The document discusses key challenges in implementing information technology across various functional areas of business. It provides an overview of common business functional areas such as sales, marketing, finance, human resources, and administration. It then outlines several challenges managers face in implementing IT, such as increasing costs, reliability concerns, integrating digital and non-digital systems, and meeting high customer expectations. The document also discusses controls and procedures that can help secure information systems, as well as other issues like globalization, excessive workloads, talent shortages, rapid technological change, and ensuring on-time and quality project delivery.

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KEY CHALLENGES IMPLEMENTING
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
IN TO VARIOUS FUNCTIONAL AREAS
Information systems have become as integrated into our daily business activities as accounting, finance,
operations management, marketing, human resource management, or any other major business function.
Information systems and technologies are vital components of successful businesses and organizations -
some would say they are business imperatives.
Information technologies, including Internet-based information systems, are playing vital and expanding
roles in business. Information technology can help all kinds of businesses improve the efficiency and
effectiveness of their business processes, managerial decision making, and workgroup collaboration,
which strengthens their competitive positions in rapidly changing marketplaces. This benefit occurs
irrespective of whether the information technology is used to support product development teams,
customer support processes, e-commerce transactions, or any other business activity. Information
technologies and systems are, quite simply, an essential ingredient for business success in today’s
dynamic global environment. (O'Brien, 2011).
Functional Areas of Business
Organisations are built about a group of functions, each of which provides support for the operations of
the business. Different functional areas of an organization are:
 Sales
 Purchase
 Marketing
 Finance
 Human Resource
 Administration
 MIS
 Sales: The sales department responsible for support functions, such as sales forecasting, sales
compensation, sales automation and the process of managing orders and quotations…Maintain
sales record, Monitor stock control, Keeping customer records up to date Liaise with other
departments, Follow-up with customers, Preparing quotations Organising sales promotions,
Providing technical advice, Selling the product or service to customers
 Purchase: The procurement of raw materials, machinery, equipment, and supplies are being
handled by the Purchasing Department. Its tasks also vary depending on the type of business. In a
manufacturing company, for instance, the Purchasing Department will take care of getting all the
necessary materials for production. On the other hand, it will make sure that there are enough
products on the shelves or in the warehouses for retail companies. Whatever the case may be, this
department sees to it that the materials needed are of the right quantity, the right price, and are
available at the right time.
 Marketing: This business department plays a vital role not only in promoting the business as well
as its mission and vision. In some case, it may be integrated with the sales function. It starts plans
and follows through with new products and services. This is supported by advertising and
promotional programmes working together with advertising and public relations agencies and the
media. (Functional areas… 2018).
 Finance and accounts: Finance and accounts is very important functional area in any
organization. Keeping the records of all the transactions is the main functions carried out by this
department. Maintaining of the budget, the bills, profit and loss accounts, EPF, ETF, maintains
and provides accounting and finance services of the organization.

2. Management Information System (5567)-2019
 Preparing financial statements
 Account department prepares interim and annual financial statements. Financial
statements help to make decisions.
 Checking and paying invoices received.
 Prepare staff salaries and etc.
 Managing payments
 Information needs of the Finance and Accounts
 Salary information of the employees
 the EPF, ETF
 the economic stability of the organization
 Interim and annual financial statements
 Functions of Human Resources
 Recruitment and selection of employees: In here analyze what type of employees need
and how many employees need for analyze the institute by comparing with past
employment. After selects the employees by taking interviews, ability test and personal
test.
 Employee performance management: This evaluation helps to know about the employees’
strength and weakness. According to their performance, HR department provide
promotions, increment their salary.
 Employee services: In this function provide services to employees such as bonuses,
extend the sick leave, Sick pay, provide catering facilities, health and safety and give
entertainment stuffs and etc.
 Dismissal details: Maintain the dismissal information. This means employees details who
left from the organization or who want to leave from the organization or who took out
from particular job by the institute.
 Training and development: HR department have to analyze what are the training required
for this job or employees and identify what skills required or need to be improved. The
training goal should be observable and measurable and give special first aid training.
(Essays, 2013).
Challenges Faced By Managers
Managers face variety of challenges in implementing the IT in their organizations. Different
organizations have different requirements of implementing IT based on their business operations.
Keeping in view all desired requirements of the organization including financial requirements, IT
systems requirements, applications development and deployment, employees training to use those
applications in certain time, internal and external data level access at different levels, security of data
information and data management system in case of any disaster. Data security is very important to
managers in the competitive market.
Information Systems requires certain controls to be implemented for its smooth and effective
functionality. Information security managers can put these controls in place to ensure the system is
secure against threats, exposure, and risks.
 A threat can be any possible unwanted occurrence or event that could harm the Accounting
Information System or the business.
 The exposure is the possible loss of money that would occur as a result of the threat becoming
a reality.
 The risk is the chance that the threat will become reality.

