Mcgraw hill primis

Introduction

The McGraw-Hill Company had started and implemented most innovative project in the academic publishing industry for benefitting the students and professors. The technology, business environment, economic conditions are changing drastically in the modern world for example students need to go to library to find information on a particular topic but now Kindle device is being used for finding information from the same place without visiting library. The changes in the technology, business processes had made the existing information in the traditional text books outdated. Even though textbooks are being revised regularly they may not contain updated information. To solve such issues the Mc-Graw Hill developed Primis system which enables the professors to design the contents of the text book for a particular course. Generally faculty selected the course contents from the core textbooks of a particular subject. The issues which such systems are outdated syllabus, could not select latest case studies, many textbooks have to be referred by the student. The Primis systems helps the professors to customize the text book by selecting course contents from different text books, databases and place an order for the customized text book. The Mc-Graw Hill will publish the text books according to requirements of professors of a particular university. The important steps in traditional system development life cycle are: probem identification, system analysis, system design, system development and system maintenance (O'Brien & Marakas, 2011).

The Mc-Graw Hill had adopted systems approach for developing the Primis system. Primis means first information system where customized publishing are done on demand basis. The present study is to understand the Primis System and how Mc-Graw Hill had used the concepts of management information systems to design the Primis system. The four phases of Primis system: system analysis, system design, system development and system maintenance are studied and analyzed in this paper.

System Analysis

1Q. What kinds of questions might Mc-Graw Hill have asked as part of determining the feasibility of the Primis idea?

A: The information technologies, including internet-based iformation systems are playing a vital role and expanding role in business (Mcleod & Schell, 2008). The Primis project had started with uncertainty because the idea for the company as well as for the academic publishing industry. In 1988 the Mc-Graw had observed facts like 30 percent of the students do not purchase all the required textbooks, course contents are changing regularly. The following questions had been raised by Mc-Graw Hill for determining the feasibility of Primis idea:

1Q. Do we have enough funds to invest in research for creating custom published books?

2Q. Doe existing technology supports the new idea?

3Q. How to pay royalties for the authors?

4Q. Will customized printing increases the price of the product?

5Q. How to gather perfect requirements from the professors?

6Q. How to update the databases?

7Q. Do our vendors support for the new idea?

8Q. How to deliver the products to the customers?

9Q. What are the opportunities for custom publish textbooks?

10Q. Should we change the existing business process?

11Q. Will the employees, distributors support the idea of custom publish textbooks?

12. How to maintain quality, pricing and deliver the product in time to students.

13Q. Updating the system with new content may become costly and leads to complexity in payment of royalty to authors?

14Q. Competition from new entrants into custom published text books industry.

2Q. How well did the systems approach work for the initial stages of the Primis system?

A: The Mc-Graw Hill had effectively implemented the systems approach. First the company had identified the problem i.e. professors and students are facing difficulty the complete course content in one text book. The purchasing of many text books for one course is difficult for students. In the next stage the company had conducted the feasibility study whether the new idea of custom publish text books brings benefits to students and faculty. Hence the systems approach has given best inputs during the initial stages of Primis system.

3Q. What could the team have done differently in the preliminary stages? How might this have affected the end result?

A: The project teams should identify the software, hardware and database resources for effective implementation of the project (O'Brien & Marakas, 2011)The team should have conducted a survey to know the purchase intentions of students for custom published text books. The customization should be available only for text books which have more demand. The team should gather the course content generally for the universities rather than only for specific universities. The team should have estimated the honesty issues regarding billing issues. The team should have anticipated the issues related to printing and collecting the bill. It would be better for Mc-Graw to collect advance before starting the actual production. The company should not provide a sample copy to the customers. Now the company is experiencing lot of demand for custom published eBooks rather than print books. The team had not anticipated the demand for eBooks. If this is anticipated then the Primus project could have completed within six months saving funds, time and other resources.

4Q. Would you have implemented the system, armed with the information the team had at the time? Why or Why not?