Strategic Information Systems

Discuss about the Strategic Information System of Westpac Bank.

Strategic information systems (SIS) are information systems that are developed in response to corporate business initiative. There are various business initiatives in any specific business or organization (Laudon and Laudon 2016). All of them are required to be fulfilled for making the organization successful and thus reaching the goals and objectives of the company. This type of strategic information system is supposed to provide all kinds of competitive advantages to that particular organization and thus making the business absolutely popular and significant for all. This strategic information system subsequently delivers any typical service or product in an extremely lower cost and focuses on a typical market segment (Galliers and Leidner 2014). Another important advantage of the strategic information system is that it helps the organization to become innovative by providing innovation to the business operations and processes. Strategic information system or SIS is the most important feature or characteristic for the field of information technology. The entire categorizing, storing, processing and transferring of information are easily done with the help of strategic information system (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta 2016). ERP or enterprise resource planning is the most effective and efficient method of integrating all the business processes of any particular organization. It is thus termed as the integrated management of the major business processes that is mediated by software.

The following report outlines a brief discussion on the most popular banks in Australia known as the Westpac Bank. The report will be focusing on the ERP selection for the bank for helping them in their business processes. This report will be covering a detailed research on ERP for business processes, business requirements, systems requirements, vendor selection, security risks, mitigation strategies and many more for the bank. Relevant details will be providing regarding all the above mentioned points.

A business process can be defined as the set of various connected tasks that search for their end to deliver any specific product or service to the respective clients (Amrollahi, Ghapanchi and Talaei-Khoei 2013). The business process can also be stated as the collection of activities as well as tasks that would be helpful for any organization to achieve its goals and objectives once completed. All the processes of any business are correlated amongst each other and all of them have the same goal to make the business unique and successful in its field. There is a sequence that is followed while executing the business processes or activities. Any business process is often displayed through a flowchart for showing the sequence of activities within it (Becker, Kugeler and Rosemann 2013). The most important advantages of utilizing a business process are that the customer satisfaction is highly improvised. Moreover, the agility to react over the several change and alterations in the market is also improved.

Enterprise Resource Planning

There are three types of business operations (Van Der Aalst, La Rosa and Santoro 2016). They are the operational processes, which define the main processes and create the preliminary value stream like order taking or manufacturing anything. The second type of business processes is the management processes. These types of processes oversee the operational processes by involving the corporate governance, employee oversight and budgetary oversight (Meyer et al. 20130. The third type of processes is the supporting processes that are responsible for supporting the major operational processes.

The Westpac Bank comprises of various significant business processes within its systems. The several important business processes of this particular bank are given below:

1. Lending Operations for Personal: They provide personal loans to the customers of the bank (Rosemann and vom Brocke 2015).
2. Lending Operations for Business: The second business process of Westpac Bank is that they provide loans to any specific business or organization.
3. Lending Operations for Security: The third important business process is that they provide loans for security purposes. This type of operations is mainly given to any organization (Bijan et al. 2013).
4. Customer Accounting: The next important business process is the accounting of the customers.
5. Cheque Processing: This is another important business process of the Westpac Bank.
6. Other Payments Processing: Other modes of payments are also processed in this particular bank.
7. Cash Handling: The liquid cash is handled by them and hence it is considered as one of the most important business processes (Hoch and Dulebohn 2013).
8. Account Maintenance: The accounts of the customers are also maintained by them properly so that no problem occurs in case of the security of the money.

The business requirements can be defined as the various specifications that once delivered, give value for describing the features of the system from the systems viewpoints. The business requirement of any business is also termed as the StRS or stakeholder requirements specification (Laudon and Laudon 2016). The various systems, products, processes and software are the proper methods that help to determine the procedure to delivering, satisfying and finally meeting all the business requirements. These types of requirements are often referred to or utilized for the proper development and procurement of other systems or software.

There are three major reasons for acquiring the business requirements. They mainly include understanding the several needs of the business, fulfilling the business output criteria and satisfying the customers and other stakeholders (Amrollahi, Ghapanchi and Talaei-Khoei 2013). The business requirements should be high level for providing the high level products or services. If the business requirements are of vague level, the products or services are bound to be a major failure.