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 The controls that secure information systems against unfavourable outcomes are as follows:
- Preventive Controls; are designed to discourage errors or irregularities from
occurring. They are proactive controls that help to ensure departmental objectives are
being met
- Input Controls; Input controls checks upon the information that is being entered into
the system.
- Processing Controls; Processing controls checks whether the data is processed
properly after it is entered in to the system.
- Output Controls; The output controls ensure the completeness, validity, and accuracy
of the data in various output mediums.
- Storage Controls; The storage controls ensures that the data in stored in such a
manner that it cannot be tampered with.
- Files Controls; Files controls reduce the errors that occur due the improper storage of
files.
- Hardware Security; Hardware security control is very important as any damage or
harm to the hardware would mean that the failure of the system therefore the
hardware for the information system must be kept in a secure place and with only
reliable and relevant personal having access to it. Proper protection against high
temperature or power failures and incidents should be made along with backup
support.
- Standardization; Standardization controls involves usage of already laid down
standards by the developers and operators for the methodology of the system
development and operation respectively.
- Detective controls; are designed to find errors or irregularities after they have
occurred
- Testing; Testing is required to detect any problems occurring in the system and is thus
performed before it is made operational. Testing can shows problems that can occur
in the processing and any other errors. It is recommended that testing should be
performed on a routine basis or after any new developments.
- Training; the training of the data processing staff ensures proper functioning of the
system. The awareness of the staff also helps in pointing any defects in the system
which could then be resolved.
- Operation Controls; Operation controls in Dean Plc are controls which record what
computer systems and the employees have been doing. The operational controls can
include tasks such as rotation of shifts, duty logs, manual of operating instructions,
attendance controls and computer logs, etc. which can referred to whenever a
problem is reported.
- Corrective controls: When any problem in the system is detected, the management
along with the help of Business Analysts and Expert can take relevant steps to correct
the problems in the system.
 Certain procedure can be set for reoccurrence of the problems.
Apart from security concerns, there are several other challenges and issues associated with
managing information systems. These are:
 Increase costs of a technological solution (developing, implementing and maintaining of the
information technologies and systems)
 Reliability for certain processes (information systems require thorough testing before they
could be used and are difficult prone to errors leading to potential losses)
 Software tools are not fixed but constantly evolving (information communication technology
tools require timely upgrades to meet prevailing standards)
 Integrating digital and non-digital sales and production information (for e-commerce
activities)

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 Customer fear of personal information being used wrongly (privacy issues)
 Customer have high expectations regarding efficiency and real time responses
 Vulnerability to fraud and other crimes
 Higher employee training required to effectively using the information technology.
 Another technological concern regarding information technology is the high volume of data
generated from its use and its management. Organizations are required to create robust
middleware application that are capable of handling the high amount of data and route it to
the appropriate information systems in a timely manner. (Essays, Nov. 2018).
Companies may choose to use information systems strategically, or they may be content to use IT to
support efficient everyday operations. If a company emphasized strategic business uses of information
technology, its management would view IT as a major competitive differentiator. They would then
devise business strategies that use IT to develop products, services, and capabilities that give the
company major advantages in the markets in which it competes.
Information technology plays a major role in reengineering most business processes. The speed,
information-processing capabilities, and connectivity of computers and Internet technologies can
substantially increase the efficiency of business processes, as well as communications and
collaboration among the people responsible for their operation and management. For example, the
order management process illustrated in Fig.1.1 is vital to the success of most organizations.
Fig.1.1 The order management process of several business processes
and crosses the boundaries traditional business functions.
Information technology can enable an organization to develop relationships with its customers in
virtual communities that help it be an agile innovator. Information technologies enable an
organization to partner with its suppliers, distributors, contract manufacturers, and others via
collaborative portals and other Web-based supply chain systems that significantly improve its agility
in exploiting innovative organization opportunities. (Laudon & Laudon, 2014).
So, IT has permitted has permitted possible integration in many areas such as:
 Teams within the organisation. For example, design, engineering and manufacturing people
can be connected together through local and/or global networks to work as a team focusing on
one product, as done by Xerox.
 End-to-end links between organisations. For instance, a supplier’s shipping department can be
connected to the buyer’s purchasing department for business transactions. This shifts the
boundary of the organisation out to overlap with others, thus creating a virtual organisation.
 Electronic alliances. An organisation may perform one stage or part of a manufacturing or
design task and subcontract either a specific task or the whole stage to another (electronically
linked) organisation.

