Week Ten Questions: Chapter 9

1.     What is your understanding of CRM?

Customer-relationship management (CRM) involves managing all aspects of a customer's relationship with an organisation to increase customer loyalty and retention as well as an organisation's profitability.

2.     Compare operational and analytical customer relationship management.

Operational CRM supports traditional transactional processing for day-to-day front-office operations or systems that deal directly with the customers. Analytical CRM supports back-office operations and strategic analysis and includes all systems that do not deal directly with the customers.

3.     Describe and differentiate the CRM technologies used by marketing departments and sales departments?

The three primary operational CRM technologies a marketing department can implement to increase customer satisfaction are:

-        List Generators: compile customer information from a variety of sources and segment the information for different marketing campaigns

-        Campaign Management: guide users through marketing campaigns performing such tasks as campaign definition, planning, scheduling, segmentation and success analysis

-        Cross-Selling: is selling additional products or services to a customer (Up-Selling: is increasing the value of the sale)

4.     How could a sales department use operational CRM technologies?

Sales departments had two primary reasons to track customer information electronically. First, sales representatives were struggling with the overwhelming amount f customer account information they were required to maintain and track.  Second, companies were struggling with the issue that much of their vital customer and sales information remained in the heads of their sales representatives.

5.     Describe business intelligence and its value to businesses

Business intelligence refers to the applications and technologies that are used to gather provide access to and analyse data and information to support decision-making efforts. It allows business users to receive data for analysis being reliable, consistent, understandable, and easily manipulated.

6.     Explain the problem associated with business intelligence. Describe the solution to this business problem?

7.     What are two possible outcomes a company could get from using data mining?

Data mining is the process of analyzing data to extract information not offered by the raw data alone.

Week Nine Questions: Chapter 8

1.     Define the term operations management?

Operations management (OM) is the management of systems or processes that convert or transform resources (including human resources) into goods and services.  

2.      Explain operations management’s role in business?

Operations management is responsible for managing the core processes used to manufacture goods and produce services. Typical OM activities within a business include:

-       Forecasting

-       Capacity Planning

-       Scheduling

-       Managing Inventories

-       Assuring Quality

-       Motivating and Training Employees

-       Locating Facilities

3.     Describe the correlation between operations management and information technology?

Managers can use IT to heavily influence OM decisions including productivity, costs, flexibility, quality and customer satisfaction. One benefit of IT on OM is in making operational decisions because OM exerts considerable influence over the degree to which the goals and objectives of the organisation are realised.  

4.      Explain supply chain management and its role in a business?

SCM involves the management of information flows between and among stages in a supply chain to maximise total supply chain effectiveness and profitability. 

SCM software can enable an organisations to generate efficiencies within these steps by automating and improving the information flows throughout and among the different supply chain components.
Efficient and effective SCM systems can enable an organisation to:

-       Decrease the power of its buyers

-       Increase its own supplier power

-       Increase switching costs to reduce the threat of substitute products or services

-       Create entry barriers thereby reducing the threat of new entrant

-        Increase efficiencies while seeking a competitive advantage through cost leadership

Click HERE for a video on Supply Chain Management 

5.     List and describe the five components of a typical supply chain

The 5 basic components of supply chain management are:  

-       Plan: Strategic portion of SCM. A company must have a plan for managing all the resources that go toward meeting customer demand for products and services.

-       Source: Companies must carefully choose reliable suppliers that will deliver goods and services required for making products.

-       Make: This is the step where companies manufacture their products or services.

-       Deliver: often referred to as Logistics = the set of processes that plans for and controls the efficient and effective transportation and storage of supplies from suppliers to customers.

-       Return: Typically the most problematic step in the supply chain. Companies must create a network for receiving defective and excess products and support customers who have problems with delivered products.

6.      Define the relationship between information technology and the supply chain.
Information technology's primary role in SCM is creating the integrations or tight process and information linkages between functions within a firm- such as marketing, sales, finance, manufacturing and distribution- and between firms, which allow the smooth, synchronized flow of both information and product between customers, suppliers and transportation providers across the supply chain. IT integrates planning, decision-making processes, business operating processes and information sharing for business performance management.

Week Eight Questions: Chapter 7

1.     Explain the business benefits of using wireless technology.

There have been numerous benefits to business through the use of wireless technology. It is able to carry information across geographical areas that cable and fibre optics cannot. Wireless technology has also fuelled a major market and technology disruption, which has permeated almost every consumer market worldwide. The domino effect of the success of wireless technology has resulted in a unique opportunity for innovation and creativity in technology, marketing, and business strategy.

