Total No. of Questions [Total No. of Pages 02
M.B.A (II YEARS) DEGREE EXAMINATION, MAY 2018
First Year
HOSPITAL ADMINISTRATION
Introduction to Computers and MIS
Time 3 Hours Maximum Marks 70
SECTION A
Answer any three of the following × 5 15)
Q1) Secondary memory.
Creating a new slide
Information resource management
CAN
Query language
MS-Access
SECTION B
Answer any three questions × 15 45)
Q2) Explain historical development of computers.
Q3) Explain various icons and commands in tool bar.
Q4) Write about system development life cycle.
Q5) Discuss recent trends in information technology.
Q6) Explain various computer networks in detail
Q7) Discuss steps involved in mail-merge.
SECTION C
Compulsory
Q8) Case Study
The Halloween and holiday season of 1999 was a major disappointment for Hershey
Foods, the largest U.S candy maker. In July 1999 it had gone live with a new $112
million information system that combines SAP's R/3 enterprise software with software
from Manugistics Group and Siebel Systems. IBM was the system integrator. Glitches
in the system left many distributors and retailers with empty candy shelves in the season
leading up to Halloween. Despite the complexity of the system, Hershey decided to go
live with a huge piece of it all at once, an approach that is both rare and dangerous. 50
With a number of vendors involved it was difficult to assign responsibility for the
problems.
Hershey had embarked on this project in 1996 partly to satisfy retailers who wanted to
keep their own costs down by receiving deliveries when they are really needed. The
new information system is used by Hershey's 1,200-person sales force and other
departments "for handling every step in the process, from original placement of an
order to final delivery. It also runs the company's fundamental accounting and touches
nearly every operation; tracking raw ingredients, scheduling production, measuring the
effectiveness of promotional campaigns; setting prices; and even deciding how products
ought to be stacked inside trucks." The project was supposed to go live during the slow
period in April, but development and testing were not yet complete. The July startup
occurred as Halloween orders were arriving. In July Hershey informed customers that
computer problems might cause delays and some customers soon started receiving
incomplete shipments. In September, it announced that its turnaround time for orders
would double to 12 days.
In September, Hershey announced it would miss third-quarter earnings forecasts due to
the problems rolling out new systems designed to take customer orders and make store
deliveries. That particularly hurt Hershey during the Halloween season, when it
sacrificed some market share to competitors such as Mars and Nestlé. Hershey blamed
lower-than-expected sales in December on a slowdown in customer order demand
partly due to earlier customer-service and orderfulfillment issues. Hershey predicted its
sales would be off by as much as $150 million for the year.
The problems with the information system were reported in Hershey's 1999 annual
report: "We have experienced the well-publicized problems associated with the
implementation of the final phase of our enterprise-wide information system. While this
has been a painful process for us and for our customers, we should remember that the
system is designed to make Hershey more competitive through lower costs, better
customer service, and increased sales. It has not been the easiest journey, but we still
expect to arrive at our intended destination.
Questions:
Summarize what happened in each of the phases of building and maintaining
systems and the extent to which Hershey encountered; Review the section on
obstacles to applying IT in the real world. Explain the extent to which Hershey
seems to have encountered these obstacles; and Based on the definition of
e-business and the limited information explain the extent to which Hershey wanted
to become and actually became more of an e-business.