HRHIS in Tanzania

The Tanzania Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MOHSW) identified health workforce information as a key area needing to be strengthened for fast tracking implementation of its Human Resource Strategic Plan. In order to address this need, HRHIS (Human resource for health information system) was implemented as an effort to improve human resources for health (HRH) management. A situation analysis indicated the existence of several databases within and outside the ministry dealing with HRH, That too, with similar information fields. It was agreed these sources should be harmonized, and housed under Health Management Information System (HMIS) for consistency. The HRHIS software thus became part of the HMIS and was fully integrated with the District Health Information System (DHIS) software with the help of import/export mechanisms. 

The HRHIS was built using free and open source technologies PHP (server scripting language), PostgreSQL (database management system) running on multi-platform (Windows, Linux) architecture, and designed to be user-friendly, hence allowing administrators or authorized users to add additional elements when new needs arise. The initial database was populated with the minimum dataset as requested by the MOHSW. 

The HRHIS provided import/output mechanisms for data at different levels, this includes: national, regional, district or facility level. It was designed to provide flexibility to the following:

• Capture and store health personnel's data and history by organizational unit, cadre, and other characteristics;
• Add any number of datasets or elements required by any sector (such as the central health ministry, local governments, civil services or private providers);
• Update organizational unit details according to users' requirements (e.g. allowing additional regions, districts and health facilities to be added dynamically without entering into system codes);
• Generate web-enabled reports in different formats (general and aggregated), including graphical reporting.

The HRHIS system was developed with high security measures for protecting the data entered, since human resource information/data are personal and confidential. Security measures include a login mechanism such that only authorized personnel can use the system, and also a Users Administration functionality which allows the system administrator to limit users' access to certain functions.

EMPLOYEE LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM (ELDS)

I found that Employee Learning Development system function where by plan and observe the employee training, career development and employee’s performance. ELDS provides the opportunity to improve and correct employee’s performance and the organization itself by providing the right training program to the right employee in the right time when they need. Right training for the right employees ensures that the employees can keep competitiveness and will perform their job well. With the help of this system, employee is able to access the detail of the training program and can choose to attend. An ELDS consists of employee information, performance before training, the training course, the transfer of training and program evaluation for each employee. ELDS helps manager in promotion in an organization because with the help of this system, manager can view all the detail and the working performance in the system.

The advantage of ELDS is cost saving and accessibility. Employees can access the information about the training by just logging in to the account. Second advantage is helps to empowerment and facilitation. ELDS enables the employee to make self-assessment and development by letting them choose the training program that they want. In this way, employees will be able to enhance their own Knowledge, Skill and Ability (KSA).

The disadvantage of this ELD system is lack of human contact because all the information is delivered by the computer only and only have participate between computer and the employee. Thus, if the employees have some question about the training content, they cannot straight away ask and have to leave the question and wait for the admin to answer

As a conclusion, the ELDS can help the process easier to implement, facilitate timely information sharing and enabling a consistent coordination between elements and the organization.

DSS IN WASTE MANAGEMENT

Waste management is a company operating in North America. Soon after the establishment of waste management, company planned to expand its business. As soon as the business expanded operations were becoming complex day by day, because the business was in growth stage, investments were coming in so it was becoming difficult to manage the organization. The business now needs some management information system in order to maintain smooth business operations. So the management decided to install a SAP information system in order to respond business issues more quickly. These issues can be classified as pricing, customer care, billing and activities. More over what company wanted to achieve was to improve customer care and business operations by reducing costs. Apart from that their main objective was related to decision making in which their information system should provide them such internal and external info which should help them in decision making.

Once the information system was implemented the system was failed badly. The reason behind the failure was that the staff was not properly trained as they do not know that how to operate that system, secondly their structure were weak and by structure I mean that the research they did was wrong. Based on the research and their objective SAP installed the system but once their representation of data was wrong the SAP system failed to work in that context.

So the reason why I wrote this article is that if a company is implementing a system it should consider some aspects which can be related to proper planning, results, objective, staff training etc. Otherwise instead of reducing your costs it can further increase your operating costs thus decreasing your efficiency.

