CHAPTER 15

15.1 Identify the different ways in which companies collaborate using technology.

Ø  Companies must be able to collaborate. Without collaboration companies simply would have a very difficult time operating. Companies collaborate in a number of ways including document exchange, shared whiteboards, discussion forums, and email.

15.2  Compare the different categories of collaboration technologies.
          Collaboration technologies fall into one of two categories:

1. Unstructured collaboration (sometimes referred to as information collaboration) includes document ex¬change, shared whiteboards, discussion forums, and email.
2. Structured collaboration (or process collaboration) involves shared participation in business processes such as workflow in which knowledge is hardcoded as rules.

15.3 Define the fundamental concepts of a knowledge management system.

Ø  Knowledge management involves capturing, classifying, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing information assets in a way that provides context for effective decisions and actions.

15.4 Provide an example of a content management system along with its business purpose.

Ø  A content management system (CMS) provides tools to manage the creation, storage, editing, and publication of information in a collaborative environment. The CMS marketplace is complex, incorporating document management, collaboration and versioning tools, digital asset management, and web content management. One example is www.vignette.com.

15.5 Evaluate the advantages of using a workflow management system.

Ø  Many workflow management systems allow the opportunity to measure and analyze the execution of a process. Workflow systems integrate with other organizational systems, such as document management systems and database management systems.

15.6 Explain how Groupware can benefit a business.

Ø  Groupware is software that supports team interaction and dynamics including calendaring, scheduling, and videoconferencing. Organizations can use this technology to communicate, cooperate, coordinate, solve problems, compete, or negotiate

CHAPTER 14

14.1 Compare ecommerce and ebusiness.

  E-commerce is buying and selling using an electronic medium. It is accepting credit and payments over the net, doing banking transactions using the Internet, selling commodities or information using the World Wide Web and so on.

  E-Business in addition to encompassing E-commerce includes both front and back-office applications that form the engine for modern E-commerce. E-business is not just about E-commerce transactions; it's about re-defining old business models, with the aid of technology to maximize customer value. E-Business is the overall strategy and E-commerce is an extremely important facet of E-Business.

  Thus e-business involves not merely setting up the company website and being able to accept credit card payments or being able to sell products or services on time. It involves fundamental re-structuring and streamlining of the business using technology by implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, supply chain management, customer relationship management, data ware housing, data marts, data mining, etc

14.2 Compare the four types of ebusiness models.

 

•Business-to-business (B2B) applies to businesses buying from and selling to each other over the Internet.

•

•Business-to-consumer (B2C) applies to any business that sells its products or services to consumers over the Internet.

•

•Consumer-to-business (C2B) applies to any consumer that sells a product or service to a business over the Internet.

•

•Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) applies to sites primarily offering goods and services to assist consumers interacting with each other over the Internet.

  The primary difference between B2B and B2C are the customers; B2B customers are other businesses while B2C markets to consumers. Overall, B2B relations are more complex and have higher security needs; plus B2B is the dominant ebusiness force, representing 80 percent of all online business.

14.3 Describe the benefits and challenges associated with ebusiness.

   Ebusiness Benefits and Challenges.

Ebusiness Benefits:

·         Highly Accessible- businesses can operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year.

·         Increased Customer Loyalty- additional channels to contact, respond to, and access customers helps contribute to customer loyalty.

·         Improved Information Content- in the past, customers had to order catalogs or travel to a physical facility before they could compare price and product attributes. Electronic catalogs and web pages present customers with updated information in real time about goods, services, and prices.

·         Increased Convenience- Ebusiness automates and improves many of the activities that make up a buying experience.

·         Increased Global Reach- Business, both small and large, can reach new markets.

·         Decreased Cost- the cost of conducting business on the Internet is substantially less than traditional forms of business communication.

Ebusiness Challenges:

·         Protecting Consumers- consumers must be protected against unsolicited goods and communication, illegal or harmful goods, insufficient information about goods or their suppliers, invasion of privacy, and cyberfraud.

·         Leveraging Existing Systems- most companies already use information technology to conduct business in non-Internet environments, such as marketing, order management, billing, inventory, distribution, and customer service. The internet represents an alternative and complementary way to do business, but it is imperative that ebusiness systems integrate existing sytsems in a manner that avoids duplicating functionality and maintains usability, performance, and reliability.

·         Increasing Liability- Ebsuiness exposes suppliers to unknown liabilities because internet commerce law is vaguely defined and differs from country to country. The internet and its use in ebusiness have raised many ethical, social, and political issues, such as identity theft and information manipulation.

