Module Code :

ORGANISATIONAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Student Name : <SURNAME, Initials>

UB Number : <Student number>

Assignment 2 – title :

Compare and contrast a medium sized white goods manufacturing company (with around 500
employees) and a university by considering their environments, types of IS application uses,
telecommunications and the Internet uses. Please assume that both organizations are based in the
UK.

Tutorial group : <Your tutorial group>

Tutorial Time : <Thursday/Friday, /time>
Tutors Name : <Ashwini Kumar>
Course : (Course : e.g. ……)

No. of words in this assignment :

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION TO THE ORGANIZATIONS

AN ORGANIZATION’S EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT

BUSINESS APPLICATIONS

IT INFRASTRUCTURE

DATA MODELLING AND IS USE BY ORGANIZATIONS

NETWORK STRUCTURE

ONLINE BUSINESS

SUMMARY

APPENDIX

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INTRODUCTION

Voltas Ltd, India

Voltas Limited is India's premier air conditioning and engineering services provider. It offers
engineering solutions for a wide spectrum of industries in areas such as heating, ventilation and air
conditioning, refrigeration, climate control, electro-mechanical projects, textile machinery, machine
tools, mining and construction, materials handling, water management, building management
systems, pollution control and chemicals.

The Company's strengths lie principally in the design and manufacture of industrial equipment;
management and execution of air conditioning and public work projects; sourcing, installation and
servicing of technology-based systems; and representation of global technology leaders, serving
diverse industrial sectors and applications.

Operations

Voltas' operations have been organized into four independent business-specific clusters, namely
the Electro-Mechanical Projects & Services, Unitary cooling products for comfort & commercial use,
Engineering Agency & Services and Others. Each of these has its own facilities for market coverage
and service to customers.

Voltas is a leader in India's cooling appliances industry and one of the largest exporters of mechanical, electrical
and public works products. It is also a trusted name in mining and construction equipment and a leader in textile
machinery, machine tools and forklift trucks. The company's head office is in Mumbai, and it maintains regional
headquarters in Mumbai, Kolkata, New Delhi and Chennai. It also has several territorial offices and locations
overseas in Abu Dhabi (UAE), Hong Kong, Singapore and Qatar.

ENVIRONMENT

The Company has its head office in Mumbai; zonal headquarters in Mumbai, Kolkata, New Delhi
and Chennai; territorial offices at Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Jamshedpur,
Lucknow, Pune and Kochi; Overseas offices in Dubai, Abu Dhabi (UAE) Hong Kong, Singapore and
Qatar and factories at Thane in Maharashtra, Dadra, Union Territory and Sanathnagar in Andhra
Pradesh.

This appliance company knows that to overtake its competition, it needs to strengthen and streamline
its processes and improve customer service. Voltas has decided to implement a SAP solution for its
Cooling Appliances Business Division and a strong information technology backbone to support it.

TYPE AND CATEGORIES OF BUSINESS APPLICATIONS

Business need:
Voltas is the number two supplier of room air conditioners in India behind LG Electronics. In order to overtake the
competition, Voltas needed to strengthen and streamline its processes and improve customer service. The company
targeted three key post-manufacturing areas in which to improve business operations:

 Sales & Distribution - Voltas aimed for this team to be more flexible in responding to market dynamics
and more accountable by requiring it to document all sales commitments
 Accounts Receivable - The company needed to improve accounting processes to reduce working capital
requirements

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  Customer Service - The idea was to keep comprehensive, centralized records of all contact to enhance
customer service and strengthen customer loyalty.

Voltas decided to implement an SAP solution for its cooling appliances business unit, but needed a strong
information technology (IT) backbone to support it. If the deployment met with success, the company would extend
the solution enterprise-wide.

To make it sales and distribution team more flexible in responding to market dynamics and more
accountable by requiring it to document all sales commitments, IBM Business Consulting Services was
given the responsibility to implement SAP R/3. It rests on a robust IT infrastructure based on IBM
eServer pSeries and xSeries servers, IBM TotalStorage components and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager.
The project will encompass 19 branches, 17 C&F depots, 100 dealers and five call centers across
India.

Results

The solution improves competitiveness through industry best practices and streamlines business
processes to improve the company's post-manufacturing operations. The CRM application enables
Voltas to keep consistent, comprehensive records of all service-related calls, enabling it to proactively
measure and manage its customer service levels.

DATA MODELING AND IS USE BY ORGANIZATIONS

On the front end, Voltas has set up four IBM eServer xSeries 345 servers, acting as

 portal server (SAP Enterprise Portal)

 portal database and LDAP server

 SAP Internet server and development platform.

The portal allows users to access personalised views of the SAP system through a Web-based interface.

The SAP applications are supported by a number of IBM eServer pSeries servers. Each of five pSeries 615 servers
running IBM AIX fulfill a unique function: there is one test and development server, an application server, a
failover machine for the database and two servers dedicated to business warehouse (BW) and customer relationship
management (CRM) development.

Three pSeries 630 servers form the production environment for the database, the business warehouse and the CRM
application. The database server and its failover partner are clustered together with High Availability Cluster Multi-
Processing (HACMP) software.

TYPES OF NETWORK STRUCTURES USEFUL

The server environment is linked in a robust, flexible storage area network (SAN) based on two 8-port IBM
TotalStorage SAN Fibre Channel Switches. The SAN enables Voltas to pool its SAP data in a centralised storage
device - the IBM TotalStorage FAStT600 Storage Server, which provides 20 disks of 73GB capacity each.

