworths Limited

In order to implement the functions effectively separate duties are allotted to separate employees. Remuneration is the award facility used in the company. In order to increase the skills and knowledge of the working employees Woolworths organizes training and development programs (Kavanagh and Johnson 2017). The higher authority of Woolworths allots resources in accurate places and the HR ensures that the allocation is fairly done.  It can eventually control the performance and helps to take relevant actions for it. GMCs have its own dimension that shows all extent at which a management control system has impact over their employees.  

Different kinds of Application Control Systems (ACs) are available and according to and based on the background various companies adopt various Control systems (Denolf et al. 2015). ACs is referred to as a security practice that helps to restrict the unauthorized applications that may put data in high level risks. Based on specific business functionalities and applications business purposes can be pointed out and also reach the business objectives (Juan Ding et al. 2014). ACs includes completeness, validity checking, identification, authentication, authorization, controlled inputs, forensic control etc. The details of some of the ACs are elaborated in the below section:

Completeness checking:  From initiation to final completion this approach helps to ensure the records processing.

Validity checking:  This ensures only the input or process of valid information

Identification: It makes sure the unique, irrefutable identification of the users associated to the business organization (Belanger et al. 2014)

Authentication: It provides authentication mechanism

Authorization: It ensures that only the authorized users can access information from the server

Input control:  Make sure that from the upstream sources the  data integrity feed into the system of application

 Woolworths Limited has adopted Information System (IS) for supporting their decision and resolving all the identified issues accordingly.  

General Management Control (GMCs) deals with operational and functional activities whereas the ACs deals with all the policies and procedures of ARE applications served by an organization. General control is referred to as policies and procedures that are related to many applications. It also supports the effective functionalities of application control system that helps to ensuring the operation of the Information system (Luiten et al. 2016). This control applies to the organizational mainframe, servers etc. The functionalities of GCs are as follows:

• It gives proper control over the data centre and other network operation
• It deals with system software acquisition, change management and maintenance
• It deals with security
• Provides authorization to access to the computer programs and also other data files (Aakhus et al. 2014)
• Gives physical security to assets and other records

Almost each large to medium organizations uses some of the ERP systems such as automated financial reporting system etc. The reliability and accuracy of the economic reports are completely dependent on large extent over the IT control system used by different business organization.  

Management Control System in Woolworths Limited

On the other hand, IT ACs controls specific software application and individual transaction as well (Kerzner and Kerzner 2017). In order to control business operations and functions different policies and practices are applied by the business organizations. For enacting these policies, procedures to restrict the access all the general ledger software package needs all necessary functionalities. The ACs accesses are strictly important and required to be reviewed as a part of the certification process (Power, Sharda and Burstein 2015).  IT application used to monitor and control huge set of information properly. It also helps to review the modification over product prices periodically. Furthermore it can be said that, the data access should be restricted among the authorized users.

As Information system is an advanced technological excellence thus due to lack of different managerial approaches the company is facing major risks in their business ongoing phase (Morioka, Evans and de Carvalho 2016). It is necessary for the business organization to develop an accurate risk management plan to avoid the unwanted risks.

Reliability: Data reliability is a data collection technique that ensures the consistency of information set over the distributed environment.  The IS used by Woolworths is reliable in nature.

Confidentiality: Woolworths uses proper mechanisms to restrict unwanted data access from server. This feature ensures that the sensitive information is not hijacked by unauthenticated users (Denolf et al. 2015).

Availability:  It ensures that all required information is available to the employees for the organizational usage (Abunar and Zerban 2016)

Integrity: This fundamental component is referred to as the accuracy and the consistency of data stored in the server, warehouse.

Security: Woolworths uses firewall and DMZ to restrict unwanted data access.  

1. The other risk management approaches

Risk identification: Apart from these, Woolworths has proper risk identification techniques as well through which they can identify the risks from the initiation up to the completion of any project.  

Risk assessment: After identifying the risks proper risk assessments approaches are also implemented by Woolworths (Kavanagh and Johnson 2017). With the help of these approaches the company will be able to give priority to the risks.

Risk control: After pointing risk according to their priority proper risk control approaches are also elaborated by Woolworths Limited.

For any business organization audit plan audit processing are very important components to be implemented. Based on the basic requirements proper audit plan is needed to be implemented by the business organization. It is the responsibility of the finance manager to make effective audit planning as it also helps to safeguard the data quality (von Briel and Recker 2017). In order to achieve the business objectives, reliable financial reports are needed and that are also developed by the business organizations easily with the help of audit planning and processing it (von Briel and Recker 2017). Frauds can be prevented and costs of total capitals are also reduced with the feasibility study and proper IS audit planning and processing. It helps to identify the cost for each resources and materials also.  

Risk Management in Woolworths Limited

Conclusions

From the overall discussion it can be concluded that, Information System and Information Technology have brought revolutionary changes in the business organization to gain competitive advantages and economical revenue. Even in case of organizational capital investment IS has become the largest component.  From the company survey it has been found that, Woolworths Limited has invested over 50% of its total investment in the IS development.   With the help of IS, company can create secure and strong relationship between the consumers and other service providers. The key corporate assets for this company are intellectual properties, core competencies, financial and human assets etc. The core business processes of Woolworths Limited have also changed in terms of business task, digital network after the adoption of Information system to their business. In addition to this, different types of application control, general management control and their comparisons are also mentioned in this report. Besides these benefits certain challenges are also associated to it those are needed to be resolved. The list of the recommendations regarding security and risk management are mentioned below.

Encryption: Encryption is referred to as one of the most important technologies that must be used by the business organizations to ensure the security of the asset. Encryption is done with the help of a key that can encode information and on the other hand that particular information cannot be decoded with the relevant key. The private key should never be shared among the third parties.

Firewall: Firewall is another security approach ensures the security of the organizational confidential data. It order to gain competitive as well as commercial success from the market over other companies, Woolworths Limited should adopt application firewall for their company to avoid unwanted data fetch.

Risk register: Risk register is another important approach that Woolworth Limited should adopt by identifying the risks and their according risk mitigation approaches. It will help the business organization to ensure company reliability, flexibility, data availability, and integrity and data security as well.  Collectively it can be said that, risk register is an important approach to control unwanted activities in the business organization

References

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