HI5019 Strategic Information Systems T2 2018

Introduction 

Strategic Information System defines a set of guidelines which helps the organisation to set plans and strategies. The main objectives are to enable the entrepreneurship to cope up with the environmental changes and utilize it for benefits.  In order to analyse the strategic information system, Aqua Mountain Water Filtration has chosen. This water filtration industry is researching with modern purification process and the latest technology. The main motto of the company is to deliver the best water filtration system, ensure the clients that they receive the correct filtration. This company supplies a complete range of filtration equipment for tank water and for the town.

Findings and analysis  

Background of the company 

Aqua Mountain Water Filtration is situated at Tamborine Mountain QLD in Australia.  This company provides a range of water filtration equipment for the tank and town. This company uses the latest filtration with modern technology which removes all the chemical cocktail and microorganism from the water. The company range includes bench top filter units, under sink units, alkalizing bench top water fountains, whole house UV system, and other units (Aqua Mountain 2018)    

Industry identification of the company

Aqua Mountain Water Filtration is working in the water filtration industry. In Australia, due to lack of rainfall water supply industry faced challenges. The government focused on implementing the water security as the level of the dam dropped. The interest in augmentation of water supply also grew. Modern technology for purifying the water from salt water, stormwater and wastewater has emerged. The annual growth of water treatment service industry is 2.7%  and the revenue of the water purifier industry is $6bn (IBIS World 2018).

PESTLE analysis 

Political Factors	? The political environment is  in favour  of the    home  companies in Australia ? In Australia, the government has levied  extra taxes   for  research and development ? Even, the government  has levied extra  regulation  on the  companies   regarding  the use of machines ? Government  has   announced  for   power  saving  policy  which  has greatly affected the manufacturing department who has to design  machine with low power consumption
Economic Factor	?   Water purifier  companies have slow  growth rate ?  Attracting  foreign  revenue  by  expanding  in  new  and  developing markets ? 2.7billion  is  the  revenue of this  industry ? Annual  GDP  rate in  Australia  is 2.8% which  increases    in hand money  of the  citizens ?  The interest rate in  Australia  is 1.5%  which  deliver  better  growth  opportunity  to the company
Social Factor	? Due to the lack of potable drinking water use of water  purifiers increases ? Water-related disease ? Low social awareness
Technology Factor	? New advancements  in  water purifier  technology in Australia ? Filter the water with nanotechnology ? Use of  Photo catalytic   in  purifying water ? Sunsping system   technology   is used  by  other competitors (Schaltegger et al. 2016)
Legal Factor	? The  companies must abide by legislation like Water Act 2007, Water Efficiency Labelling and Standard Act 2005
Environmental Factor	? Water purification requires  high  consumption of power which   negatively affects the environmental sustainability ? Alternative  power  is  being  used  for  operating   water purifiers

Table 1: Pestle Analysis

(Source: Created by author)

Environment   of the industry  

1. i)  Power of suppliers

The power of the suppliers is moderate for Aqua Mountain Water Filtration. Cassidy (2016) asserted that the water purifier industry provides a lot of facility in the leading time and also maintains the flow of the supply chain. As this company is small so the amount of investment is average.

1. ii)  Power of buyers

Power of buyers refers that the power is in the hands of the buyers. This power is high for  Aqua Mountain Water Filtration. Galliers and Leidner (2014) stated that the buyer or the customer can bargain from various products available in the market and the other available local companies who provide similar products with same features.  

iii)  Potential entrants

The potential entrants are low for Aqua Mountain Water Filtration. As it is a small company so less number of investors invests in this company. The company needs to develop effective strategy regarding the threats of the potential entrants.   

1. iv) Substitute products and competitors

Aqua Mountain Water Filtration recently uses latest technology for water purification. This implementation has created a potential threat to the company. There is no substitution for the water purifier so the product substitution rate is low but the competition is high (Coltman et al. 2015).

Competitive rivalry

Competition faced by the company 

Aqua Mountain Water Filtration provides excellent quality of water.  The purified water is fresh, clean and affordable. It also provides alkaline which is ideal for detox, health and for longevity. Dwivedi (2015) pointed out that the water is antioxidant which helps to remove the free radicals.  The purified water helps the cells to release waste toxic. The water filtration process contains purification, alkalisation, ionisation and hydrogen enrichment. The competition is high for Aqua Mountain Water Filtration as they provide the best town and tank water filtration system. The competitors of Aqua Mountain Water Filtration are my water filter, Aqua safe water filtration system and waterway. All the companies provide the best water purifier with the latest technology so the competition is very tough for Aqua Mountain Water Filtration.

