CHAPTER 19 : OUTSOURCING IN THE 21st CENTURY

Two basic options are available to organisations wishing to develop and maintain their information systems :- 

1. Insourcing ---> is a common approach using the develop and maintain the organization's information technology systems
2. Outsourcing ---> is an arrangement by which one organization that chooses not to perform them in-house

3 forms of outsourcing options a project must consider are :- 

• onshore outsourcing = engaging another company within the same country for services
• nearshore outsourcing = contracting an outsourcing arrangement with a company in a nearby country. Often this country will share a border with the native country.
• offshore outsourcing = using organizations from developing countries to write code and develop systems. The country is geographically far away.

Factors affecting the growth of the outsourcing market :-

• core compentencies
• financial savings
• rapid growth
• industry changes
• the internet
• globalization

CHAPTER 15 : CREATING COLLABORATIVE PARTNERSHIPS

Teams , Partnerships, and Alliances

• organizations create and use teams, partnerships, and alliances to                                    - undertake new initiatives                                                                                                         -  - address both minor and major problem                                                                                  -capitalize on significant opportunities

• organizations create teams, partnerships and alliances both internally with employees and externally with other organizations.
• facilitating the sharing and flow of information.
• core competency is an organization's key strength, a business function that it does better than any of its competitors.
•  
• core competency strategy is organization chooses to focus specifically on its core competency and forms partnerships with other organizations to handle nonstrategic business processes.
• information partnerships occurs when two or more organizations cooperate by integrating their IT systems, thereby providing customers with the best of what each can offer.

Collaboration Systems

• an IT-based set of tools that supports the work of teams by facilitating the sharing and flow of information.
• categories:
• unstructured collaboration (information collaboration)
• structured collaboration (process collaboration)

Explicit and Tacit Knowledge

• explicit consists of anything that can be documented, archived, and codified, often with the help of IT.
• tacit is knowledge contained in people's head.

Content Management

• - provides tools to manage the creation, storage, editing, and publication of information in a collaborative environment

Working Wikis

• -wikis is web-based tools to make it easy for users to add, remove and change online.

Workflow Management Systems

• -workflow defines all the steps or business rules, from beginning to end, required for a business process.
• -workflow management system is facilitates the automation and management of business processes and controls the movement of work through the business process

Groupware Systems 

• -groupware is software that supports team interaction and dynamics including calendaring, scheduling and videoconferencing.

CHAPTER 14: EBUSINESS

• Business Model ----> Plans that details how a company creates, delivers and generates revenues
• Ebusiness Model -----> plans that detalis how a company create, delivers and generate revenues on the internet 

1. Business to business (B2B) = applies to businesses buying from n selling to each other over the internet.                                                                                                                                                   E.g : software sales, licensing, virtual assistant business
2. Business to consumer (B2C) = applies to any business that sells its products or services to consumers over the internet.                                                                                                                                       E.g : online business that operate by Zalora .com
   
3. Consumer to business (C2B) = applies to any consumer who sells product or service to a business on the internet.                                                                                                                                               E.g : customer set a price of something and then the seller decide to supply them
4. Consumer to consumer (C2C) = applies to sites primarily offering goods and services to assist consumers interacting with each other over the internet.                                                                              E.g : auction where buyers and seller solicit consecutive bids from each other and prices are determined dynamically.                                                                                                                                                                                    

• Business tools -----> - email - instant messaging - podcasting - web conferencing - video conferencing
• Challenges of ebusiness -----> -identifying limited market segments                                                                                                     -managing consumer liast                                                                                                                   -ensuring consumer protection                                                                                                           -adhering to taxation rules

CHAPTER 12 : INTEGRATING THE ORGANIZATION FROM END TO END - ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING

ERP - Enterprise resource planning

• ERP system is a databased, when a user enters or updates information in one modul, it is immediately and automatically updated throughout the entire sytem.
• ERP bringing the organization together

Integrating SCM, CRM, ERP

• all are the backbone of e-business
• intergration of these is the key to success for many companies
• integration allows the unlocking of information to make it available to any user, anywhere, anytime

Integration tools

many companies purchase modules from an ERP vendor, an SCM vendor, and a CRM vendor and must integrate the different modules together.

