Information Systems

Riordan Manufacturing is a fortune 1000 company that specializes in polymer materials that range from plastic bottles to heart pumps. Riordan employs over 550 personnel that help make this global company earn revenues in excess of $1 billion. Riordan has three operating entities; Georgia, Michigan and California and joint venture in China. The plastic is produced in its plant in Albany Georgia, custom plastic parts in Pontiac Michigan, and plastic fan parts are produced in China.

It is imperative that a company this large uses a strong software and database system. There is a lot of money being strained through this company and its operating entities. There has to be a strong system to store and organize data, and to have proper software to manage, organize, release, and share information based on product and finances.

Riordan headquarters is based in San Jose; CA. HQ is the central command for all of Riordan operating centers and. HQ has license for a fully integrated Windows based ERP manufacturing, distribution and financial management software application. This system is specifically designed for plastics processing and assembly. This system is used for the operations of the company as a whole as well as the finance and accounting department. This software allows the company to collaborate with all of its entities to compile its data to one central location. For the finance and accounting departments of HQ and sub companies, it is very difficult to maintain systems accountability. Georgia and Michigan use different software than CA so there is no compatibility within systems. For Corporate branch to collaborate all of the files, they must be entered into corporate main database. Because the different entities use different systems, some of the data is provided through hard copy reports that must then be entered manually. Other data must be converted from companies' software to the corporate software in order to match codes and etc. Both Georgia and Michigan purchased vendor developed software. This type of software has made more problems than solutions for the company. "Off-the-shelf software might be convenient, but limits a business once the organization expands beyond the software's design" (Yudkin, 2004, Software Conversion is not for Cowards, p40).

Corporate sales and marketing is trying to consolidate customer information to better improve sales. They are collecting historical files that are in many different databases and even archived in hard copy paper files. They have realized how large and scattered everything is so they decide to consolidate everything into a CRM system. Still, there are issues with the sales database. Each member of sales maintains their own set of customer records by either hand written documents or software such as ACT or others use both.

In a business software and databases are essential in maintaining proper accountability in everything within the company.