ROYAL MAIL DSS

Royal mail is a company operating worldwide that is providing parcel and post offices services in different regions of the world. It’s basically a UK based company. By the end of 1999 royal mail started enterprise system programme, in which their main goal was to bring finance and human resource into single platform.  The main reason behind combining them was to manage royal mail as single enterprise system. The system provided the following features:

• Deploying innovative solutions in support of a holistic approach to strategic enterprise management which was consistent with Royal Mail Groups data management principles.
• This provided senior management with different king of information which helped them to make better and good decisions which further added value to royal mail.
• After implementing the system royal main can get the desired financial data for the analysis purpose.
• Provided a vital source for strategic data which at the end of the day resulted in flexible decision making.

The whole system resulted in improved decision making especially in the fields of revenues, planning and costing. After this step the data was available for all decision makers and this resulted in transparent decision making. More over this helped royal mail to centralize its business standards all over world.

MARRIOTT USING CRM

Marriott is an American diversified hospitality company that manages and franchises a broad portfolio of hotels and related lodging facilities. Due to their huge business all over world Marriott decided to introduce CRM in their operations so that their operations run more efficiently. They started using Siebel Systems Inc.'s customer-relationship-management package. This CRM helped Marriott in number of ways like with the help of this they can avoid cross selling of Marriott property secondly it would also help in centralized management. This also helped Marriott to maintain their reservations and inventory level because after implementing this CRM their inventory was connected to catering which was part of single data base which resulted in good inventory management. Basically the working of CRM was four dimensional as the CRM was capable to collect and consolidate information, booking of Marriott property, personal planning services, and creating guest profiles and booking.

The hotel chain is planning upgrades to central reservations, revenue and property management, and CRM systems. For example, the property-management system is used around the world to manage everything from room inventory to kitchen supplies. Four years ago, franchisees were using 19 different systems, including some custom-made ones and one from the Micros-Fidelio division of Micros Systems Inc. Now, they're down to six, and Wilson plans to take another look at consolidation this summer.

So at the end of the day the customer loyalty was increased which in the long term increased profits for Marriott.

MIS IN FRITO-LAY

Frito-Lay North America is the division of PepsiCo that manufactures markets and sells chips, potato chips and other snack foods. The business of Frito-Lay is too vast that every day they have to track 14 million products sold all over world through their hand held devices. These devices used to record data that was stored in the main headquarters of Frito-Lay. Once the data is stored its combines with previously stored data which is collected through different sources and ways and then vital market information was provided through that which provide them key information regarding the market. The information was provided in real time that was related to every aspect of the business.

Secondly this helped them to have complete market information ranging from competitors information to future expectations of the market. In logistics, the use of the standardized reports generated by the Management Reporting System [MRS] has permitted Frito Lay to consolidate four hundred sales routes. This ability to better control the use of company resources has allowed Frito-Lay, with a leaner sales force, to increase sales volume dramatically. The scheduling of deliveries has been improved, so that "stales" -- products which have exceeded their shelf-life, are almost totally eliminated, thereby improving product quality and eliminating wastage. Even the packing cartons used to ship the product are monitored to insure their return, reducing environmental waste and saving millions of dollars in packing costs.

The implementation of MIS system provided them a competitive advantage as it can provide them Executive Support System [ESS] in order to see competitor’s strategies. It also helped them in trend analysis that which product is in high demand and what are the causes for that more over it also helped them to analyze that in which area a specific product is in high demand.

Among the most important advantages of Frito-Lay's information systems comes through centralizing data yet allowing managers of regional operations access to this vast database and software to use it effectively in a distributed processing environment.

MIS in central bank of India

Central bank of India was established in 1911. Central Bank of India provides a wide range of corporate, international & net banking with financial services. It is dealing in complex financial banking services and solutions for the commercial banks of India. The bank was growing at a rapid growth rate as a result it used to face different kind of problems like need to timely submission of financial reports that include income statement and balance sheet, need for inter-branch reconciliation of accounts within a definite time frame, need to undertake risk management strategies and for this purpose build up appropriate set of data and market intelligence reports etc. secondly apart from these reasons central bank was dealing in diversifies services like at the same time it was dealing with businesses, employees, customers etc.

Moreover the bank was providing different complex services like global network, internet banking, ATM in which over 2 million transactions were made daily. So to solve these issues and to maintain a sound banking system in the economy central bank of India implemented an MIS system. Soon after the implementation of MIS the bank was benefitted in many different aspects like now the date is easily accessed and can be analyzed easily, decision making was made easy as accurate and timely decision can be taken now, more over cost was reduced through which overall efficiency of the banking system was increased.