Management Information Systems

[Date of Submission]

Introduction

The website confused.com is part of an organization that is the subsidiary of Admiral Group, and is based in the United Kingdom. It simple a website that compares prices for financial and insurance services that are offered to the people of UK. It started in the 2002 only from car insurances but now it has insurance comparisons for virtually anything and everything.

Discussion

Ethical, Legal and Cultural Issues

The modern world works primarily on information. In this age and century, information has become the flesh and blood on which the industries and organizations depend. Information is the key resource of confused.com. Indeed actually that is the only thing which it is providing.

As mentioned in the introduction, confused.com provides comparisons of a variety of insurance services, gas, electric, etc. services for the ease of consumers. They are payed by the service provider when a customer uses confused.com to satisfy his queries and finally makes a purchase. He gives a specific referral number or purchases online through confused.com itself. In this way the tally is made as a 'sale 1' for confused.

The ethical and legal issues start coming into play, when one observes the fact that private information regarding the consumer is constantly being collected by the website. Aside from the account details, (which are also confidential) the browsing and usage history showing the habits and interests of the users are the data that is constantly being retrieved by the website. Now Facebook page and twitter etc. have also made it possible to view the 'contacts' or 'links' of the consumers. Such data is the private right of any individual and cannot or should not be divulged without proper declarations. Privacy is the right of every individual, but it is dependent on the organizations to respect and fight for the rights of their consumers.

Strategic Information Needs

For confused.com, information is essential to run their online business. It is the only commodity which they deal in so their information need is getting fulfilled through the collection of a variety of data on the different industries and areas. The informational need of any organization can be in regards to professional, educations, cultural, research or recreational activities. The demand of the customers of specific information, become the needed information for confused.com. The information required by the consumers can be extensive or not, but for the confused.com i.e. the parent company, being the provider of the information, it is a priority need. Just like there is a difference in need and demand, similarly, there a difference in the information needed or information demanded.

Since, confused.com is an organization that is based solely on the distribution on information and knowledge, it has to gather and save up information regarding industries and related companies, on which it claims specialization for instance, financial and insurance industry's product. This is why the strategic needs for specific information for confused.com is dictated majorly by its users. There are a few critical factors that are involved in regards to the information ...