Opportunities and threats of the company 

Aqua Mountain Water Filtration can use gravity purifier as it has a high demand. According to Qrunfleh and Tarafdar (2014) the awareness of the gravity purifier is high and the cost of this purifier is low.  So instead of purifying the water with modern technology people can use gravity purifier. The spare parts and the service for the water purifiers are high. In Australia, the importance and demand for the water purifiers are rising.  

Aqua Mountain Water Filtration is focused on UV purifiers. As the competition is high for the Aqua Mountain Water Filtration the threats are also high. Due to the complaint of the quality of the services and the spare parts the brand value of Aqua Mountain Water Filtration is dropping. Naturally, it hampers the brand value of the company.  

Analysis 

Tangible or Intangible Resources of the Firm 

Tangible resources

Being a manufacturing company responsible for the manufacture of potable water, Aqua Mountain Water Filtration has quite a few numbers of tangible resources. Their tangible resources include:

The filtration Machine:

The filtration machine in the company does a 7 step filtration of water. In the first step water is passed through activated alumina which absorbs fluoride particles. KDF85 filters bacteria and other heavy metal content of water. As per Popovi? et al. (2014), KDF85 is the costliest filtration system in the present world. Further, the catalytic carbons remove the chloramines and the volatile organic compounds. The tourmaline layer detoxifies the water and enriches the taste and softness. The ceramic magnets maintain the neutral pH of water by passing it through a magnetic field. The O-Dobi beads increase the hydrogen content in the water making it more pure. The crystal Quartz layer of the water enriches its oxidation/reduction effect and gives the water a better taste (aquamountain.com.au, 2018).

Figure 1: Filter of Aqua Mountain

(Source: aquamountain.com.au, 2018)

Intangible resources

Asset of Aqua Mountain:

The main asset of Aqua Mountain is their products. They develop the best quality of water filtration systems in Australia. This has enabled the company in increasing the amount of profit by 30% in the last twenty years. The revenue of the company has increased by 25% and this has enabled the company to work harder on the manufacture of more developed filtration systems (Salmela 2016). 

Identification of the capabilities of the company

The main concern of the company is to provide clean water to the people of Australia. The water that comes from the reservoirs, rivers and lakes that is Surface Water and from deep wells and artesian that is Groundwater is the only sources of water in Australia. The company aims to filter these types of water in such a way so that they become fit for drinking.

Further the company tries to provide slightly alkaline water to the people. Water filtered through the products of Aqua Mountain usually has the pH of 8.0-8.5, which is slightly alkaline, whereas the pH of pure water is 7.0 (Altameem et al. 2014). According to Aqua Mountain, the alkaline water increases the alkalinity of the blood in our body and helps in fighting the toxins and acidic components present or mixed in the blood regularly.

Analysis of competency 

Identification of competency tests	Analysis
Significant Value	Aqua Mountain products provide significant value to the company. This is because the filtration system that they manufacture is of superior quality and is able to reduce toxic and harmful impurities from any type of water. Moreover, according to Kitsios and Kamariotou (2016), the filtration candles that are used by the company in the filtration tanks are easily replaceable although costly.
Domination on Market Share	Aqua Mountain products have low amount of shares in the market. This is because the company is very young and they are still a local company. However, it can be predicted that the quality of the products and the goodwill of the company can enable it it have good amount of shares if they maintain this goodwill.
Imitation by Competitors	The products of Aqua Mountain cannot be easily imitated by the competitors. This is because of the research that they have done behind the development of the filtration candle. The filtration candle has very measured amounts of the materials used and thus is able to provide water of such alkalinity. Water more than an alkalinity level of 8.5 is harmful and thus other companies cannot imitate the product by seeing or buying it.
Competitive Advantage	The products of Aqua Mountain are competitively much advanced than the products of similar companies like Puretec and Waterways. As per the view of Arvidsson et al. (2014), their products do not use such advanced system of purification and medical tests have also proven that the waters of Aqua Mountain are more pure after Filtration.

