iLLuMiNaTa - The Enlighten One's

Subject: Assignment 2 (Due: July 7, 2009, before 01:00pm) Fri Jun 19, 2009 9:30 am

Based on the organization(s) that you visited, what do you think are the risks associated with business and IS/IT change? (1000 words)

(Before anything else I would to apologize for the late reply post regarding this topic.)

When there is a change a risk is expected and business world is not an exception to this aspect. In business, taking risk is not new strategy if want to improve and to be able to compete to the fast evolving world of technology. An efficient strategy to be able to cope up with this scheme, changing or implementing an Information System is advisable.

What is an Information System?

Everything will be clearer if I’ll define first what an Information System is. So, according to our class discussion an Information System is more than technology, more than a computerized system that enables to automate all business processes. An information System is the combination of PEOPLEWARE + HARDWARE + SOFTWARE. It focuses in three dimensions which are the management, organization and technology.

Why Information System?

Business world is a very competitive phase of the real situation of today’s living. To be able to have an edge with other business firm, having an Information System is a great help. With this, an organization can automate its business processes, it is very useful in coordinating organization’s activities, how it support the decision making, synchronization of knowledge from different management levels, functions and business firms. This also gives more importance to the customer relationship; automate the flow of information to manage and coordination of the organization to its other business partner if any.

What are the risks associated with IS/IT change?

• Integrity risk, this refers to the information being vulnerable. While developing a new system the information is expose and a great possibility that it is incomplete, inaccurate and unreliable. The organization sets the standard requirements and policies to be use in the process of development of the said system thus data gathering must be collected cautiously, for this affects the system consistency. This aspect should not be bypass, for this may result to IT failure.

• Organizational risks, pertain to the resistance of the people within the organization to use the available technology. The end-users may find reluctant to operate it due to unfamiliarity of the system. The users and technology should cooperate hand in hand in this way we can say the system is fully utilized and the IT benefit is maximized.

• According to what I have read from the internet another risk is the business risks. This focuses on the financial or the monetary risks in an organization. Changing the Information System of an organization requires a lot of resources in the process as well as time yet the results or the success is not guaranteed. This attempt may improve the functionalities, efficiency and competence of the company’s system yet it may also pull it down resulting to bankruptcy.

• Security jeopardy is another thing to be considered. In here, the exposure of the significant and confidential information is at stake. There must be an access control and data manipulation restriction especially to those hackers which are not authorized to gain access to the company’s information.

• Another threat that must be considered is the Technical Risks. Here, we are talking about the capable of the end user of manipulating the said information system. It is said to be the one of the reasons why implementing an Information System in an organization fails because of the end-users. Lacking of the capability, skills, knowledge and ability to maximize the functions of the designed system and how to use it, the system would be useless and will only a liability to the organization. Thus, this requires intensive training and orientation of the system to all its users, which also means this will another process for the organization to make and this also include some financial aspects.