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College of Business and Management

Department of Business & Hospitality Management Northern Caribbean University

Final project

Presented to Mr. Desmond Montgomery

Submitted by:

Chaddaine Cunningham - 11121047

In Partial Fulfillment of MGMT485: Management Information Systems

Due Date: February 27, 2022

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Contents
Acknowledgement.................................................................................................................................3
Abstraction............................................................................................................................................4
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................5
Company Background............................................................................................................................6
Type of Organization.............................................................................................................................8
Number of Employees...........................................................................................................................9
Competitors........................................................................................................................................10
Management Structure.......................................................................................................................11
Type of MIS or Enterprise Application in Use......................................................................................13
Results.................................................................................................................................................15
Recommendations...............................................................................................................................16
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................17
References...........................................................................................................................................18
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Acknowledgement
I would like to acknowledge and give thanks to Mr. Desmond Montgomery for the

completion of this project it would have not been possible without you. The knowledge that

you have imparted onto me is evident in writing this paper. I would also like to thank North

Caribbean University for giving me the resources and means of doing this project as it was

very informative and I know I will be using this information in the future. Lastly I would like

to thank my dear friend Sashene brown for the emotional support while doing this paper for it

was a difficult one but with her strong and wise worlds I managed to complete this project.
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Abstraction
Organizations have now evolved since the internet area and see information system

as a way that they could increase their efficiency and ultimately cut costs and increase their

profits. The project examines how Amazon uses information system to acquire information

from customers , how they use information systems for data management, innovations and

streamline their business processes that made amazon into the leading online retail company

thee are today and how they use information system in the Web services. In the latter part of

this project amazon’s existing information systems are examined and recommendations are

made as to how amazon can improve its information system.

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Introduction

“Management Information system tries maximise the use of information systems to

fix behavioural and technical issues in the development, use and impact of information

systems used by managers and employees in the firm. Information system is used to support

decision making, coordination and control in an organization by use of an interrelated set of

components that collects(or retrieve), process, store, and distribute information. Information

system can also be used to analyse problems, visualize complex subjects and create new

products. Business use information systems to ultimately achieve six strategic objectives

which are operational excellence; new products, services, and business models; customer and

supplier intimacy; improved decision making; competitive advantage; and survival.

Enterprise applications systems span functional areas, focused on executing business

processes across the business firm and includes all level of management. The main

functionality of Enterprise applications is to integrate and coordinate groups of business

processes and systems so the organization can efficiently manage resources and give good

customer service. The four main types of enterprise applications are the enterprise systems,

customer relationship management systems, supply chain management systems and

knowledge management systems. The enterprise systems have become popular and crucial in

any organization that wishes to become more efficient and increase customer base and have

customer retention (Laudon & Laudon, 2016).” Amazon uses the information system and

enterprise application system for the acquisition of customer information, management of this

information and the integrations of pertinent information across the relevant functions of the

organization. “Amazon is the leading online retail company and they offer cloud computing

services that wouldn’t be possible without information systems. The enterprise systems that

Amazon currently has in place is the customer relationship management system and the

Enterprise resource planning systems (Demir, 2017).”

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Company Background

According to Mcfadden (2021), in terms of sales Amazon is the largest Internet based

company in the world. It started out by selling books online in 1994 but today the company

sells everything from groceries, computer games and music, software, home-improvement

items, toys, games, and much more. Jeff Bezos, owner and founder of amazon envisioned the

company being a technology company at heart for which the real business was to simplify

online transactions for its customers (McFadden, 2021).

