Problem Analysis, Recommendations, & Conclusion

Problem

As one of the most successful wireless companies in the world,T-mobile seems its whole system runs good and there is no deadly problem. But it has some problem with their management technology. This lead to waste of their human resources and it caused the inefficient workflows, and rise of cost.

Silos are becoming more of an issue in this high speed world. One of the problems that come with this is not letting build a relationship with the customer, not because the company doesn’t want to. Why? Because there no way of tracking that customer information, wants, and needs. Enterprise systems are the way to build an internal system on how to transfer information from all departments to each customer that has an account with us. By having this it will have a smooth flow of information and directions to each employee on how to make the company perform better and increase their target market by identifying certain patterns of current customer. The type of system that would be best fit for our needs increase sales and decision making would be a management information system that will allow to view reports that will be helpful to see on how the company expects sells and goals, with that information, it could make us make a strong structured decision on important issues concerning employees and customers. Also with a management information system, it will have a clear overview on the day to day business to know exactly on what problems need solutions. The types of venders being uses here will be SAP, in order to have management input on the day to day business. Also Siegel so it could track certain patterns on customers to offer promotions and increase their value.

This is an inter-organizational application that allows Senior and Junior management have a better understanding on where the company stands. Using an Enterprise 2.0 model will help us strong business relationships with other business venders, customer and employees. Using this will make the things searching for information will make it easier to find with a structured content. Allows the people have to hand out information with to certain with the proper authorization to do so. And easier access to customers’ accounts that will allows knowing their needs and wants which will drive business.

T-Mobile is currently using a software called “Quikview”:

which allows employee to enter customer account and have an overview of the status of the account, which it depends on the last time they got an upgrade on a phone, billing, and their history on their account so we can see customer memos which tell us times they called or came in the store with an summary on what they spoke about that time. This gives us knowledge about the customer account and history to have a better understanding on what they need. Quikview also has a link for “streamline” which is a employee-support site. Which, gives us information from how to reboot a phone all the way up to annual sales for T-Mobile. Employees have access to this on read-only information about the T-Mobile and issues that we encounter. Only IT and trainers have access to change and add information.

T-mobile uses an Enterprise DBMS because of its need to store massive amounts of customer information. The head of Information Management, Matthias Assmann, announces on 4 March 2011 that T-mobile has switched to the IBM DB2 database system.

Assmann states, “IBM systems will give T-mobile a significant competitive advantage.” The type of database security T-mobile uses isn’t disclosed to the public but

has recently been changed and modified due to a break-in. In October of 2004, a hacker broke into T-mobiles database and stole government files and customer’s personal information. The hacker stated, “There was a flaw in the way the cell phone servers were set up.” Since this incident, T-mobile has reinforced their database security utilizing many counter-intrusion methods such as; account holder verification via text message, and several prompts to confirm email addresses and security questions. I recommend and hope T-mobile utilizes the use of security consultants to prevent hackers from exploiting flaws in their system.

The traditional approach to business intelligence had reached its limits in 2010, and T-Mobile wanted a faster and more flexible solution. As part of a major upgrade to its SAP software environment, T-Mobile worked with IBM Global Technology Services to deploy the new IBM Systems. The new upgrade increased performance which eliminated the need for query optimization, saving development time and costs and enhancing business flexibility for users. Ultimately, the optimization of T-mobiles systems made business intelligence a lot more efficient in recording and gathering customer relationships. Some business intelligence methods used by T-mobile include enterprise Resource Planning (which manages business processes), Information Infrastructure, Leveraging Information, and Optimizing IT. There are several ways to implement each method of business intelligence. They all relay heavily on researching their customers and gaining a competitive advantage wherever they can.

T-mobile utilizes IBM servers such as the IBM BladeCenter, running on IBM HS20 64-bit Intel Xeon processor blade servers. With these servers, T-Mobile is able to considerably reduce the time to market for business intelligence solutions, cut costs, and provide its business analysts with the tools they need quickly.