2.     Describe the business benefits associated with VoIP

Voice Over IP (VoIP) uses TCP/IP technology to transmit calls over Internet technology. The benefits associated with VoIP have allowed the telecommunications industry for easier development, interoperability among systems and application integration.

3.     Compare LANs and WANs

A Local Area Network or LAN, is designed to connect a group of computers in close proximity to each other such as in an office building, a school or a home. A WAN or Wide Area Network, spans a large geographic area, such as a state, province or country. They can also connect multiple smaller networks (LAN’s).

4.     Describe RFID and how it can be used to help make a supply chain more effective.

RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification and are technologies that use active or passive tags in the form of chips or smart labels that can store unique identifiers and relay this information to electronic readers. They can cut costs by requiring fewer workers for scanning items and can also provide more current and more accurate information to the entire supply chain.

5.     Identify the advantages and disadvantage of deploying mobile technology?

Advantages	Disadvantages
Universal access to information and applications	Data loss
Automation of business processes	Flexibility and users ability to embrace change
User convenience	User’s knowledge of mobile technology can be limited
Africa has the largest growth rate of mobile phone subscribers in the world, its markets expanding nearly twice as fast as Asian markets. This has helped fuel growth in Africa.
Mobile phones are now being used to provide immediate notifications of natural disasters. In the event of an emergency, disaster response crews can locate trapped or injured people using the signals from their mobile phones. (This is evident in Japan, Australia, and Finland)

Week Seven Questions: Chapter 6

1.     List, describe, and provide an example of each of the five characteristics of high quality information.

-       Accuracy: Are all the values correct? E.g. Is the name spelled correctly?

-       Completeness: Are any of the values missing? E.g. is the address complete?

-       Consistency: Is aggregate or summary information in agreement with detailed information? E.g. do all total fields equal the true total of the individual fields?

-       Uniqueness: Is each transaction, entity and event represented only once in the information? E.g. are there any duplicate customers?

-       Timeliness: Is the information current with respect to the business requirements? E.g. is information updated weekly, daily or hourly?

2.     Define the relationship between a database and a database management system.

A database maintains information about various types of objects (inventory), events (transactions), people (employees) and places (warehouses).

A database management system (DBMS) is the computer program used to manage and query a database.  

Click HERE for an Introduction to Databases

3.     Describe the advantages an organisation can gain by using a database.

-       Increased Flexibility: handle changes quickly and easily

-       Increased Scalability and Performance: Scalability refers to how well a system can adapt to increase demands. Performance measures how quickly a system performs a certain process or transaction.

-       Reduced Information Redundancy: Redundancy is the duplication of information, or storing the same information in multiple places.

-       Increased Information Integrity (Quality): Information Integrity is a measure of the quality of information.

-       Increased Information Security

4.     Define the fundamental concepts of the relational database model.

-       Entities and Attributes

o   An entity in the relational database model is a person, place, thing, transaction or event about which information is stored.

o   Attributes (aka fields or columns) are characteristics or properties of an entity class.

-       Keys and Relationships

o   Primary Key is a field (or group of fields) that uniquely identifies a given entity in a table. 

An illustration of a relational database:

5.     Describe the benefits of a data-driven website.

-       Development: allows the website owner to make changes any time- all without having to rely on a developer or knowing HTML programming

-       Content Management: A static website requires a programmer to make updates. This adds an unnecessary layer between the business and its web content, leading to misunderstandings and slow turnarounds for desired changes

-       Future Expandability: Enables the site to grow faster than would be possible with a static site. Changing the layout, displays and functionality of the site is easier with a data-driven solution

-       Minimising Human Error: Error-trapping mechanisms to ensure that required information is filled out correctly and that content is entered and displayed in its correct format

-       Cutting Production and Update Costs: updates and published by any competent data-entry or administrative person

-       More Efficient: System keeps track of the templates, so users do not have to

-       Improved Stability: there is peace of mind, knowing the content is never lost- even if your programmer is

6.     Describe the roles and purposes of data warehouses and data marts in an organization?

Data Warehouse: a logical collection of information- gathered from many different operational databases- that supports business analysis activities and decision-making tasks. Primary purpose is to aggregate information throughout an organization into a single repository in such a way that employees can make decisions and undertake business analysis activities.

 

Week Six Questions: Chapter 5

1. What is information architecture and what is information infrastructure and how do they differ and how do they relate to each other?

