Chapter 6 : Valuing Organizational Information

Learning Outcomes :

1. Describe the broad levels, formats, and granularities of information
2. Differentiate between transactional and analytical information
3. List, describe and provide an example of each of the five characteristics of high quality information
4. Asses the impact of low quality information on an organization and the benefits of high quality information on an organization

Organizational Information

• Information is everywhere in an organization
• Employees must be able to obtain and analyze the many different levels, formats,and granularities of an organizational information to make decisions

The Value of Timely Information

Timeliness is an aspect of information that depends on the situation

• Real-time information - immediate, up-to-date information
• Real-time system - provides real-time information in response to query requests

The Value of Quality Information

-Characteristics of high quality information include : 

• Accuracy
• Completeness
• Consistency
• Uniqueness
• Timeliness

Chapter 5 : Organizational Structures that Support Strategic Initiatives

Learning Outcomes :

1. Compare the responsibilities of a chief information officer (CIO), chief technology (CTO), chief privacy officer (CPO), chief security officer (CSO), chief knowledge office (CKO).
2. Explain the gap between IT people and business people and the primary reason this gap exists
3. Define the relationship between information security and ethics

IT Roles and Responsibilities

• Chief Information Officer (CIO) - oversees all uses of IT and ensures the strategic alignment of IT with business goals and objectives
• CIO includes manager, leader and communicator

Ethics

- The principles and standards that guide our behavior toward other people

Issues affected by technology advances

•  Intellectual property : intangible creative work that is embodied in physical form
• Copyright : legal protection afforded an expression of an idea such a song 
• Fair use doctrine : certain situations, legal to use copyrighted material
• Pirated software : unauthorized use, duplication, distribution or sale of copyrighted software
• Counterfeit software : manufactured to look like the real thing and sold as such

Security

- Information security : protection of information from accidental or intentional misuse by persons inside or outside an organization

Chapter 4 : Measuring The Success of Strategic Initiatives

Learning Outcomes :

1. Compare efficiency IT metrics and effectiveness IT metrics
2. List and describe five common types of efficiency IT metrics
3. List and describe four types of effectiveness IT metrics 
4. Explain customer metrics and their importance to an organization

Efficiency and Effectiveness :

• Efficiency IT metric - measures the performance of the IT system itself 
• Effectiveness IT metric - measures the impact IT has on business processes and activities including 

Benchmarking - a process of continuously measuring system results, comparing those results to optimal system performance 

The Interrelationships of Efficiency and Effectiveness IT metrics

• Efficiency IT metrics focus on technology and include :

- Throughput - amount of information that can travel through a system at any point

- Transaction speed - amount of time a system takes to perform a transaction
- System availability - number of hours a system is available for users
- Information accuracy - system generates the correct results when executing the same transaction
- Web traffic - a host of benchmark such as number of page views
- Response time - time it takes to respond to user interactions such as mouse click

• Effectiveness IT metrics :

- Usability - people perform transactions and/or find information
- Customer satisfaction - measured by such benchmarks as satisfaction surveys and percentages
- Conversion rates - number of customer an organization 'touches' for the first time
- Financial - return on investment, cost benefit analysis and maintenance


Metrics for Strategic Initiatives

Metrics for measuring and managing strategic initiatives include :

1. Website metrics
2. Abandoned registrations
3. Click through
4. Conversion rate
5. Cost-per-thousand
6. Page exposures
7. Total hits
8. Unique visitors

Supply Chain Management

1. Back order
2. Customer order promised cycle time
3. Customer order actual cycle time
4. Inventory replenishment
5. Inventory turns (inventory turnover)

Customer Relationship Management Metrics

1. Sales metrics
2. Service metrics
3. Marketing metrics

BPR and ERP metrics

• The balanced scorecard enables organizations to measure and manage strategic initiatives

Chapter 3 : Strategic Initiatives for Implementing Competitive Advantages

Learning Outcomes:

1. List and describe the four basic components of supply chain management
2. Explain customer relationship management systems and how they can help organizations understand their customers
3. Summarize the importance of enterprise resource planning systems
4. Identify how an organization can use business process reengineering to improve its business

Strategic Initiatives

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• Supply Chain Management (SCM) - involves the management of information flows between and among stages in a supply chain to maximize total supply chain effectiveness and profitability
• Four basic components of supply chain management include : 

