BDM INDIVIDUAL REPORT ON PAUL AGRO SYSTEMS

DONE BY;

Introduction

Any organization has to make right decisions at any process of their growth in order
to go over the right road to reach their mission. Since the environment they are
operating is completely dynamic it is very much essential for them to choose the
correct decisions that are going to determine their future.
It can be any aspect of the organization like the Finance, HR, IT, etc any part of the
firm needs decisions to be made. Any decision made is influenced by a lot of the
factors and always they should ensure that the right decision should be made at the
most correct time in order to move the firm in the positive direction of growth.

Decision making is very much essential and decides about the organization as
choosing the right decision from the set of the alternatives decides the organizations
future. (Salaman G.., 2001)

Companys Profile

Paul agro is an emerging organization in India with an unique product and industry to
manufacture organic fertilizers. They have a very good growth rate as they are
involved in the process of manufacturing organic fertilizers at a very low cost
compared to the chemical fertilizers. More over they are free from the harmful
chemicals and hence they have a very good reception in India. With in a very short
time they have a very good growth rate and huge profit of nearly crore Indian rupees.
They are also in to the research and development of the new kind of the fertilizers and
products taking their products to international heights and creating business values.

Their Challenges and Decision making

Information Technology

The major domain of this company is manufacturing the organic fertilizers which has
a very high demand in todays world market. The people have understood the need for
buying the vegetables and the fruits prepared using the natural organic fertilizers
which contain no chemicals and hence this product has a universal appeal. More over
since they are a SME and their profit last year was considerably very good in terms of
Indian rupees they are now planning for the technological growth which can take
them over the international markets and attract the suppliers and buyers all over the
world.

Currently they are planning for an intranet facility and it is very good for them
because of the amount of advantage they gain on going for this growth.

The main challenge in the process of the decision making depends on understanding
the mind of the management and determining the boundaries of the organization
before going in for the process of the decision making. (Zhang, G. 2003).

Intranet facilities:

The intranet is a facility which enables connection of the individual computers with in
the firm. That is they can form a private network with in the firm in order to share the
information among them. They currently have only autonomous computers and due to
this the communication with in the firm becomes very difficult. They are not able to
share the information among them and they have to use pen drives or telephones for
the process of the communication even though they have provisions for the intranet.
In this model each and every user is given a separate user id and pass word; he has the
permission to access the specific information depending up on his role like manager
or employee. They already have an Oracle database which can be centralized using
the common server which is going to cost them as the number of the computers here
is less than 50 and it is a small network. Hence here there is no problem of huge
traffic congestion due to large amount of the transactions.
More over it helps the employees to share the information very safely at a very low
cost and with high security.

Communication:

Since they are in a process of very good growth and expansion it is very much
essential for them to communicate and make strategic decisions and this is possible
when there is a very good communication between all the levels of the management.
They can configure their own chat applets, e mail servers and bulletin boards using
which they can share all the essential information. They can post all the needed
information on the bulletin boards and can argue with others virtually which is not
possible due to the functional and positional differences in the real time like the
employees feeling difficult to communicate with the upper levels of the management.
The information's on the web site can be made available to their customers by making
them accessible on the world wide website of Paul Agro also. Thus any important
information can be directly passed from the intranet to the website with the proper
authorization from the manager and system administrator to the customers and the
suppliers. Suppose if they have excess stock and if they are ready to give discounts for
the bulk purchase this information can be sent to the suppliers and also put on the web
site in seconds. Thus this Intranet serves as a means for integrating the entire business
facilitating the process of the internal and the external communication with the clients
and the suppliers.

This is a very low investment in terms of money as this can be obtained for a very low
cost but in terms of the results it is very high.
Quick share of data and immediate update of the information is possible because any
document or the message updated can be made to be viewable by every one in
seconds which might have taken quite a long time and expense when communicated
through telephone or in the form of the circulars.

