Mr. Dimpz Blog

Based on the organization(s) that you visited, what do you think are the risks associated with business and IS/IT change?


Our adopted company was Dole Philippines, Founded in Hawaii in 1851, Dole Food Company, Inc., with 2007 revenues of $6.9 billion, is the world's largest producer and marketer of high-quality fresh fruit and fresh vegetables. Dole markets a growing line of packaged and frozen foods, and is a produce industry leader in nutrition education and research. The Company does business in more than 90 countries and employs, on average, 36,000 full-time, regular employees and 23,000 full-time seasonal or temporary employees, worldwide.

As the world's largest producer and marketer of high quality fresh fruit and fresh vegetables and with a growing line of packaged and frozen foods, the DOLE brand is synonymous with high quality standards and satisfaction. Dole has earned this reputation over the last 154 years thanks to its unwavering commitment to fulfill its customers' needs and consumers' expectations in the critical areas of quality assurance, food safety, traceability, environmental responsibility and social accountability.

First, we define Information System (IS)
In a general sense, the term Information System (IS) refers to a system of people, data records and activities that process the data and information in an organization, and it includes the organization's manual and automated processes. In a narrow sense, the term information system (or computer-based information system) refers to the specific application software that is used to store data records in a computer system and automates some of the information-processing activities of the organization. Computer-based information systems are in the field of information technology. The discipline of business process modelling describes the business processes supported by information systems.

During our interview for assignment 1 with the MIS Internal programmer of Dole Philippines, We also discussed the risk associated with business and IT/IS change.We prepare some questions for her to answer and these are the list of risk that she mentioned.

User

When changing the information system of company, programmers must consider the end users. End users a person or group that is one of the ultimate consumers or users that a system has been designed for.

Sometimes users will find it difficult to understand the new system implemented. So, when you implement a new system it should be a user friendly for the user to easily understand and operate. This is very important because a system that is poorly designed and cannot be use effectively by end users does not meet the goal or requirements of the company.

System Failure

Failure with regards to the changes in the system of business or in an organization is a serious mistake and a threat to the company. Changes can lead to success or sometimes it can lead to failure. An example of this failure is associated with the system, it is called System Failure. System is the brain of the company. It keeps information needed by the company to assess its performance and help them make decisions. So if the system fails all operations are affected especially if this system is designed to be used by all the departments. If this is the case, then the changes will lead to the failure of the company.

Financial Risk or Cost

is normally any risk associated with any form of financing. Risk is probability of unfavorable condition; in financial sector it is the probability of actual return being less than expected return. There will be uncertainty in every business.

Security Risk

describes employing the concept of risk to the security risk management paradigm to make a particular determination of security orientated events.
is the demarcation of risk, into the security silo, from the broader enterprise risk management framework for the purposes of isolating and analyzing unique events, outcomes and consequences.
Security risk is often, quantitatively, represented as any event that compromises the assets, operations and objectives of an organization. 'Event', in the security paradigm, comprises those undertaken by actors intentionally for purposes that adversely affect the organization.

Data corruption

Data corruption refers to errors in computer data that occur during transmission or retrieval, introducing unintended changes to the original data. Computer storage and transmission systems use a number of measures to provide data integrity, the lack of errors. In general, when there is a Data Corruption, the file containing that data would be inaccessible, and the system or the related application will give an error. For example, if a Microsoft Word file is corrupted, when you try to open that file with MS Word, you will get an error message, and the file would not be opened. Some programs can give a suggestion to repair the file automatically (after the error), and some programs cannot repair it. It depends on the level of corruption, and the in-built functionality of the application to handle the error. There are various causes of the corruption.
Data corruption during transmission has a variety of causes. Interruption of data transmission causes information loss.
If you are going to change the information system of the company you have to plan what type of system you are going to change. You have to consider the factors and issues regarding the change before you implement it. Some of those factors to consider are:
Do you want to change the database?
Are you going to change or upgrade the system?
What type of language will be used for the new system?
The MIS Programmer said that whatever the data is in the system before change, it will be the same data that the users will be able to see or to access.

In general, changing information system has many risks to consider. Because
when changing the system it is the same in developing or improving a new system.


references:

http://dole.com/CompanyInfo/Company_Index.jsp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_systems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_risk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_risk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_corruption