“ In the mid-2000s, Amazon launched its Amazon Web Services (AWS) and By

2006, Amazon expanded its AWS portfolio with its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). This was

followed up by their Simple Storage Service (S3) soon after. When the company expanded

into web services like EC2 and S3 this boosted the company's revenues significantly. Today,

they remain the bulk of the income for Amazon Web Services. In 2007 Amazon launched

their first Kindle e-reader. These relatively low-cost handheld tablets would invigorate the e-

book market, and by 2012 the Kindle would constitute around 50% of all Android-operated

tablet sales. The Kindle's success led to Amazon entering the e-book publishing market in

2011 with its Amazon Publishing service. That same year Amazon announced that e-book

sales on its site were outselling traditional printed books. Since then Amazon has continued

to expand into many other services. These include shipping fresh produce, drone delivery,

and many more innovations. Amazon has even recently begun operations at their very own

airport and Amazon launched its now highly lucrative Affiliate program. Amazon also uses

the latest technological innovations to increase its efficiency and service to its customers.

From the use of AI to handle and process orders or recruiting to experimenting with drones

and robots. Amazon also found out some of the pitfalls of technology such as their machine

learning recruitment tool which was shown to have an apparent bias against certain groups of
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people in software development and other technical positions. Also its automated process of

firing and hiring was criticized for making decisions without being able to take into

consideration issues in people’s personal life etc. This same software also tracks an

employee's performance against set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) whilst handling

orders from customers. The main appeal of Amazon in its early days was one of pure

convenience. No longer did a potential customer need to visit a physical bookstore to get the

book they were looking for (McFadden, 2021).”

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Type of Organization

“Amazon is an American multinational ecommerce company and the leader in online

retail services and they also offer cloud computing services. They are a publicly traded for

profit company. Amazon is the best example of a modern digital company that invests heavy

in information system to integrate and coordinate its business functions, processes and

systems. The company sells everything from groceries, computer games and music, software,

home-improvement items, toys, games, cloud computing services and much more

(McFadden, 2021).”
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Number of Employees

According to Gacier (2021), Amazon has revealed for the first time the number of

people it employs in the U.S., placing the figure at 950,000, according to the e-commerce

giant's quarterly earnings. While the headcount was boosted by an additional 64,000 people

hired in the second quarter, it does not include the thousands of contractors such as drivers

whom Amazon depends on to run its Amazon Prime delivery operations. Globally, the

company employs 1.3 million people.

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Competitors
“Amazon is a Global competitor and would be competing with most retail companies,

subscription service providers and web service providers in the world. However, the main

competitors of amazon based on the different types of services they offer are: Amazon’s retail

store competitors include target, Walmart, best buy, and Costco. In their subscription services

Amazon’s competition includes Netflix apple and google. In their web service offerings

Amazon’s competition includes rivals such as Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM (Dudovskiy,

2020).”
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Management Structure

(Dudovskiy, 2020)

According to Dudovskiy (2020), Amazon have a hierarchical organizational structure.

The senior management team of Amazon includes three CEO’s and three senior vice

president responsible for various crucial functions of Amazon. They report directly to the

CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos. The organizational Structure of Amazon have the following

three key features:

- Hierarchical Corporate Structure – The structure have developed at amazon due to the

large size of the business and its employees

- The flexibility of the business – Despite the large size of Amazon it is really flexible

to respond to frequent changes in the external marketplace and leads changes in the

external business environment. There are many small teams that serves in amazon that

is integrated into amazon’s organizational structure

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- Stability in the Top management - In Amazon’s organizational structure there are very

minimal employee turnover amongst key employees. This is one of the key factors of

the stability of Amazon

Amazon’s organizational structure is however always changing due to the culture,

policies and the market environment that they operate in. The type of organizational structure

also coincides with the Adhocracy structure because of how amazon have to respond quickly

to rapidly changing environments and consists of large groups of specialist organized into

short lived multidisciplinary teams but amazon seems to have a strong central management

team. The type of organizational structure usually determines the kind of information

systems used and the nature of the problems of the system

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Type of MIS or Enterprise Application in Use

“Amazon uses management information system as a tool to efficiently manage and

acquire information that will enable them to gain a competitive advantage. Amazon have

successful used management information system to acquire and reaped the maximised benefit

of the information that they gather. The enterprise applications that are used by amazon are

the enterprise systems or enterprise resource planning systems (ERP) and the customer

relationship management system (CRM). The enterprise application system and technology

are interconnected with vibrant relational database management systems which are

interdependent on each other (Demir, 2017).”