There are various business requirements of the Westpac Bank. The business requirements of the Westpac Bank are as follows:

1. Good Personal Credit: This is the first and the foremost requirement for the business of Westpac Bank. The personal credit is evaluated on the application of loan for the business. The major face of their business is on the normal market (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta 2016). The character and the record of paying all the debts of the parent bank is the significant reflection on their business. Since, the personal credit is better than the other banks, Westpac Bank is considered as the most effective and important banks within entire Australia and New Zealand.
2. Good Business Credit: The second requirement of the business of Westpac Bank is the better business credit. The moment the business starts its operation once in a year, the business will be having the credit score that is associated with the legally incorporated name as well as tax ID number (Galliers and Leidner 2014). The credit report shows each and every obligation and debt that are solely associated with the bank and also shows the records of payments. Westpac Bank requires good credit for considering a good loan for the business.
3. Larger Asset Base: The third important business requirement of the Westpac Bank is the larger base of assets. The business loans are eventually secured against any specific asset (Becker, Kugeler and Rosemann 2013). They have put their assets for the betterment of their business by taking loans from the parent bank. This has helped them in acquiring the business processes properly.
4. Solid Business Plan: The fourth significant business requirement for the Westpac Bank is solid business plan. The business plan eventually reflects all the estimated profits of the business that is supposed to come in the next few years (Chiu et al. 2014). This type of plan helps to obtain the finances of the organization subsequently and provides a predictable rate of ROI for the capital. When the business grows, the business plan requires to be changed and altered o a timely manner.

Each and every computer software requires specific components of hardware or any other resources of software for being present on the computer system. All these prerequisites are called the systems or computer requirements for any particular business (Bijan et al. 2013). These requirements are always utilized as the guidelines and are opposed to the basic rules. There are basically two types of systems requirements; they are the minimum and the recommended sets. With the high power of processing as well as resources in the newest versions of the software, all the system requirements eventually tend in increasing over time period. Another important definition of the systems requirements is that it provides all the requirements that are subsequently to be fulfilled for designing any particular system or any sub system (Laplante 2017). Any business when starts its journey, has to maintain its systems requirements for the betterment f their business operations or processes.

Business Processes of Westpac Bank

The bank deals with the customers and their money and hence the systems requirements of any bank are extremely important for making the bank operations properly working. There are various system requirements for the Westpac Bank. The several systems requirements of this particular bank are as follows:

1. Hardware Requirements: The most basic set of requirements for hardware is known as the HCL or hardware compatibility list (Rosemann and vom Brocke 2015). These hardware requirements are needed for making the operating systems work for the bank. The several hardware requirements of Westpac Bank are given below:
2. Architecture: Every computer operating system is eventually designed for the specific architectures of computer. Most of the applications of software are restricted to the specific operating systems that are running on the computer architectures (Antero 2015). If the architecture will be absent, the operating system will not be working.
3. Processing Power: The central processing unit or CPU should have a basic processing power for making the systems work on it. Moreover, the clock speed of the CPU also defines the processing power.
4. Memory: The random access memory or RAM of the computer system is the next hardware requirement for the bank (Ram, Corkindale and Wu 2013). It stores the confidential information and data and the requirements are checked with the operating system and applications.
5. Software Requirements: The second type of systems requirements is the requirement of software. It defines all the prerequisites that are installed on the system for providing proper functions to the system. The various software requirements for the Westpac Bank are given below:
6. Platform: The computing platform is the most important requirement and provides a type of framework for the software (Kasemsap 2015). Operating systems are the requirements of software requirements.
7. Web Browser: The web applications and the software that is dependent on the technology of Internet. The default browser is utilized in this case.