·         Providing Security- The internet provides universal access, but companies must protect their assets against accidental or malicious misuse. System security, however, must not create prohibitive complexity or reduce flexibility. Customer information also needs to be protected from internal and external misuse. Privacy systems should safeguard the personal information critical to building sites that satisfy customer and business needs. A serious deficiency arises from the use of the internet as a marketing means. Sixty percent of internet users do not trust the internet as a payment channel. Making purchases via the internet is considered unsafe by many. The issue affects both the business and the consumer. However, with encryption and the development of secure websites, security is becoming less of a constraint for ebusinesses.

·         Adhering to Taxation Rules- the internet is not yet subject to the same level of taxation as traditional businesses. While taxation should not discourage consumers from using electronic purchasing channels, it should not favor internet purchases over store purchases either. Instead, a tax policy should provide a level playing field for traditional retail businesses, mail-order companies, and internet-based merchants. The internet marketplace is rapidly expanding, yet it remains mostly free from traditional forms of taxation. In one recent study, uncollected state and local sales taxes from ebusiness were projected to exceed $60 billion in 2008.

14.4 Explain the differences among eshops, emails,and online auctions

 

Eshop

·         Sometimes referred to as an estore or etailer. It is a version of a retail store where customers can shop at any hour of the day without leaving their home or office.

·         These online stores sell and support a variety of products and services.

·         The other online businesses channeling their goods and services via the internet only, such as Amazon.com, are called pure plays.

Email

·         Email- consists of a number of eshops. It serves as a gateway through which a  visitor can access other eshops.

-      It may be generalized or specialized depending on the products offered by the eshops it hosts.

-      Eshops in emails benefit from brand reinforcement and increased traffic as visiting one shop on the email often leads to browsing “neighboring” shops.

 Online auctions:

·         Electronic auction (eauction)- sellers and buyers solicit consecutive bids from each other and prices are determined dynamically.

·         Forward auction- an auction that sellers use as a selling channel to many buyers and the highest bid wins.

·         Reverse auction- an auction that buyers use to purchase a product or service, selecting the seller with the lowest bid.

CHAPTER 12

12.1 Describe the role information plays in enterprise resource planning systems.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

·         It serves as the organization’s backbone in providing fundamental decision making support.

·         It enables people in different business areas to communicate.

·         ERP system helps an organization to obtain operational efficiencies, lower costs, improve supplier and customer relations, and increase revenues and market share.

·         The heart of an ERP system is a central database that collects information from and feeds information into all the ERP system’s individual application components (called modules), supporting diverse business function such as accounting, manufacturing, marketing, and human resources.

·         ERP automates business processes such as order fulfillment- taking an order from a customer, shipping the purchase, and then billing for it.

12.2 Identify the primary forces driving the explosive growth of enterprise resource planning systems.

•  ERP is a logical solution to the mess of incompatible applications that had sprung up in most businesses.

•

•ERP addresses the need for global information sharing and reporting

•

•ERP is used to avoid the pain and expense of fixing legacy systems

12.3 Explain the business value of integrating supply chain management, customer relationship management, and enterprise resource planning systems.

integration Tools

·         An integrated enterprise infuses support areas, such as finance and human resources, with a strong customer orientation.

·         Integration are achieved using:

§   Middleware- several different types of software that sit in the middle of and provide connectivity between two or more software applications. It translates information between disparate systems

·         Enterprise application integration (EAI) middleware- represents a new approach to middleware by packaging together commonly used functionality, such as providing prebuilt links to popular enterprise applications, which reduces the time necessary to develop solutions that integrate applications from multiple vendors.

 Integration between SCM, CRM, and ERP Applications.

·         Companies run on independent applications, such as SCM, CRM, and ERP. If one application performs poorly, the entire customer value delivery system is affected.

CHAPTER 11

1.      Compare operational and analytical customer relationship management.

Operational CRM	Analytical CRM
·         Deal directly with the customers	·         Do not deal directly with customers
·         Supports back-office operations	·         Supports traditional transactional processing for day-to-day front-office operations
·         Example: Campaign management, e-marketing, telemarketing and e-selling.	·         Example: Develop customer profiles and analyze customer or product profitability.