“Amazon uses customer relationship management systems (CRM) to record personal

information and buying habits of its customers which is integrated with the advertising

campaigns and the marketing activities of the organization. The integrations of the CRM

systems enables the users of the amazon’s website to be able to see the products that have

been bought by the user and by buyers similar to the user based on search history and

preferences. The crm allows amazon to offer personalized content to customer based on

information that was recorded during a surfing session. This information is recorded under

the infomediary model which is partially where some of the information in the crm system

are from. The integrating of Customer contact information with the logistics system is

another important feature of the crm. This enables customers to be able to track their products

during shipping by logging into the amazon website and searching for their product with the

tracking number. Amazon also offers an incentive marketing program to gain more customers

and business to its website. The new customers information that amazon wold have gained

would be recorded into the crm system for which they would use for their own marketing

activities and also it would be sold out to the relevant layers (Demir, 2017).”
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“The enterprise system that are integrated with the internet are the accounting,

logistics and the human resource. Amazon uses the Enterprise system or enterprise resource

planning system (ERP), when orders are placed by the customers and the shipping methods

are chosen, it is then integrated with the logistics and delivery department of the enterprise

application system. This integrates and coordinates the process, systems and functions and

Amazon’s logistic department is able to send the package via the appropriate shipping carrier

to be delivered within the stipulated lead time. Employees of amazon are satisfied with the

erp system and it makes work easier with the automated warehouse that it enables (Demir,

2017).”
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Results
The result of Customer relationship system (CRM) and the enterprise resource

planning system (ERP) is that Amazon has successful used the enterprise application systems

to reap the maximised benefit of the information. They have used information systems to

achieved the strategic objectives such as operational excellence; new products, services, and

business models; customer and supplier intimacy; improved decision making; competitive

advantage; and survival. This is why amazon have a competitive advantage In the market and

the leading online retail company globally.

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Recommendations
My recommendation for Amazon is to use knowledge management systems

especially for middle and operational levels and keep it secured from their competitors.

Amazon’s business process would become hard to copy, unique and they can leverage this to

achieve an even greater competitive advantage. Knowledge management systems would

enable amazon to capture knowledge and able to apply this knowledge. While the market

environment of amazon is dynamic some business operations would have been unstructured,

semi structure and structured on the senor management, middle management and the

operation management levels respectively, amazon need to have clear cut standards of

operation across its business operation and customer service to improve the quality of service.

Secondly, my recommendation for amazon is to withhold some of their cloud

computing services and information gathered from their infomediary model that are unique to

them alone. Amazons offers the same cloud computing resources that they use for their own

business and offers information gathered from their infomediary model and they are arming

the competition to be able to better compete with them and also to now their system and how

it is set up.
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Conclusion
The research done shows amazon’s best practises in information system and it is

evident why amazon is the leading online retail company in the world. Amazon invests heavy

and is a modern digital company using the best technology and innovations to bring value to

customer. While amazon needs improvement on their processes and systems they are in a

good strategic position and will continue to evolve in information technology.

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References

Demir, A. (2017). Management Information System: Case Study of Amazon.Com. Quest Journals, 11-
14.

Dudovskiy, J. (2020, March 24). Retrieved from Business Research Methods: https://research-
methodology.net/amazon-organizational-structure-2-2/

Glaser, A. (2021, July 30). Business News. Retrieved from NBC News:
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/amazon-now-employs-almost-1-
million-people-u-s-or-n1275539

Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. P. (2016). Management Information Systems; Managing the Digital firm.
Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.

McFadden, C. (2021, february 17). Culture. Retrieved from Interesting Engineering :

https://interestingengineering.com/a-very-brief-history-of-amazon-the-everything-store