The enterprise resource planning or ERP software or the vendor for the betterment of the Westpac Bank is SAP (Leon 2014). It is one of the most important vendors of ERP and for the applications of any organization. The bank’s ERP system eventually will be allowing them to run their business operations like sales, accounting, production, finance as well as human resources in a significant integrated environment. This type of integration is responsible for the flow of information form one of the component of SAP to the next without even the requirement for any type of redundant entry of data and thus helping to enforce the legal, finance related and processing controls (Shaul and Tauber 2013). The other important advantage of SAP for the organization of Westpac Bank includes effective utilization of resources like capacity of production, capacity of machines and even manpower.

The various advantages or benefits of the SAP within the organization of Westpac Bank are as follows:

1. i) Competition: SAP would be useful for the organization as it would be enhancing the competition of the organization (Sustainment 2014). It provides competitive advantages to the organization.
2. ii) Efficiency: The ERP software also helps to eliminate the repetitive business processes and reducing the requirement of entering information manually. The business processes are also streamlined with this software.
3. iii) Collaboration: The third significant advantage that the organization would be getting from the SAP software is easy collaboration (Hoch and Dulebohn 2013). It helps to collaborate amongst all the departments that function separately. The data is centralized with this SAP software.
4. Cost Savings: SAP software is extremely cost effective and does not incur huge costs.
5. Scalability and Flexibility: The next significant advantage of the SAP software is its scalability and flexibility (Tarhini, Ammar and Tarhini 2015). The structured ERP systems enable amendments of new users and thus it is extremely flexible.
6. Integrate the information properly and thus the CRM software is also integrated with ERP.
7. Process Streamlining: The operations of the business of Westpac Bank are extremely complex (Nofal and Yusof 2013). All these processes are required to be streamlined. With the help of the SAP software all these processes could be easily streamlined.
8. Customer Service: The customers are the most important factors of any specific bank. With the presence of SAP software, the organization of Westpac Bank would be able to provide high quality of customer services (Chofreh et al. 2014).

Thus, the most suitable software for the ANZ should be SAP vendor.

The 3 distinct ways for utilizing the technology of SAP within the Westpac Bank for the purpose of improving their business efficiencies are as follows:

1. Increasing Productivity: The first and the foremost way to utilize the SAP enterprise resource planning software within the business processes of Westpac Bank is the incrementing productivity (Matende and Ogao 2013). SAP helps to take care of the diverse functionalities of the bank like sales, purchasing, finance, human resources and many more into one single function. This helps to reduce the complexities and thus the productivity of the bank is increased in a high level.
2. Improving Efficiency: The second way to utilize or use the software of SAP enterprise resource planning is to improve the overall efficiency of the business (Seo 2013). A bank requires various business processes within it and hence they are required to be absolutely and extremely efficient and effective. With the help of the SAP enterprise resource planning software the chances of inefficiency is reduced to a greater level and hence it is widely accepted in all over the world (Zeng and Skibniewski 2013). The business data is stored with this software and thus reducing the complexity of the maintenance of data manually.
3. Improving Decision Making: The third way is to improve the decision making process by the SAP ERP software. The entire process of decision making is extremely easy and simplified with this particular software (Ha and Ahn 2014). Westpac Bank thus would be extremely helpful with this.

When the software of SAP will be implemented within the business of Westpac Bank, the efficiency level would be highly improved. Following is the evaluation of the efficiency level of the bank once the technology is implemented (Shen, Chen and Wang 2016).

1. Customer Satisfaction: Any bank becomes successful when the customers are satisfied with them. This customer satisfaction is obtained with the implementation of the SAP as it helps to streamline the business processes.
2. Increased Profits: Since the business processes are integrated into one, the extra costs are discarded and hence the profit is increased with the implementation of SAP ERP software (Antero 2015).
3. Good Control on Business: There is a good control over the entire business of the bank and thus the business is benefitted with this SAP.