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 Electronic markets. Here, coordination within a few or all organisations gives way to an open
market. For example, travel agents can reserve seats electronically from all major carriers,
and therefore can look for a best price for the customer. Thus the reservation system acts like
an electronic market. (C1 Management Information Systems, 2012).
Challenges of IT to Business
There primary challenges faced due to Information Technology are:
- Globalization: Virtually every company today must compete globally and the markets are
opening up all around the globe. The benefits of a global economy as it provide a wider
customer base and the potential for greater profits is when an organization deals with the
reality of increased.
- Excess Workload: Customers are becoming more demanding as the competition growth
increases. The increase in expectations is coupled with the reality of lower IT budgets which
is providing more service for less money
- Talent has been referred as both a challenge and an opportunity. Demand for IT professionals
is growing annually and the organization has been encouraged to balance gender ration when
giving opportunities.
- Change: it is said that the only constant is change. IT will be faced with the challenge of
finding that perfect balance between keeping up with change and not changing for its own
sake. Change is predictable; and change is good; but the change must be consistent with
corporate objectives .
- On-time Performance and Quality is one major challenge in most companies delivering
less than 50% of their IT projects on time and within specified budget. A main reason might
be the alleged need to establish both the budget and the deadline well before the scope of the
project is fully understood and due to that many projects are actually set-up to fail from the
extremely beginning. That affects delivering a quality product as the goal of the project and
quality has been compromised for the sake of expediency and profit.
- Outsourcing and Off Shoring seems to be predictable however but it is actually becoming a
necessity and it is a business fact of life in growing global economy. Outsourcing will
definitely become a wider advantage and a challenge in the mere future.
- Project Management is one of the challenges in IT, including security and risk.
Collaboration will become more prevalent and important e.g. instead of each discipline
delivering separate designs for their particular scope of the project, there is actually seeing a
greater degree of those disciplines working together on the same technological model of the
building design. Communication, in this case, and creating successful collaboration
partnerships is the key to success.
- Meeting Customer Expectation will be the main business challenge. Introducing E-business
can systematically reduce transaction costs and can eliminate many of the costs that have long
assumed to be more or less fixed in meeting customer centricity. Becoming customer centric
in order to develop an effective e-business strategy; a company must make the shift from
being product-centric to becoming customer-centric. By placing customer needs at the centre
of every decision and tactic, the entire e-business strategy will become more effective and
profitable for the company, by fostering an atmosphere of customer loyalty and long-term
relationships.

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- Data Protection and Security is also another critical challenge to business is how to protect
data from any number of internal and external threats. Hackers want to steal it and disasters
like floods, fire, earthquakes and storms can destroy it and dissatisfied employees might want
to erase it after selling it to your competition and also it might be accidentally deleted. In
order to ensure that organization data is as protected as possibly from hackers and those who
shouldn’t have access to it, then install a well thought out backup plan to ensure that data is
backed up should it get lost and to ensure that data can be recovered.
REFERENCES
C1 Management Information Systems. (2012). Vancouver: Commonwealth of Learning.
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samples/information-technology/functions-of-different-functional-areas-information-technology-essay.php?vref=1
Essays, UK. (November 2018). Management Challenges with Information Systems. Retrieved from https://www.ukessays.com/services/example-
essays/management/management-challenges-information-systems.php?vref=1
Functional areas of business: Business departments explained. (2018). Retrieved from http://www.biznas.co.uk/business/functional-areas-of-business-explained/
Laudon, Kenneth C. and Laudon, Jane P. (2014). Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm, 13th
ed. Boston: Pearson Education.
O'Brien, James A. (2011). Management Information Systems - New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.