Management Information System

Redesigning Business Processes for Healthlite Yogurt Company

Analyzed by: Delawar Barekzai

Healthlite Yogurt Company

Healthlite Yogurt Co, is a U.S based manufacturing company that produces dairy products, and is market leader in yogurt. Despite their revenues tripled over the past 5 years but as far as growth and net profit is concern its decreasing accordingly. It has a centralized management system where all the functions are directed by central New Jersey, Massachusetts, etc. Healthlite has 20 sales regions, each with approximately 30 sales representative and regional sales manager. It has a 12-person marketing group at corporate headquarter.

Data about sales and advertising expenses, promotional campaigns, and customer shelf space devoted to Healthlite products are maintained manually at the regional offices. Frequently orders are delayed when the fax machines breakdown. Since yogurt is fresh food product, it could not be held long in inventory. Yet Healthlite had trouble shipping the right goods to the right places in time. Sales representative have to write up their monthly reports of sales calls and then mail this information to regional headquarters. Since the day to day world is advanced with technologies and other facilities the old system of Healthlite may no longer work, therefore the management of the company is concern how to redesign the current system in order to overcome the hassles and keep the companys competitive position in the market.

Problem Area
1. Old and manual system of order processing and account receivables, which causes delay in the process, hence less number of customers are rendered the product/services. 2. Centralized management system: this causes the management to face with difficulty of processing orders and take actions where the marketing and production activities come to the picture. 3. Utilities and resources are outdated, hence waste the time of the staff working in the process, and became a bothersome to the company. 4. Short come in the planning and execution of the plan as far as the transfer of information is concern. Plan to overcome the hassles and improve the business Objectives
1. A master plan consisting of management restructuring, redesigning information flow

system, redesigning the network and database of the customers, and a developing a system for market research, and promotional activities, will be made and implemented accordingly.

2. Retain current regular and potential customers, by improving the system flow as I

mentioned above.
3. The cost should be reduced by reducing the number of employees, and instead too many

people working in the system to process the order and receive the accounts, they should be replaced by computers where professionals should work on them. The above mention system redesign will take approximately 3 months to totally replace old system by new modern system. The cost associated with system redesign will be compensated by reducing the number of employees in the company, but again certain extra cost will be there for system renovation and restructuring. The benefits sought from this plan are as beneath; Individual units will be more productive by getting liberty to manage their sales and production processes.
The new system which consisting of computer and internet based database system will

ease the work of employees to work more efficiently and manage more orders and customers in less time. Improve sales efficiency; reduce sales costs and time-to-market. Tightly control access to your beta or prototype systems
Receive regular activity reports and timely feedback.

Management Structure The management will be decentralized that is; every branch and regional production facility will be operating independently and will be producing and processing the orders as per the demand of that area. Weekly and monthly report should be sent to regional headquarters and from there to central headquarter. Order processing There will be two databases; one for the order processing and second for accounts and customer feedback. The order received should be process by the computer and the invoices should be made directly in the computer and calculation should be done automatically. The orders should be listed and maintained in a proper sequence manner so it is delivered based on the promised delivery time, hence the accounts receivable will be clear how much a particular customer had paid and how much is remaining. If the product is given to other grocery shops which is not related to Healthlite the demand forecasting will be also done through this computer system and will be delivered on time accordingly.

New Technology Components 1. Total computer system is required including CPUs, Monitors, Networking cables, modems, Internet, accounting software, database, and alert system for reminding the order processing and delivery time. Functions Each computer will be connected to a network internet, and the databases will work to save all the data about orders and accounts made during the processes. All 20 sales regions will have computer and internet access, especially marketing people will have it individually, since we are also concern about the cost therefore depending on the work required and the process flow, we will distribute the computers. Through clear chain of command the reporting system will be done, hence all the information related to the order processing and sales will be transferred to each other. New data reporting system Access database can be used to make forms, reports, and relationship of the entry of the data. What is more important is the order number, and the code of the process to be documented. But since it is very simple form of the database cannot be easily operated in the internet, therefore we will choose oracle as a database which is long lasting and accurate to operate in the internet and network very easily. The cost associated with this will be a little high but since the long lasting benefit is concern it will be cost effective in the long run.

Data base screen

Steps taken to convert old system to new system 1. Inform all the employees about the management decision that new technology will be adopted, 2. The financial plan should be done to see how much resources they will allocate to that specific changes 3. Competency mapping analysis should be done in order to evaluate their current workforce and remove the extra staff, which is not productive for the company. 4. The order should be placed for tech equipments and training should be provided how the employee should use the new system. 5. Market analysis and demand forecasting should be done, so that they can estimate how much capacity they have to produce. Quality Assurance Measures
1. "A Yogurt Product Can Be No Better Than the Quality of the Raw Materials from Which It Is Made!" I have since self proclaimed this statement to be "The First Rule of Quality Assurance." 2. The ingredients technology which mix is the ingredients and produce the product should be maintained properly so that nothing is toxic and has standard quality for that period of time specified to a product. Adopting new technology and overall change management impact is on both side +ve and ve, therefore looking to the pros & cons of the new proposal the first factor is human resources which will be reduced and replaced by the technology, but for the technology itself operators are required therefore in this case those who have the capacity and competent will not lose the position, and those who are lacking will face the disaster. In the contingency plan these issues are taken care by compensating these workforces and happily convinced them to leave.