Assignment 5 in MIS

Based on your adopted orgnaization(s), identify and discuss barriers in their IS/IT implementation ..(2000words)


Before the discussion of the Information System Barriers in the company I adopted let's define barrier first.

What is Barrier?

In economics and mostly especially in the theory of competition, barriers to entry are obstacles in the path of a firm that make it difficult to enter a given market.
Barriers to entry are the source of a firm's pricing power - the ability of a firm to raise prices without losing all its customers.
The term refers to hindrances that an individual may face while trying to gain entrance into a profession or trade. It also, more commonly, refers to hindrances that a firm (or even a country) may face while trying to enter a market, industry or trade grouping. Barriers to entry restrict competition in a market.

We know that EMCOR is a well known company here in Davao City. EMCOR is a 100% Filipino-owned retail business corporation specializing in appliances, furniture, IT products, motorcycles, and money transfer through its network of specialty chain stores in the Visayas, Mindanao, and Palawan areas. With the launching of our online store, EMCOR will now be making its presence known in the online industry and promote its company’s goals and vision to the global community.

Source: http://emcor.com.ph/about.php

On the case of EMCOR here are the following list of the barriers in IS/IT implementation which their company identify possible solutions.

•Control of resources and Research and development - Some products, such as microprocessors, require a large upfront investment in technology which will deter potential entrants. If a single firm has control of a resource essential for a certain industry, then other firms are unable to compete in the industry.

The company has maintenance of the database through their programmer and system analyst. They are responsible in creating programs in different sections in the company. But in some case their programmers encounter failures to their work so the company decided to have Outsourcing.

• Cost advantages independent of scale - Proprietary technology, know-how, favorable access to raw materials, favorable geographic locations, learning curve cost advantages.

• Network effect - When a good or service has a value that depends on the number of existing customers, then competing players may have difficulties in entering a market where an established company has already captured a significant user base.

In economics and business, a network effect (also called network externality) is the effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other people.
The classic example is the telephone. The more people own telephones, the more valuable the telephone is to each owner. This creates a positive externality because user may purchase their phone without intending to create value for other users, but does so in any case.

In EMCOR they sometimes encounter problem in internet connection
they are only using the management monitoring system for their transaction in different store. They have two stores in Mangagoy, their system cannot access in that store so they planning to have some possible solution to address the problem. Because of their initiative the two stores in Mangagoy are now having their own database and can have their own system which is efficient.

EMCOR is now planning to have a Disaster Recovery System for the process, policies and procedures related to preparing for recovery or continuation of technology infrastructure critical to an organization after a natural or human-induced disaster.This system will automatically update every five minutes by the access of the internet and provides back-up and transfer to another system all the data of the company so that if something will happen to the company they can easily restore the entire file.

• Changing their system

The development stage of the company uses a Visual FoxPro as their front end and SQL 6.5 then change into SQL 7.0 and lastly the to SQL 2000 which they are currently using. Because of the system change the company's employee has a big adjustments on it that's sometimes the reason of having a failure on their work. The company provide solution to address this problem which is to help the employee to have trainging and studies in the new system of the company which they are using. This kind of solution is helping the employee to know better the new system to continue their work in the company.

• Employees

Like I said before in the system change employees must have training in order to learn how to operate or access the new system implemented in the company. The company decided to train their employees to address this problem.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barriers_to_entry