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Backup is managed by IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM), which provides LAN-free backup of the entire SAP
environment. Voltas use the SAP R/3 backup agent to enable online backup of the SAP database to an IBM
TotalStorage 3582 Ultrium Scalable Tape Library. The tape library contains two fiber drives and is directly
connected to the SAN.

TYPES OF BUSINESS USES OF THE INTERNET

By implementing an integrated web-based ERP system, Voltas is benefitted from industry best practices,
streamlining its business processes to improve its post-manufacturing operations. The Sales & Distribution aspect
of the solution automates much of the order fulfillment process and helps the sales force manage customer
accounts. With the customer relationship management application, Voltas has been able to keep consistent,
comprehensive records of all service-related calls, thus enabling the company to proactively measure and manage
its customer service levels.

Finally, the accounting application helps the company manage its inventory and accounts receivables more
effectively, reducing outstanding credit with its dealers. Combined with the reliable, scalable IBM infrastructure,
the SAP solution position Voltas gain more market share and pose a threat to its biggest competitor.

Close on the heels of implementing “E-Volt” - an e-business process Website - in its SRP Tools
Division in June this year, the Rs 1,250-crore Tata group company Voltas Ltd aims at reducing its
working capital from 60 days to 15 days by June next year. E-Volt is the electronic transfer of
business in which all the future business of Voltas will be conducted, with benefits such as cutting
across barriers of communication and delay in execution of orders, reduction of cycle time,
transaction cost, purchase price, reduction in inventories and increased productivity.

Voltas has invested Rs 15 lakh in developing a customised Website and hardware, and Rs 2.5 lakh
per annum as recurring charges, which it hopes to regain in the corresponding period.

The existing cutting tools business model is an interaction between various entities such as
customers, branch office, sales office, plant and registered office, head office, and third parties such
as billing centres in terms of flow of information/data, documents and goods.

Voltas distributes and markets cutting tools supplied by the manufacturing unit of SRP Tools
Division at Ranipet in Tamil Nadu, to clients such as Telco, Hyundai, Bharat Gears, Mahindra &
Mahindra, Escorts, among others. In addition, Voltas has also expanded the base for E-Volt activity
to LMW’s Ring Travellers for the Textile Machinery Division and supply and support of Visi coolers
to Pepsi at the Hyderabad Unit. In the automobile industry, cutting tools are used for designing gear
boxes through various kinds of tools. Cutting tools is also used in ancilliaries.

Reducing delivery lead time

To implement the process, Voltas formed a team headed by the corporate general manager Mr CM
Pant, assistant manager systems Mr ZA Shaikh and two people from the machine tools division, viz,
Mr Vaidya and
Mr Fernandes along with two Tata Strategic Management Group (TSMG) members Mr Ajit
Rajgopalan and Mr Ankur Jindal.

This team formulated a system design and selected Silverline to develop the system. The team

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reviewed the progress of the project every fortnight. Internally, TSMG studied the process and re-
engineered it from what it was earlier. Business re-engineering was done to remove the duplication
of the process. Voltas has paid Rs 12 lakh to TSMG as part of the consultancy fee for analysing the
existing business model in terms of process flows between entities.

Through E-Volt Voltas is consistently reducing the average delivery lead time for order processing
from five weeks to three weeks by encompassing all entities involved in the cutting tools business.

One way of reducing the average delivery lead time is by way of transferring the customers’ orders
to Voltas’ sales office and then to SRP tools division. The division passes the order to SRP sales
office and then to the factory.

Informs Voltas assistant manager - systems (information technology)

Mr ZA Shaikh: “The second way is reducing on cost of communication by half. This is because cost
of communication is between customers, Voltas, SRP sales office and SRP plant. Earlier, the
telephone was used as the mode of communication between the entities. But now, the SRP division
updates information on the manufacturing status of the tools regularly.”

According to TSMG consultant Mr Ankur Jindal: “Order processing and customer lead time vary
from various categories of orders. Before E-Volt, average delivery lead-time was five weeks (pre-
manufacturing: three weeks; post-manufacturing: two weeks). The initiative is aimed at benefiting
the customer through faster delivery of products by online availability of order status and better
planning, reduced working capital, lower communication and travel expenses. This will also
eliminate redundant activities and related manpower costs and increase the prospects for
business/sales.”

This is how the process runs:

 Customers place their orders for cutting tools in two forms, viz. Regular and Repeat items,
with delivery schedule and quantities.
 The new development items starts with an existing or prospective customer sending an
inquiry with local drawings and request for quotation.
 Due to availability of information on customer orders, the company’s sales office is able to
initiate production much earlier and plan the raw material procurement and inventories in a
better manner. (Although detailed process changes at the factory level have not been
envisaged, the sales office has significantly upgraded its IT infrastructure.)
 The front end activities from traditional paper-based to online/electronic comprise inquiry,
purchase orders, clarifications, order status and delivery information. The changes brought
about at the back-end activities involves re-design of the processing order, new standard
operating procedures (SOP) put in place at the sales office, integration with Voltas’ ERP
and IT systems at the sales office.

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Voltas’s B2B website section

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Reference:

1. http://www.voltas.com
2. http://www.voltas.co.in
3. http://www-306.ibm.com/software/success/cssdb.nsf/CS/GJON-5V8Q99?
OpenDocument&Site=
4. http://www-8.ibm.com/businesscenter/sg/sstories/success_200403161.html
5. http://www.tata.com/voltas/media/20011029.htm