Since the chairman of the organization is in the verge of huge expansion this is a very
good option for them to expand as this is going to improve their organizational culture
and pave way for new strategic ideas.

This is not going to put a huge financial burden on them as this technology can be
made possible at a very low affordable cost of 10, 000 to 15,000 Indian rupees which
comes around just 200 British Pounds. The technologies they have now can be
extended and reused for this process like the existing computers and the server for
hosting their web site.

In the recent meetings Chairman was concerned about the changes to bring in the web
sites and some of the suggested changes to their web site are;

Incorporate more amount of live graphics and images that will make the web page
more live and professional.
In order to attract the international buyers they can also go in for the process of
posting all their ads on the social networking sites like You tube and Facebook. They
can also start their own blog and threads in social networking sites and provide those
links in their web site. The international suppliers will gain in an advantage to view
the external comments about the organization and will essentially gain in a good will
about the firm; thus enhancing the current business opportunities.
The website currently lacks the facility for the online purchase and order and in order
to emerge as an essential business model they have to plan for the process of
contacting Pay Pal and also other banks in order to enable the provision for the online
transfer of the funds. Suppose if any supplier from Russia is ordering for a bulk
amount of the product no provision is present in the web site for online fund transfer
and this is possible by going in for the Pay Pal which is very low cost solution for the
process of the money transfers. They can also seek the help of the local State bank
which is now expanding all over the world and will essentially help in the process of
the safe money transactions online. They should ensure that the transactions are safe
and it is essential that they take the certifications for the safety and security standards.

Their recent decision to go in for the ERP implementation is not advisable for them
because the cost of the ERP is very high and since they are only coming under the
category of the SME sector it is better for them to efficiently use the open source
ERPs and a lot of other open sources are available online for all the business
processes like schedulers, production managers and inventory managers. They can
initially attain efficiency by using these tools rather than going in for a large scale IT
investment. They can also pay for the services using the cloud based services and use
them like the SaaS technologies where they can use the costlier software as a service.

The main role of the managers in the process of the decision making is to improve
their organization and work on the strategies to improve the process of the decision
making. They should always resolve the cardinal issues and focus on the process of
the decision making. (Yates, J. 2003).

Conclusion and Recommendations:

They have earned a very good growth rate in the market and hence they are in the
process of looking for technological growth. Since they are under the category of
SME they dont have very huge revenues and now only they are in the process of the
expansion. Hence it is essential for them to start up as a small organization and slowly
plan for big expansions.

It is very promising that they are planning for their intranet as they can help them
provide very good communication facilities at a very low cost and also help in
improve their communication and the process of the business decision making.

Similarly it is highly recommended that they add the facilities of the online
transactions in to their web site to facilitate the international buyers and also to add
the links to the social networking sites to their web site. Using this they can gain more
clients from the international market and also they can gain support from their clients
through the feed backs posted providing an opportunity for them to improve
themselves. This can help them in the process of gathering the opinion of the clients
and they can come to know about their products with out spending more on the
technologies. They can also involve in the process of conducting online surveys
among the clients and international for their expectations on the new products those
are under the development; these opinion are going to serve as valuable opinion for
them for aligning the technology with the business.

Finally it is not the right time for them to go in for very big implementations like Data
ware housing and ERP as they will cost them more; and it is better they go in for the
open sources and the help of the cloud computing where they can purchase the
software as a service.
References and Bibliography

1. BP Info systems Official Website. [Online]. Available at<

www.bpinfosystems.com/ > [Accessed 26 March, 2010].
2. BP Engg Works Official Website. Core Competency Skills[Online]. Available
at< http://www.bpengworks.com/ > [Accessed 26 March, 2010].
3. Salaman G.., (2001). Decision Making for Business. 2nd ed. SAGE
Publications, UK
4. Yates, J. (2003). Decision management: how to assure better decisions in your
company. 3RD Edition, New York, NY: Wiley Publishers.
5. Zhang, G. (2003). Cognition-Driven Decision Support for Business
Intelligence., Springer, Germany.