• Middleware - several different types of software which sit in the middle of and provide connectivity between two or more software applications.
• Enterprise application integration (EAI) middleware - packages together commonly used functionally which reduced the time necessary to develop solutions that integrate applications from multiple vendors.
• Data points where SCM, CRM and ERP integrate

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

ERP systems must integrate various organization processes and be:

•  flexible
• modular and open
• comprehensive
• beyond the company

SAP boasts 20,000 installations and 10 million users worldwide.

ERP solutions are growing because:

• 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 fixinf legacy systems.

CHAPTER 11 : BUILDING A CUSTOMER-CENTRIC ORGANIZATION - (CRM) CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

(CRM)

CRM enables an organization to 

1. provide better customer service
2. make call centers more efficient
3. cross sell products more effectively
4. helps sales staff close deals faster
5. simplify marketing and sales processes
6. discover new customers
7. increase customer revenue

(RFM) regency, frequency and monetary value

an organization can find its most valuable customers by using a formula that industry insiders call RFM

1. Regency: how recently a customer purchased items 
2. Frequency: how frequently a customer purchased items 
3. Monetary value: how much a customer speeds on each purchased

The evaluation of CRM

1. CRM reporting technologies help organizations identify their customers across other applications
2. CRM analysis technologies help organizations segment their customers into categories such as best and worst customers
3. CRM predicting technologies help organizations predict customer behavior, such as customers at risk of leaving.

CHAPTER 9: ENABLING THE ORGANIZATIONAL - DECISON MAKING

Decision Making

Reasons for growth of Decision Making information :

• people need to analyze large amount of information
• people must make decisions quickly.
• people must apply sophisticated analysis techniques, such as modeling and foracasting to make good decisions.
• people must protect the corporate asset of organizational information.
• Model : a simplified representation or abstraction of reality. And IT systems in an enterprise.

Transaction Processing Systems  

• Moving up through the organizational pyramid users move from requiring transactional information to analytical information

transaction processing systems is the basic business systems that serves th

operational level (analysis) in an organization.

Decision Support Systems : 

 models information to support managers and business professionals during the decison making process.

3 quantitative models used by DSS: 

• sensitivity analysis : the study of the impact that changes in one or more parts of the  model have on other parts of the model
• what is nalysis : checks the impact of a change in an assumption on the proposed solution
• goal- seeking analysis : finds the inputs necessary to achieve a goal such as a desired level of outputs.

 Executive Information Systems : 

• is a specialized DSS that support senior level executives within the organization.
• Digital Dashboard : integrates information from multiple components and present it in a unified display.

Artificial Intelligence : 

• Intelligence systems is various commercial applications of artificial intelligence.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) is simulates human intelligence such as the ability to reason and learn.
• 4 categories of AI : expert system, neural network, genetic algorithm and intelligent agent.

Data Mining : 

• Data mining software includes many forms of AI such as neural networks and expert systems.

CHAPTER 8: ACCESSING ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION - DATA WAREHOUSE

Data Warehouse Fundamentals :

•   Data warehouse - a logical collection of information -gathered from many different operational databases -that supports business analysis activities and decision-making tasks.
• primary purpose of a data warehouse is to aggregate information throughout an organization into a single repository decision-making purposes.
• Extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) - a process that extracts information from internal and external databases, transform the information using a common set of interprise definitions, and loads the information into a data warehouse.
• Data mart - contains a subset of data warehouse information.

Multidimensional Analysis and Data Mining : 

• cube - common term for the representation of multidimensional information.

• data mining - the process of analyzing data to extract information not offered by the raw data alone.
•  data-mining tool - uses a variety of techniques to find patterns and relationships in large volumes of information and infers rules that predict future behavior and guide decision making.

Information Cleansing or Scrubbing : 

• is a process that weeds out and fixes or discards inconsistent, incorrect, or incomplete information.

Business Intelligence : 

• information that people use to support their decision-making efforts.
• principle BI enablers includes - technology, people and culture. 

CHAPTER 7: STORING ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION - DATABASE

Database --->  maintains information about various types of objects (inventory), events (transactions), people (employees), and places (warehouse).

