Revving Up Sales at Harley Davidson Essay

1. Explain how Talon helps Harley Davidson employees improve their decision making capabilities. Harley Davidson uses an information system named Talon to help improve their decision making capabilities. Talon is responsible for the inventory, warranties, vehicle registration, and point of sale transactions for the Harley Davidson dealerships. The system is able to generate par orders which helps with the companies ability to only get what is necessary rather then the employees having to guess. The system helps improve decision making capabilities by offering a wide view of operations, sales and expenses. 2. Identify a few key metrics a Harley Davidson marketing executive might want to monitor on a digital dashboard. An executive information system is a specialized DSS that supports senior level executives and unstructured, long term, nonroutine decisions requiring judgment, evaluation and insight. A digital dashboard tracks KPIs and CSFs by compiling information from multiple sources and tailoring it to meet users needs. Using a digital dashboard Harley Davidson executives would be able to to gain access to more information. The key metrics could be sales by season, sales by region, best selling product, worst selling product, online orders, in store orders, highest sale months and lowest sales months. 3. How can Harley Davidson benefit from using decision support systems and executive information systems in its business? 4. How would Harley Davidsons business be affected if its decided to sell accessories directly to its online customers? Include a brief discussion of the ethics involved with this decision. 5. Evaluate the HOG CRM strategy and recommend an additional benefit Harley Davidson could provide to its HOG members to increase customer satisfaction. 6. How could Harley Davidson SCM system, Manugistics, improve business operations? 7. Provide a potential illustration of Harley Davidsons SCM system including all upstream and downstream participans. 8. Explain how an ERP system could help Harley Davidson gain business intelligence in its operations.