Best furniture LLC is a Sohar-based company that is specialized in office and home furniture. The company is especially famous for creating antique designs preferred by Omani customers. The best furniture is having its own facility for the plantation of trees to ensure high quality of material and reliable supply. The company also purchase some raw material from the selected suppliers. The company sell its furniture through its own chain of showroom and also through famous furniture chain like the Danube.

In order to manage the business, the company utilizes various information systems.

The company is using the latest version of computer-aided design software to help the design team in creating the most attractive design of the furniture. The company is using robotics to manufacture furniture quickly and without mistakes. The managers and the design team remain in touch with each other using Skype for business and Microsoft teams.

The company is also using an online recruitment system that has been instrumental in saving time and cost as compared to a manual recruitment system. The online recruitment system allows the HR managers to automatically eliminate invalid job applicants and send the appropriate reply automatically to the applicants. HRIS has been used extensively in the company to get the monthly and annual reports about the employee performance evaluation and they continue using it in the same way.

Company is also using Marketing Information system for the last 15 years. Company has already started using financial modules of Enterprise Resource Planning systems to integrate all information in centralized data warehouse. Company is using Point of Sales systems in all its showroom. Company has a data backup system to keep back of all the sales and other transaction data. Company will continue keep using data back for routine purpose but at the same time they also started using Business Intelligence in order to analyse the huge backup data.BI helps the company to obtain completive advantage by identifying the market trends and hidden pattern in the information that’s why company has decided to invest in more powerful data mining soft wares.

The company is using CRM for sending regular birthday wishes by email to customers. CRM also helps company in identifying potential customers and making more effective marketing campaigns. The company is also using a web-based system to let the customer ask questions or give feedback. The chat facility helps the customer to discuss their with the company employees.

The company has provided an FAQ facility also on its websites. The company has been using EDI systems since decades to achieve competitive advantage over the competitor who was using a manual ordering system. However, now the competitors have also started using EDI so the company is not getting any more competitive advantage and they are thinking of using an advanced XML system.

The company is also using a Network management system to monitor the bandwidth usage and adjust the resources allocated to user as per their requirement. The system also monitors the attempts of unauthenticated login and informs the Network manager immediately for the action.

Answer in your with own words

a.Illustrate all the primary activities of Best furniture’s value chain. Evaluate how Best furniture is using IT to add value to each of the primary activities. Propose the use of Information Systems to the primary activity that is not discussed in the case.

b. Compare procurement activity with inbound logistics. Propose to best furniture the improvement in each one and recommend information systems suitable for each of them.