T-mobile does not utilize web servers or cloud computing. IBM provides a solid structure for T-mobile to access information quickly and efficiently, so much so that cloud computing is not necessary. In the past, T-mobile has had some difficulties with cloud computing services. On October 10, 2009, customers of T-mobile and SideKick data services provider Danger (a cloud computing service) crashed. As a result, information such as contacts, calendar event entries, to-do lists were all lost. The incident prompted T-mobile to stay away from the use of cloud computing.

Recommendation

The fundamental problem of information silos is that data are duplicated in isolated systems. The most obvious fix is to eliminate that duplicated data by a shared database and revising business processes to use that database. T-Mobile needs to be mindful to develop procedures to record any intended use for shared resources in the database. A fully integrated system that offers the necessary content management and optimal workflow control is needed. The technology systems being used which require significant duplication of human efforts. The technical components of the information systems are crucial to daily operations and productivity. These two systems need to communicate on more of a real time basis. Data from each system will at times need to be manually input into the next. This can lead to disastrous results if human error occurs. Two different versions of information each having their own silo can lead to increased costs, delayed the inability to meet customer requirements, etc. To help T-Mobile broaden its reach against Apple and other players on the consumer side is necessary.

T-Mobile USA's chief marketing officer, sketched out some new customer service policies the carrier need institute to boost the comfort levels of new Android phone users. For one thing, T-Mobile has to make sure that every phone is working before it leaves the company's doors. T-Mobile's new emphasis on "usability" will extend across Android software. T-Mobile is contains new software applications and features devised by T-Mobile. T-Mobile should be user-customizable. There will be "boundless possibilities as to how to personalize". To support its new competitive strategy for Android phones, T-Mobile should keep devising a new ad campaign. The new ads should start soon, and should be schedule to enter general availability soon. To add features of T-Mobile's new Android phone include a 3.2-inch HVGA touch-screen display with enhanced video capabilities and a virtual keyboard; a 3.2-megapixel camera; a music player with a pre-installed 4 GB microSD memory card; To built-in wireless communications through Wi-Fi and T-Mobile's 3G network; a Microsoft Exchange client; GoogleTalk, MMS, and Microsoft LiveTalk messaging; and one-click access to a number of different online apps, including Google Maps, YouTube, Picasa, and Yahoo.

Conclusion

It’s our conclusion that T-mobile should make ways to tracking the customer information, wants, and needs in order to build customer relationship as soon as possible, it might improve the quality of customer service, it’s really significant for T-mobile to get marketing advantages in the competition. As a service provider, T-mobile role as a positive company in its industry, the company upgrading its systems and facility frequent to improve their service and purchased integrated management system. High technique support behind of this company, and they are contribute for the better of the service for their customers.

T-mobile business strategy

This section of team six discuss T-mobile's business strategies.

Five forces


The five forces applied to T-Mobile gives the management team an idea of where they stand in the industry and what competitive advantage they have. As a customer of T-Mobile you are bound by a contact and have little bargaining power. T-Mobile is threatened by a few substitutions that can replace their service; prepaid phones, telephone booths, video chat, email, and instant messenger. The bargaining powers of suppliers have a lot of bargaining power over T-Mobile because they provide the company with the bandwidth and phones to then provide their service. The threat of new entrants to the industry is low because the industry is controlled by the main phone service providers. Rivalry between T-Mobile and Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T stands in the way of T-Mobile being the preferred phone service. Part of T-Mobile’s competitive strategy was to utilize entry barriers. These entry barriers include already existing contracts with the phone manufacturing companies and available bandwidth from suppliers. Another competitive strategy T-Mobile implements is the switching costs of switching to another service and leaving a contract. This holds customers in place.