The Westpac Bank is the most popular bank in Australia and New Zealand. They have serving to their customers for more than 100 years and have faced various difficult situations in the tenure (Cao, Nicolaou and Bhattacharya 2013). One of the most vital areas is the security risk or threat. There are various security risks and data breaches possible within the system of Westpac Bank. The most important security risks and data breaches are as follows:

1. Distributed Denial of Service Attacks: The DDoS attacks or the distributed denial of service attacks refer to the most significant risks in any banking system. It is the type of cyber attack where the perpetrator or the attacker seeks into a machine for making it completely unavailable for the authorized users (Ram, Corkindale and Wu 2013). All these users do not get the access of the data although being authorized. This type of attack even blocks the network resource and hence the services are disrupted.
2. Phishing: The second significant type of security risk is the phishing. This is the most basic way to get all the confidential information or data like usernames or passwords or even credentials of bank account and credit cards (Kasemsap 2015). This type of risk occurs when the attacker disguises himself as the most trustworthy entity within any electronic device.
3. Trojan horses: It is the malicious program of computer that eventually misleads all the users of its real intention. This type of security risk is spread through social engineering like tricking a user in clicking on a malicious email.
4. Insider Attacks: Another significant security risk within the Westpac Bank is the insider attack (Dey, Clegg and Cheffi 2013). Any person within the bank deliberately or accidentally breaches the data or information.
5. Improper Duty Segregation: The duties of the employees should be segregated properly and if this is not done properly, confusion can occur.
6. Misalignment of Application Controls: The application controls help to control all the applications of any bank. One of the most significant security risks is the misalignment of these application controls.
7. Inadequate Vendor Management Processes: Another important risk is the inadequate vendor management processes (Nofal and Yusof 2013). Major problems can arise due to this in the Westpac Bank.
8. Infrastructure Security Vulnerabilities: The final significant risk for any specific bank is the infrastructure security vulnerability. The infrastructure of the bank should be maintained properly as it is vulnerable to such risks.

The SAP vendor of the ERP software would be extremely helpful for the bank in mitigating all the above mentioned risks (Matende and Ogao 2013). The guidelines for mitigating all the above mentioned security risks are given below:

1. Alignment of Application Controls: The SAP software comprises of an in built alignment of application controls and thus the misalignment of these controls are mitigated.
2. In Built Cyber Security: The most significant feature of the SAP software is that it consists of an in built cyber security system within it (Chofreh et al. 2014). All the various cyber security risks like Trojan horses, viruses, malware, phishing, spoofing and many more are easily mitigated with specific type of ERP software.
3. Resolving Insider Attacks: SAP helps to segregate the duties of the employees within the bank and hence the access of the confidential information is controlled. The insider attacks are thus reduced with this type of ERP software (Dey, Clegg and Cheffi 2013).
4. Infrastructure Management: The infrastructure of the bank is also secured with SAP and thus ANZ should implement the software of SAP ERP.

Business Requirements of Westpac Bank

Conclusion

Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that, strategic information system or simply SIS is the collection of various rules or guidelines that are utilized by various organizations to set their plans as well as strategies as per the previously existing principles. The most significant objective of the incorporation of this type of strategic information system is that it is utilized for enabling any organization in assessing the changes or alterations of the environment and thus utilizing them as the beneficial aspects or features. Usually, this strategic information system is sub divided into three major types. They are the financial division, operational division and strategic division. However, it completely depends on the type of business; the strategic information system is being incorporated. The next important advantage of this type of information system is that the process of decision making is extremely easier with this. When strategic information system is integrated with the support systems, the business objectives and goals are streamlined and the information systems are aligned properly with the strategies. In addition to this, the strategic information system is responsible for providing solutions to all the long term and short term objectives of the business. The latest information is thus dug out with strategic information system. ERP is the business category management software that provides integration to all types of applications. The applications are thus managed, collected, stored, interpreted and managed with the help of the software of enterprise resource planning. The case study that is selected in this particular report is of the Westpac Bank. There are various business processes in any specific bank. The above report has clearly mentioned about the pros and cons of the Enterprise resource planning for the Westpac Bank. The report has properly highlighted all the requirements of a business, all the systems requirements and the suitable software as wll as selection of vendor selection for the bank. Moreover, three methods to improve the business efficiency are also mentioned here.

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Systems Requirements of Westpac Bank

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