Information Management Strategy

Information Management Strategy
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Information system strategy is one of the most important factors that determine the success of an organisation. If an organisation has an effective information system strategy, it would be able to make effective and efficient decisions on timely basis (Beynon-Davies et al. 2004). With the availability of complete and accurate information, the core management would be able to make decisions that are based on the most recent and relevant information therefore the decisions made by the management would be efficient (Checkland et al., 1998). The following paper would analyze the information systems strategy of The Body Shop and it would also analyze how this organisation is responding to its changing environment by using information systems to rethink its business process.
ORGANISATION OVERVIEW
The Body Shop is a cosmetics company that runs a chain of around 2,400 stores in 61 countries all around the world. The organisation has been exceedingly successful with its products and it has enjoyed successful promotions of its products in the recent past. With an organisation of such large scale, there is bound to be a large flow of information throughout the organisation including the chain of stores. Each store would have its own information such as records of sales and other transactions and considering the number of stores being run the company, the consolidated flow of information would be very vast. The external environment of the company is such that it offers a number of opportunities of expansion of business as the industry is growing rapidly in the markets like Brazil, Eastern Europe and Asia where the purchasing power of the customers is increasing at a fast pace. The goodwill of the company is well established all around the globe and the company also has significant resources. The strategy used by the company to operate successfully in different markets is that of differentiation.
INFORMAITON SYSTEMS STRATEGY
According to the information present on the official website of the company, the company takes extra care for the security of the information that it holds. The information held by the company includes; the financial records of the company, the records of the transactions of the company, and the personal information of the customers of the company which is held by the company as a result of the membership of the customers. The company`s information systems strategy focuses mainly on the protection of the information against loss or theft, as well as unauthorized disclosure, copying or copying. The company uses security safeguards that help the company in ensuring the security of the information it holds. The information held by the company is highly important as it enables the company to determine its business strategy for the future.
The safeguards used by the company include: physical measures such as filing cabinets, restriction of access to offices and company alarm systems; technical tools such as use of encryption, using the best practices prevailing in the industry; organisational controls such as confidentiality agreements, limiting the access to the information on a need-to-know basis, training of staff to ensure that the staff does not compromise on the confidentiality of the information and several security clearances of the information. The organisation also prioritises online security. In order to protect the information held by the organisation from online theft, measures such authentication tools and encryption are used. Firewalls are used in order to protect the servers that hold confidential information from unauthorized use and also to protect the information from unauthorized modification. The organisation uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology in order to ensure that sensitive information like the credit card information of the customers remains secure over the internet (The Body Shop 2012).
The efficient use of information is one of the reasons behind the rapid growth of the organisation in the recent past. The company uses its information system to evaluate new business opportunities and thus the company has been able to utilize the available information for its benefit. The ‘Stages of Growth` model of information systems strategy presented by Nolan may be used to assess the information systems strategy of the company. According to Nolan`s model, the application of Information Technology in an organisation does not take place abruptly but it evolves along with the evolution of the organisation (Gregor 2006). There are six stages that are presented in the model, which are; initiation, contagion, control, integration, data administration, and maturity.
In the first stage that is initiation, information technology is introduced in an organisation and it is not given much importance by the management. The initial software and hardware are not allocated significant proportion of the capital by the management. According to the model, in the first stage the planning and control of IT in the organisation is not comprehensive because other operations of the organisation are given more importance due to the dependence of revenue of the organisation on such operations. The first stage of the model suggests that the organisations emphasize upon cost reduction in its initial stages. It can be said that the same concept introduced by the model applies to The Body Shop as well. The organisation started its business on a small scale and the information technology did not play any significant role in the company when the business was established. Therefore, it can be said that the first stage of Nolan`s model applies to the information systems strategy of The Body Shop.
The second stage of the model is contagion and according to the model this stage leads towards acquisition of additional hardware because the hardware initially acquired reaches its saturation point. The initially acquired hard...