Question

Consider a small growing company that distributes kitchen supplies. Customers are primarily small retailers such as kitchen specialty stores, hardware stores, and other types of home retail stores. Managers keep track of all customers, orders, and inventory information using a spreadsheet.

- Identify and describe one operational level decision, one managerial level decision, one strategic decision that can be made within this company. Explain your reasoning briefly.

- Describe two types of reports that can be produced by an MIS to help managers make recurring decisions in managing a function or the entire business. Use the context of the business scenario, provide an example of each type.

Answer 1

Operational level decision - The store can start some branches on main cities around to have more customers. This will allow the rapid growth of the company. Initial investment will be high, but the long term return is increased and can be considered as an asset for future.

Managerial level decision - Having more workers to new branches and more distributors to supply the products will be great.

Strategic level decision - Starting an webstore on multiple platform like web and mobile application will take the businnes to next level. Customers can check the webstore for the new products details and make orders there itself. This combined with increasing number of distributors will take the businnes to broader areas.

MIS reports :

1. A report of the sales of each category of products on new branches can be created. This will let the company know what kind of product have more demand in particular area and company can provide more of it to the same area. For example, a branch in the city X is having more sales of product kitchen knives, company can produce different types of knives for that particular branch.

2. A report on the sales happening over webstore and mobile application can be tracked. The usage of webstores are high today and the evaluation can enable the company to make new strategic movements on the web platforms. For example, if the customers are requesting products to far region, a delivery system can be adopted.