Database models --->

• Hierarchical database model - information is organized into a tree-like structure (using parent/child relationship) in such a way that it cannot have too many relationship.
• Network database model - a flexible way of representing objects and their relationships.
•     Relational database model - stores information in the form of logically related two-dimensional tables.

Entities and Attributes --->

• entities is a person, place, thing, transaction, or event about which information is stored. - the rows, in each table contain the entities.
• attributes (fields, columns) is characteristics or properties of an entity class. - the columns in each table contain the attributes. 

Keys and Relationship --->

• Primary key - a field (or group of fields) that uniquely identifies a given entity in a table.
•   Foreign key - a primary key of one table that appears an attribute in another table and acts to provide a logical relationship among the two tables.

Relational Database Advantages --->

• Increased flexibility - a well-designed database should handle changes quickly and easily and provide users with different view.
• Increased scalability performance - scalability refers to how well a system can adapt to increase demands. And performance is to 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 to measures the quality of information. And the integrity constraint is the rules that help ensure the quality of information. > relational integrity constraint and business-critical integrity constraint.
•  Increased information security - password provides authentication of the user,access level determines who has access to the different types of information, andaccess control determines types of user access, such as read-only access. 

Database Management Systems --->

• software through which users and application programs interact with a database.

Database-Driven Websites ---> 

• an interactive website kept constantly updated and relevant to the needs of its customers through the use of a database.

Integrating Information among Multiple Databases --->

• Integration is allows separate systems to communicate directly with each other. there has two ways is -forwards integration is takes information entered into a given system and sends it automatically to all downstream systems and processes. then, backward integration is takes information entered into a given system and sends it automatically to all upstream systems and processes.

CHAPTER 6

Valuing Organizational Information

Organizational information 

Information granularity ~ refers to the extent of detail within the information (fine and detaled or coarse and abstract). Sucessfully levels, in varied formats, exhibiting different granulity can provide tremendous insight into how an organization is performing.

The Value of Transactional and Analytical Information

Transactional information encompasses all of the information contained within a single business or unit of work, and its primary purpose is to suport the performing of daily operational tasks. Analytical information encompasses all organizational information and its primary purpose os to support the performing of managering analysis tasks.

The Values of Timely Information

Real time information means immediate, up-to-date information. Real time systems provide real time information in response to query request.

The Value of Quality Information

Business decisions are only as good as the quality of information used to make the decision.HIgh quality information = 1. Accuracy 2. Comleteness 3. Consistency 4. Uniqueness 5. Timeliness

Understanding The Costs of Poor Information

Using the wrong information can lead to make the wrong decision. As a consequense wrong decisions can cosy time, money and even reputation.

Understanding The Benefit

High quality information does not automatically guarantee that every decision you made is going to be a good one, since people ultimately make decisons. However, high qulaity information can significantly improve the chances of making a good decision and directly increase an organization's bottom line.

CHAPTER 5

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES THAT SUPPORT STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

IT Roles and Responsibilities

- CIO (chief information officer)

Overseeing all uses of information technology. Ensuring the strategic alignment of IT with business goals and objectives. Reports directly to the CEO. Manager~ ensure the delivery of all IT projects, on time and within budget. Leader~ ensure the strategic vision of IT is in line with the strategic vision of organization. Communicator ~ advocate and communicate the IT strategy by building and maintaining strong executive       relationship

- CTO (chief technology officer)

Ensuring the throughput, speed, accuracy, availability and realibilityof an organization's IT. Have direct responsibility for ensuring the eficiency of IT systems throughout the organization

- CSO (chief security officer)

Ensuring the security of IT systems. Developing strategies and IT safeguards against attacks from viruses and hackers

- CPO (chief privacy officer)

Ensuring the ethical and legal use of information within an organization. Many CPOs are lawyers by training, enabling them to understand the often complex legal issues surrounding the use of information

- CKO (chief knowledge officer)

Collecting, maintaining and distributing the organization's knowledge. Designs programs and systems that make it easy for people to reuse knowledge. Must continuously encourage employee contributions to keep systems up-to-date. Can contribute directly to the organization's bottom line by reducing the learning curve for new employees or employees taking on new roles

The Gap Between Business Personnel and IT Personnel

The gap between the business arm in an organization and IT is exist because presence of perception business people that the IT department generates expenses not income. This means they looks alike liability and not asset to the organization. In the same time, the IT department is hidden from the customer often classified as back office business initiative or process, This create a different perspective to the business personnel and the resuly, a gap is exist.

