Business Information Systems

There are several types of technologies that exist in businesses to assist in marketing management decision making. Marketers have to deal with price, product, promotion and place. To help with each different marketing factor, different business information systems have been developed. Diagram 1 shows businesses core competencies and the roles that marketing plays and the importance of an effective Business Information System (BIS).

Diagram 1. Business Core Competencies

Pricing decisions can be supported by systems such as online analytical processing used by major companies such as Microsoft (http://msdn.microsoft.com/sql/bi/analysis/). A system such as this assists basing price to remain competitive in the market place.

Another example of a marketing information system is based on sales force automation. This allows a business such as Maybelline to monitor the routine parts of a sales person’s job (Wiley, 2005).

Analysis profit is also of importance to marketing managers. By using business systems companies are able to examine the frequency of customer purchases. This is in use at several hotels such as the St Kilda Road Parkview Hotel, keeping track of regular guests and offering incentives to stay again.

Figure 1. Marketing Decision Support Framework (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com:8100/legacy/college/turban/0471347809/add_material/ch07/marketing.pdf)

Figure 1 shows a flowchart of a marketer’s decision support framework in relation to BIS. Figure 2 shows the in workings of a market information system. It shows the various external factors which need to be controlled in order to make better decisions.

Figure 2. The market information systems and subsystems. (http://www.fao.org/docrep/W3241E/w3241e0a.htm)

The most common form of BIS in marketing is the customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Essex Medical and Forensic services have recently introduced a CRM system (http://download.microsoft.com/documents/customerevidence/25550_Essex_Medical_final.doc).

The company has found many benefits of using such a system such as

• Rapid response times

o Forensic operations are no longer paper-based which often leads to inaccuracies. A CRM system integrates with other business information systems to enable them to “provide the right person with the right medical expertise for the right case”. Using this system enables the company to respond quickly to police requests and evidently speeds up the process of justice.

• Timely