1. Supply Chain Strategy - managing all resources to meet customer demand
2. Supply Chain Partner - partners throughout the supply chain that deliver finished products, raw materials and service
3. Supply Chain Operations - schedule for production activities
4. Supply Chain Logistics - product delivery process

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - involves managing aspects of a customers relationship with an organization to increase customer loyalty and retention and an organization profitability
• CRM enable an organization to identify types of customers, design individual customer marketing campaigns, treat each customer as an individual and understand customer buying behaviours

• Business Process Reengineering (BPR) - a standardized set of activities that accomplish a specific task such as processing a customer order
• The analysis and redesign of workflow within and between enterprises

• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) - integrates all departments and functions throughout an organization into a single IT system so that employees can make decisions by viewing enterprisewide information 
• ERP stand for enterprise

Chapter 2 : Identifying Competitive Advantages

Learning Outcomes

• Explain why competitive advantages are typically temporary
• List and describe each of the five forces in Porter's Five Forces Model
• Compare Porter's three generic strategies
• Describe the relationship between business processes and value chains

Identifying Competitive Advantages  

-To survive and thrive an organization must create a competitive advantage

1. Competitive advantage - a product or service that an organization customer place a greater value on than similar offerings from a competitor
2. First mover advantage - occurs when an organization can significantly impact its market share by being first to market with a competitive advantage
3. Environmental scanning - the acquisition and analysis of events and trend in the invironment external to an organization

Three common tools : 

Porter's Five Forces Model (industry attractiveness)

Porter's Three Generics Strategies (business focus)

Value Chains (business strategy)

• Buyer Power

- High when buyers have many choices of whom to buy from and low when their choices are few

Way to reduce buyer power is though loyalty programs

1. Loyalty program - rewards customers based on the amount of business they do with particular organization
2. Switching costs - costs that can make customers reluctant to switch to another product or service

• Supplier Power 

- High when buyers have few choices of whom to buy from and low when their choices are many

- Low when their choices are many

- Supply chain - consists of all parties involved in the procurement of a raw product or raw material

Two types of business-to-business (B2B) marketplaces

• Private exchange - single buyer posts its needs and then opens the bidding to any supplier who would care to bid
• Reverse auction - auction format in which increasingly lower bids are solicited from organizations willing to supply the desired product or service at an increasingly lower price

Threat of Substitute Products of Service

- High when they are many alternatives about products service

- Low when there are few alternatives about products service

Threat of New Entrants

-High when it is easy for new competitors to enter market

-Low when they are significant entry barriers to enter market

Rivalry among Existence Competitor

- High when competition is fierce in market

- Low when competition is more complacent

The Three Generic Strategies

Cost Leadership

• Becoming a low cost producer in the industry allows the company to lower prices to the customer
• Competitors with higher costs cannot afford to compete with low costs reader on price

Focus Strategy

• Target to a niche market
• Concentrate on either cost on leadership or differentiation

Relationships between business process and value chain

Supply chain - a chain or series of processes that adds value to products and service for customer

Supply chain diagram

Chapter 1: Information Technology in Business

Learning outcomes:

1. Compare management information systems (MIS) and information technology (IT)
2. Describe the relationship among people, information technology and information
3. Identify four different departments in a typical business and explain how technology helps them to work together
4. Compare the four different types of organizational information cultures and decide which cultures applies to your school.

• Information technology is everywhere in business
• Understanding information technology provides great insight to anyone learning about business

Information Technology Impact On Business Operations

Information Technology Basics

• Information Technology (IT) - a field concerned with the use of technology in managing and processing information
• Information technology is an important enabler of business success and innovation
• Managing Information systems (MIS) - a general name for the business function and academic discipline covering the application of people, technologies and procedure to solve business problems.
• MIS is a business function similar to Accounting, Finance, operations and Human Resources.

When beginning to learn about information technology it is important to understand

Data - raw facts that describe the characteristics of an event

Information - data converted into a meaningful and useful context

Business Intelligence - applications and technologies that are used to support decision making efforts

IT Resources

IT Cultures

Organizational information cultures include :

• Information-functional culture ; Employees use information as a means of exersicing influence or power over others
• Information-sharing culture : Employees across departments trust each other to use information 
• Information-inquiring culture : Employees across department search for information to better understand the future
• Information-discovery culture : Employees across department are open to new insights about crisis