Information architecture identified where and how important information, such as customer records, is maintained and secured. Information infrastructure (infrastructure architecture) the actual implementation that will provide for effective Information Systems, including the hardware, software, services and people involved.

2. Describe how an organisation can implement a solid information architecture 

-       Backup and Recovery:

-       Disaster Recovery:

-       Information Security:

3. List and describe the five requirement characteristics of infrastructure architecture. 

-       Reliability:

-       Scalability:

-       Flexibility:

-       Availability:

-       Performance:

4. Describe the business value in deploying a service oriented architecture 

Service Orientated Architecture is a business-driven IT architectural approach that supports integrating a business as linked, repeatable tasks or services. It ensures that IT systems can adapt quickly, easily and economically to support rapidly changing business needs.

5. What is an event? 

6. What is a service?

A service is a business task, such as checking a potential customer’s credit card rating when opening a new account. This is part of a business process.

7. What emerging technologies can companies can use to increase performance and utilise their infrastructure more effectively?

Week Five Questions: Chapter 4

1.     Explain the ethical issues surrounding information technology.

Ethics are the principles and standards that guide our behaviour toward other people.

Ethical Issues Surrounding Information Technology
Intellectual Property	The collection of rights that protect creative and intellectual effort
Copyright	The exclusive right to do, or omit to do, certain acts with intangible property such as a song, video game and some types of proprietary documents
Fair Use Doctrine	In certain situations, it is legal to use copyrighted material
Pirated Software	The unauthorised use, duplication, distribution, or sale of copyrighted software
Counterfeit Software	Software that is manufactured to look like the real thing and sold as such

Examples of Questionable Information Technology Use

Individuals copy, use and distribute software

Employees search organisational databases for sensitive corporate and personal information

Organisations collect, buy and use information without checking the validity or accuracy of the information

Individuals create and spread viruses that cause trouble for those using and maintaining IT systems

Individuals hack into computer systems to steal proprietary information

Employees destroy or steal proprietary organisation information such as schematics, sketches, customer lists and reports

2.     Describe a situation involving technology that is ethical but illegal.

3.     Describe and explain one of the computer use policies that a company might employ?

If an organisation’s employees use computers, e-Policies should be implemented. E-Policies are policies and procedures that address the ethical use of computers and Internet usage in the business environment. These policies typically embody the following:

-       Ethical computer use policy: contains general principles to guide computer use behaviour

-       Information privacy policy: contains general principles regarding information privacy

-       Acceptable use policy: a policy that a user must agree to follow in order to be provided access to a network or to the internet

-       Email privacy policy: companies can mitigate many of the risks of using electronic messaging systems by implementing and adhering to an EPP

-       Internet use policy: contains general principles to guide the proper use of the Internet

-       Anti-spam policy: simply states that email users will not send unsolicited emails (or spam).

4.     What are the 5 main technology security risks?

-       Human Error:

o   Employees that are not proficient in their duties, for instance an employee who deletes important customer records

o   Lack of adequate training on procedures

o   Leaving a public computer logged on

o   Poorly written applications

-       Natural Disasters:

o   Events that lead to destruction of data systems, eg, fire, flood, earthquakes and Tsunami’s.

o   Blackouts, brownouts and system failures

o   Terrorism is a major threat, think about the tragic events of 9/11. Entire companies, both personal and computer systems were destroyed.

-       Technical Failures:

-       Deliberate Acts:

-       Management Failure:

5.     Outline one way to reduce each risk.

-       Human Error:

o   Strong Password – letters and numbers

o   Password Policy – change passwords regularly

§  Minimum password length

§  Secure password resets

o   System Audits to track down malicious activity

o   Strong Penalties for misuse of data

o   Firewalls to prevent unauthorised external access

-       Natural Disasters:

o   The process of regaining access to computer systems and data after a disaster has taken place

o   All firms should have a comprehensive disaster recovery plan in plan

o   This plan lists things like –

§  Communications plan

§  Alternative Sites – hot or warm site

§  Business Continuity

§  Location of Backup data

o   All Firms must have business continuity plans that outline exactly what happens in a disaster.

o   Off Site Data kept in date order

o   Hot or Warm sites

o   Well Documented Procedures

o   Regular Recovery Testing

-       Technical Failures:

-       Deliberate Acts:

-       Management Failure:

6.     What is a disaster recovery plan, what strategies might a firm employee?

All firms must have business continuity plans that outline exactly what happens in a disaster.