Pricing strategies

T-Mobile is currently using pricing strategies to maintain a competitive advantage. They are using skimming which is a strategy that companies set high initial product prices that decrease to match lower prices from competitors. T-Mobile offer a “value” plan that includes a discounted rate on the monthly rate, which customer sigh a two year contract. However the phones are full price that T-Mobile will allow customers to put a down payment and make monthly payments to pay the rest of the phones. For example getting a discount on the phone,(HTC Mytouch 4g Slide would be 249.99 and get back 50 dollars in mail in rebate) and not the plan (which unlimited everything would be 79.99). By taking the offered value plan, the same phone will cost full price (499.99) and the plan will be just 59.99 monthly, as said before T-Mobile allows you to just put a down payment of 199.99 plus tax which will make the remain balance of 300 dollars into 20 monthly payments of 15 dollars a month, which will make the monthly bill 59.99 plus 15 for the phone.

Key business processes

The key business processes in T-mobile: Examine the structure of their industry and determine a competitive strategy, then that strategy determine value chains, which, in turn, determine the business processes.

Assess an industry structure is Porter's five forces model which include: bargaining power of customers, threat of substitutions, bargaining power of suppliers, threat of new entrants, and rivalry among existing firms. To understand this model, let is us consider the strong and weak example in T-mobile industry, " I want to pay less for my phone contact plan" ," I think about join another phone company", " I will use online resources to make calls"... T-mobile's response to explain the value delivered, to emphaize importance of keeping closely contact with family by using unlimited calls and texts. Those responses called competitive strategy. Porter's four competitive strategies can focus on being the cost leader or differentiating its products from those of the competion. Further, the organization can employ the cost of the differentiation strategy across an industry or a particular industry segment. T-mobile has chosen a focused differentiation strategy. Its focus is on every city, every urban, every town. Free shipoing on all phones and devices. T-mobile offer the largest 4G network nationwide. Browse the web faster than on home internet which encouraged every adult or child to sign up in T-mobile. T-mobile differentiates by providing a superior product with lower cost $49.99/per months line -an close relationship with people by using endless data, talk and text.

Porter's model of business activities includes linkage. For example, T-mobile manufacturing systems use linkages to reduce inventory costs such as a system uses sales forecasts to plan production, it then uses the production plan to determine how many phone needs and schedule purchases. The right amount and just in time inventory reduce costs.The margin of the business process is the value of the outputs minus the cost. Because the business processes vary in cost and effectiveness so that the streamlining of business processes is able to increase margin.

Enterprise systems

T-Mobile as one of the largest mobile phone service providers, it has been set integrated information system both inside and outside of this corporation. The enterprise system has been used in T-mobile, and it makes this company more successful. The information system makes connection in different departments and also been used in customers services, it make the employees more efficient, and easy to get information. For example, the marketing department and manufactory are using one system, that if the front-desk employees have product problem, they may can get support directly in manufactory department. As an international company, customers can call for services any time to solve their problem, because the information system may connect the call to another region of world, it makes the service 24 hours per day. The enterprise system is an process implementation, it lock in customers and buyers because it is an contract model services, once a person use this services, it is hard to change to another company if they don’t want give up whole services in T-mobile. It raised barriers to other company by it’s highly technology and well services. It also reduce cost of running whole company.

MIS Report For T-Mobile

Management information systems report for T-mobile

Prepared by Team 6

keyan jiang

Yanling Zeng

Steve Maisonet

Juan David Mendoza

Report Distributed September 18, 2011
Prepared for
Professor Thomas Abraham
MGS 3040*02

REPORT

Introduction

The purpose of this report is to research, analyze and review the management information system used by T-Mobile. In this report, we will cover the major aspects of the company’s management information system, we will also analyze their business strategy and information systems and provide our feedback on what we recommend to improve their system and its profeiciency.

Company Information

T-mobile is wireless provider in that services the US, US VirginIslands, and Puerto Rico. With having over 30 Million customers theyare the fourth largest wireless carrier in the United States. In 1994Western Wireless Co. made VoiceStream as a subsidiary, which was madepublic in May of 1999. VoiceStream later acquired OmnipointCommunications and Aerial Communication in 2000. A year later afterthe transactions German based Deusche Telekom bought out Voicestream,And in 2002 VoiceStream was renamed T-Mobile USA, Inc