2.      Identify the primary forces driving the explosive growth of customer relationship management.

·   Automation/Productivity/Efficiency

·   Competitive advantage

·   Customer demands/requirements

·   Increase revenues  

·   Decrease costs

·   Customer support

·   Inventory control

·   Accessibility

3.      Define the relationship between decision making and analytical customer relationship management.

The relationship between decision making and analytical customer relationship management is analytical CRM is primarily used to enhance and support decision making and works by identifying patterns in customer information collected from the various operational CRM systems. Analytical CRM also is the solutions that are designed to dig deep into a company’s historical customer information and expose patterns of behavior on which a company can capitalize.

4.      Summarize the best practices for implementing a successful customer relationship management system.

There are several best practices for implementing a successful customer relationship management system.

Firstly, clearly communicate the CRM strategy. This practice started with a clear business objective for the system to provide customer with greater economic value.

Next, define information needs and flows. People who perform successful CRM implementations have a clear understanding of how information flows in and out of their organizations.

Other than that, build an integrated view of the customer can support organizational requirement. This system must have the corresponding functional breadth and depth to support strategic goals.

Plus, implement in iterations. This allows the organizations to find out early if the implementation is headed for failure and thus either kill the project and save wasted resources or change direction to a more successful path.

Lastly, scalability for organizational growth. Understanding how the organization is going to grow, predicting how technology is going to change and anticipating how customers are going to evolve.

CHAPTER 10

1.      List and describe the components of a typical supply chain.

The components of a typical supply chain are Supplier’s supplier, Supplier, Manufacturer, Distributor, Retailer, Customer and Customer’s customer.

2.      Define the relationship between decision making and supply chain management

The relationship between decision making and supply chain management is SCM enhances decision making. SCM systems helps all the different entities in the supply chain to work together and be more effectively in collecting, analyzing, and distributing transactional information to all relevant parties. Other than that, SCM system also provides dynamic holistic views of organization. Users can “drill down” into detailed analyses of supply chain activities in a process analogous. Without SCM systems, organizations would be unable to make accurate and timely decisions regarding their supply chain.

3.      Describe the four changes resulting from advances in IT that are driving supply chains.

The four changes resulting from advances in IT that are driving supply chains are visibility, consumer behavior, competition and speed.

        Visibility is the ability to view all areas up and down the supply chain. Changing supply chains requires a comprehensive strategy buoyed by information technology.

        Next, consumer behavior has changed the way business competes. Customers will leave if a company does not continually meet their expectations. They are more demanding because they have information readily available they know exactly what they want and they know when and how they want it.

        Competition is use advanced mathematical algorithms to improve the flow and efficiency of the supply chain while reducing inventory. Supply Chain Planning (SCP) depends entirely on information for its accuracy.

       Lastly, speed is the system that raises the accuracy between internal users. Other than that, speed also satisfied continually changing customer requirement efficiency accurately and quickly.

4.      Summarize the best practice for implementing a successful supply chain management system.

Organization should study the best practice for implementing a successful supply chain management system.

There are five SCM industry best practices. First is make the sale to supplier. This practices is the hardest and complicated part of any SCM because not only people in the organization need to changes the way they work but also the people from each supplier that is added to the network must change.

Next is wean employees off traditional business practices. Operations people typical deal with phone call, faxes and order scrawled on paper and will most likely want to keep it that way. If the organization cannot convince people that using the SCM software is worthwhile, the employees will probably find a way around using the software. 

Other than that, ensure the SCM system supports the organizational goals. It is important to select SCM software that gives organization an advantage in the areas most crucial to their business success.

Plus, deploy in incremental phases and measure and communicate success. For instance, instead of installing a complete supply chain management system across the company and all suppliers at once start by getting it working with a few key suppliers.

Lastly is be future oriented. The supply chain design must anticipate the future state of the business because SCM system likely will last for many more years than originally planned. So manager need to explore how flexible the system will be when changes are required in the future.

CHAPTER 9

9.1 Define the systems organizations use to make decisions and gain competitive advantages.

                A Decision Support System creates a competitive advantage if three criteria are met. First,

once the DSS is implemented it must become a major or significant strength or capability

of the organization. Second, the DSS must be unique and proprietary to the organization.

Third, the advantage provided by the DSS must be sustainable for at least 3 years. Even

with rapid technology change a 3 year payback is realistic. Managers who are searching for

strategic investments in information technology need to keep these three criteria in mind. A

competitive advantage means an organization does something important much better than

its competitors.

9.2 Describe the three quantitative models typically used by decision support systems.

Sensitivity analysis is a special type of what-if analysis. The decision maker will change only one variable of the problem to view change on the remaining variables. For example, change in the expenses again and again or increase/decrease the tax rate.