Table 2: competency analysis of Aqua Mountain

(Source: Created by Author)

Proposed information system for the proper functioning of the company

As the company is a local company the revenue of the company is still less compared to the companies like puretec and waterways. However, the company should build systematic software for the storage of the feedback from the end of the customers. As the company is a local manufacturing company the software will be of utmost importance to them as it will allow them to increase the competitive advantage of the company. The feedback of the customers should be stored in the software and the customer service executives should regularly achieve those feedbacks and make the required changes in the systems of the filtration.

Evaluation of the proposed system and its functioning 

The functioning of the software will be based on the following process:

Figure 2: Functioning of the proposed Software

(Source: Created by Author)

Functioning:

The software receives data from the customers. The software then sorts the data into the departments that is concerned with the feedback. The department data is then achieved by the employees of the concerned departments and then the required steps for the development of the products is done.

Recommendations

Aqua Mountain Water Filtration can use the SunSpring system for purifying the water. This water purification system can purify 5000 gallons of water with just a battery which is running on renewable energy.  The Australian government has focused on the use of renewable energy. This water treatment technology known as SunSpring uses a seven-mile membrane to stop the microbiological toxins.  The new government policies are the less energy consumption machines and adapting these new advanced machines.  Thus, in order to get competitive complying governmental regulations, the concerned company can use this particular recommendation.

The company should try to expand themselves into other parts of Australia. This is because of the fact that Aqua Mountain is a local company with promising technologies. It is quite possible that due to the small reach of the company the major amount of population of the company is unable to know about their products. If the company expand themselves, the products will become more familiar to the people and it will result in the increase in the amount of sales and profit earned by the company. This will result in the increase in the total revenue of the company.

Conclusion 

In this report, Aqua Mountain Water Filtration has chosen for analysing the strategic information systems. This water purification company uses the latest technology for purifying the water.  This company provides the best purification system for town and tank water. The pestle analysis of the company and the environmental condition for the company has described. The competitors of the company are analysed and from that opportunities and threats for the company are described.  The type of the resource of the firm has identified. Finally, proper information system is recommended for the company for providing the better service to the customer. 

Reference list

Altameem, A.A., Aldrees, A.I. and Alsaeed, N.A., 2014, October. Strategic information systems planning (SISP). In Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science, 1(2), pp. 22-24.

Aqua mountain. 2018, Get to Know What’s in Your Water and How Best to Filter It…., viewed on 18/9/2018 < https://aquamountain.com.au/>

Arvidsson, V., Holmström, J. and Lyytinen, K., 2014. Information systems use as strategy practice: A multi-dimensional view of strategic information system implementation and use. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 23(1), pp.45-61. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0963868714000055

Cassidy, A., 2016. A practical guide to information systems strategic planning. Florida: Auerbach Publications.

Coltman, T., Tallon, P., Sharma, R. and Queiroz, M., 2015. Strategic IT alignment: twenty-five years on. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 2(1), pp. 52-59. Available from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/jit.2014.35

Dwivedi, Y.K., Wastell, D., Laumer, S., Henriksen, H.Z., Myers, M.D., Bunker, D., Elbanna, A., Ravishankar, M.N. and Srivastava, S.C., 2015. Research on information systems failures and successes: Status update and future directions. Information Systems Frontiers, 17(1), pp.143-157.

Galliers, R.D. and Leidner, D.E., 2014. Strategic information management: challenges and strategies in managing information systems. Abingdon: Routledge.

Kitsios, F. and Kamariotou, M., 2016, September. Decision support systems and business strategy: a conceptual framework for strategic information systems planning. In IT Convergence and Security (ICITCS), 2016 6th International Conference on (pp. 1-5). IEEE.

Kummer, T.F. and Schmiedel, T., 2016. Reviewing the Role of Culture in Strategic Information Systems Research: A Call for Prescriptive Theorizing on Culture Management. CAIS, 38, p.5.

Popovi?, A., Hackney, R., Coelho, P.S. and Jakli?, J., 2014. How information-sharing values influence the use of information systems: An investigation in the business intelligence systems context. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 23(4), pp.270-283.

Qrunfleh, S. and Tarafdar, M., 2014. Supply chain information systems strategy: Impacts on supply chain performance and firm performance. International Journal of Production Economics, 147, pp.340-350.

Salmela, H., 2016. Analysing business losses caused by information systems risk: a business process analysis approach. In Enacting Research Methods in Information Systems (pp. 180-216). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Schaltegger, S., Hansen, E.G. and Lüdeke-Freund, F., 2016. Business models for sustainability: Origins, present research, and future avenues. International Journals, 2(1), pp.26-98. Available from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1086026615599806

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