Organizational Fundamentals

- Ethics ~ Ethics is the principle and standards that guide our behavior toward other people. Descriptive ethics is exactly that a description of "what is" in the reality of business ethics. This perspective seeks to understand moral and ethical systems shared by people, cultures and societies. This form seeks to understand prevailing views and actions regarding ethical behavior. Effective communicatiob is important to accutarely and effectively convey the management's message. several key elements are important are honest, faith and confident. 

- Security ~ Security is a major ethical issues. The right to be left alone when you want to have control over your own personal possessions and not to be observed without your consent.

TUTORIAL CHAPTER 4

1. Define metrics and describe the relationship between efficiency IT metrics and effectiveness IT metrics.

• A metric is a standard measure to assess performance in a particular area. Metrics are about neither technology nor business strategy. Metrics are the detailed measure that feed KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). KPIs are the measure that are tied to business drivers.
• Effeciency IT metrics measure the perfomance of the IT system itself including throughput speed and availability.Effectiveness IT metrics measure the impact IT has on business processes and activities including customer satisfaction, conversion rates and sell-through increases. Effectiveness focus on how well an organization is achieving its goals and objectives, while efficiency focuses on the extent to which an organization is using its resources in an optimal way.

2. Explain why a business would use metrics to measure the success at strategic initiatives

• Metrics are at yhe heart of a good, customer- focused management system and any program directedat continous improvement.
• Supply Chain Management (SCM) metrics can hepl an organization understand how it's operating over a given time period. SCM cover many areas including procurement, production, distribution, warehousing, inventory, transportation and customer service. A good performance in one part of the supply chain is not sufficient.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) metrics is to track and monitor using repoerting and real-time performance dashboards.
• Business Process reengineering (BPR) is a standardized set of activities that accomplish a specific task, such as processing a customer's order and also redesign of workflow within and between enterprises. 
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Identify how an organization can use business process reengineering to improve its business. E.g: company A resolution cycle time is 3-4 weeks in order to claim for insurance while company B resolution time is 40 minutes to claim for insurance.

CHAPTER 3

STRATEGIC INITIATIVES FOR IMPLEMENTING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

Supply Chain Management (SCM)

- SCM involves the management of information flows between and among stages in a suplly chain to maximize total supply chain effectiveness and profitability. The  four basic components of SCM management are:

• [Supply Chain Strategy]= the strategy for managing all the resources required to meet customers demand for all of the products and services
• [Supply Chain Partners]= the partners chosen to deliver finished products, raw materials and servicesincluding pricing, delivery and payment processes along with partner relationship monitoring metrics
• [Supply Chain Operation]= the schedule for production activities including testing, packaging and preparation for delivery. Measurements for this component including productivity and quality
• [Supply Chain Logistics]= the product delivery process and elements including orders, warehouse, carriers, defective product returns and invoicing

 E.g: the diagram demonstrates how the supply chain is dynamic and involves the constant flow of information between the different parties.

Effective and efficient SCM systems can enable an organization 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 entrants
• increase effiiciencies while seeking a competitive advantage through cost leadership

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

- CRM involves managing all aspects of a customers' relationship with an organizationto increase customers loyalty and retentionand an organization's profitability

CRM Strategy

CRM aside from a form of technology, it is also a strategy an organization must embrace on a enterprise level. CRM system also help organizations identify customers and design specific marketing campaign tailored to each customer, thus increase customer spending. It is also allow organizations to treat customers as an individuals, gaining important insights into their buying preferences and behaviors and leading to increased sales, greater profitability, and higher rates of customer loyalty.

Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

- A standardardized set of activities that accomplish a specific task, such as processing a customers' orders and also redesign of workflow within and between enterprises.