The decision maker will set a target figure for the required variables and try to evaluate the remaining variables using a goal-seeking analysis, such as an amount figure is set for the profit variable and make changes in the other variables to achieve it.

The decision maker to achieve the maximum feasible value for the target variable uses optimization analysis. Optimization analysis is a special type of goal-seeking analysis. Goal- seeking analysis is made without considering any constraints where as optimization analysts is made with considering all constraints, such as budget, schedule and resources.

9.3 Describe the relationship between digital dashboards and executive information systems.

Executive Information Systems includes consolidation which involves the aggregation of information and features simple rollups to complex groupings of interrelated information. Drill-down that enables users to get details, and details of details, of information viewing monthly, weekly, daily, or even hourly information represents drill down capability. Slide-and-dice which is the ability to look at information from different perspectives. Digital dashboards integrate information from multiple components and tailor the information to individual preferences. Digital dashboards commonly use indicators to help executives quickly identify the status of the key information or critical success factors.

9.4 List and describe four types of artificial intelligence systems.

1. Intelligent System - Intelligent systems are a new wave of embedded and real-time systems that are highly connected, with massive processing power and performing complex applications. Their pervasiveness is reshaping the real world and how we interact with our digital life.

2. Expert System - a computer system that emulates the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning about knowledge, represented primarily as if–then rules rather than through conventional procedural code. The first expert systems were created in the 1970s and then proliferated in the 1980s. Expert systems were among the first truly successful forms of AI software.

3. Neural Networks - An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is an information processing paradigm that is inspired by the way biological nervous systems, such as the brain, process information. The key element of this paradigm is the novel structure of the information processing system. It is composed of a large number of highly interconnected processing elements (neurones) working in unison to solve specific problems. ANNs, like people, learn by example. An ANN is configured for a specific application, such as pattern recognition or data classification, through a learning process. Learning in biological systems involves adjustments to the synaptic connections that exist between the neurones. This is true of ANNs as well.

4. Knowledge - Knowledge is the information about a domain that can be used to solve problems in that domain. To solve many problems requires much knowledge, and this knowledge must be represented in the computer. As part of designing a program to solve problems, we must define how the knowledge will be represented. A representation scheme is the form of the knowledge that is used in an agent. A representation of some piece of knowledge is the internal representation of the knowledge. A representation scheme specifies the form of the knowledge. A knowledge base is the representation of all of the knowledge that is stored by an agent.

CHAPTER 8

8.1 Describe the roles and purpose of data warehouses and data marts in an organization.

               

                A data warehouse is a repository of an organization’s electronically stored data, designed to facilitate reporting and analysis. Data warehousing arises in an organization’s need for reliable, consolidated, unique and integrated reporting and analysis of its data, at different levels of aggregation. The process of organizing information in such way as to create data-based knowledge is called Data Warehousing. The software products that present this knowledge to users are sometimes called Business Intelligence Tools. Data Mart is a database that has the same characteristics as a data warehouse but usually smaller and is focused on the data for one division or one workgroup within an enterprise.

8.2 Compare the multidimensional nature of data warehouses (and data marts) with the two-dimensional nature of databases

                Multi-Dimensional Analysis is generally used in statistics, econometrics and other related fields and the results of this kind of analysis used in the different fields can be further applied to different fields like business enterprise. Multi-dimensional analysis actually is a process which groups data into two basic categories which are the data dimension category and the measurement category.

                Two dimensional data sets are also called panel data in other disciplines. Logically, any two or higher dimensional data sets could actually be considered as multidimensional data but the term multidimensional data tends to be applied on data sets only with three or more dimensions.

8.3 Identify the importance of ensuring the cleanliness of information throughout an organization.

                If an organization is using a data warehouse or data mart, low quality information will definitely have a negative impact on its ability to make the right decisions. To increase the quality of organizational information and thus the effectiveness of decision making, businesses use information cleansing which is a process that weeds out and fixes or discards inconsistent, incorrect, or incomplete information.

8.4 Explain the relationship between business intelligence and a data warehouse.

                Data warehouse and business intelligence are two terms that are a common source of confusion, both inside and outside of the information technology(IT) industry. Data warehousing refers to the technology used to actually create a repository data. Business Intelligence refers to the tools and applications used in the analysis and interpretation of data. These two elements have grown substantially and are forecast to experience continued growth into the future.