Finding Opportunity Using BPR

- 7 principle of business process reengineering:

1. Organize around outcomes,not tasks
2. Identify all the organization's processes and prioritize then in order of redesign urgency
3. integrate information processing work into the real work that produces the information
4. treat geographically dispersed resources as though they were centralized
5. link parallel activities in the workflow instead of just integrating their results
6. Put the decision point where the work is performed and build control into the process
7. Capture information once and at the source

Enterprise Resource planning 

- Identify how an organization can use business process reengineering to improve its business. E.g: company A resolution cycle time is 3-4 weeks in order to claim for insurance while company B resolution time is 40 minutes to claim for insurance. 

CHAPTER 2

 IDENTIFYING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Competitive advantages is a product or service that an organization's customers place a greater value on than similar offerings from a competittor. competitive advantage can be devided into three parts which is: 

Porter's Five Force Model -

 [ Buyer power] = in order to reduce buyer power, to create competitive advantage and as well to prevent customers from buying the competitors products, an organization need to be creative to attract those customers. Loyalty programs are best practice to reduce buyer power. Buyer power enable customers to grow large and powerful as result of heir market share , also many choices of whom to buy from and low when it comes to limited items.  

[Supplier power] = 

If supplier power is high the supplier can influence the industry by charging higher prices, limiting quallity services and shifting costs to industry.

[Threat of Substitute Products or Services] = It is high when there are many alternatives to a product or service and it is low when there are a few alternatives from which to choose. the threat of substitute are customers tend to use different product to fulfill the same needs and customers also tend to switch to another product because of the costs (switching cost) 

[ Threat of New Entrant] = it is high when it is easy for new competitors to enter a market. It is low when there are significant entry barriers to entering a market. Entry barriers is a product or service feature that customers have come to expect from organizations and must be offered the same for survival. E.g: a new bank must offer its customers a service like any other bank including online banking, bill payment through online services and many more.

[ Rivalry Among Existence Competitiors] = it is high when competition is fierce in a market, It is low when competition is more complacent. the best practice of IT in this are  Wal- mart and its suppliers are using IT enable system for communication and track product at aisles by effective tagging system and reduce cost by using effective supply chain. Existing competitiors are not much of the threat: typically each firm has found its niche. However , changes in in management can give rise to serious threats to long term survival from existing firms.

Porter's 3 Generis Strategies

[ Cost Leadership] = becoming a low-cost producer in the industry allows the company to lower prices to customers. Competitors with higher costs cannot afford to compete with the low-cost leader on price. 

[ Differentation] = Create competitive advantage ny distinguishing their products on one or more features important to their customers. Unique features or benifits may justify price difference and stimulate demand. E.g: i-care by Proton

[ Focused Strategy] = Target to niche market. Concentrates om either cost leadership or differentation.

Relationship Between Business Process and Value Chain

- [Supply Chain] = a chain or series of process that adds value to product and service for customer

- Add value to its products and services that support a profit margin for the firm

CHAPTER 1

  BUSINESS DRIVEN TECHNOLOGY

Information Technology's Role in Business

 IT is everywhere in Business. E.g:

 

Information Technology's impact on Business Operation

- organization typically operate by functonal areas or functional silos

- functional area are independent

functional organization= each functional area has its own systems and communicates with every other functioal are

                     

Information Technology Basic

- IT is a feild concerned with the use of technology in managing and process the information

- it is also an important enabler of business success and innovation

- Management Information Systems (MIS) is a general name for the business function and academic discipline covering the application of people, technologies, and procedured to slove business procedures to solve business problems

- MIS is a business function, similar to Accounting, Finance, Operation ans Human Resources

Data, information and business intelligence IT resource and IT cultures are the important to learn about IT

Information

- Data = raw facts that describe the characteristic of an event

- Information = data converted into a meanigful and useful context

- Business intelligence = applications and technologies that are use to support decision- making efforts

IT resources 

-people use

- information technology to work with
- information

Organizational IT cultures

- IT cultures = Employees use information as a means of exercising influence or power over others. E.g: Sales manager refuse to share information with marketing. This causes marketing to need the sales manager's input each time a new sales strategy is developed.

- Information-sharing cultures = Employees across departments trust each other to use information (esp problems and failures) to improve performance

- Information-inquiring culture = Employess across departments search for information to better understand the future and align themselves with current trends and new directions

- Information-discovery culture = Employees across departments are open to new insights about crisis and radical changes and seek ways to create competitive advantages