14. Strategies for information Flashcards
Why do organisations require information?
- Planning
- Controlling
- Recording transactions
- Performance measurement
- Decision making
Give characteristics of strategic information.
Derived from both internal and external sources:
- Summarised at a high level
- Relevant to the long term
- Concerned with the whole organisation
- Often prepared on an ad hoc basis
- Both quantitative and qualitative
- Uncertain, as the future cannot be accurately predicted
Give characteristics of tactical information.
- Primarily generated internally (but may have a limited external component)
- Summarised at a lower level
- Relevant to the short and medium term
- Concerned with activities or departments
- Prepared routinely and regularly
- Based on quantitative measures
Give characteristics of operational information.
- Derived from internal sources
- Detailed, being the processing of raw data
- Relevant to the immediate term
- Task specific
- Prepared very frequently
- Largely quantitative
What are typical information requirements for the manufacturing sector?
Strategic:
- Future demand estimates
- New product development plans
- Competitor analysis
Tactical:
- Variance analysis
- Departmental accounts
- Inventory turnover
Operational:
- Production reject rate
- Materials and labour used
- Inventory levels
What are typical information requirements for the service sector?
Strategic:
- Forecast sales growth and market share
- Profitability, capital structure
Tactical:
- Resource utilisation such as average staff time charged out, number of customers per hairdresser, number of staff per account
- Customer satisfaction rating
Operational:
- Staff timesheets
- Customer waiting time
- Individual customer feedback
What are typical information requirements for the public sector?
Strategic:
- Population demographics
- Expected government policy
Tactical:
- Hospital occupancy rates
- Average class sizes
- Percent of reported crimes solved
Operational:
- Staff timesheets
- Vehicles available
- Student daily attendance records
What are typical information requirements for NFP organisations?
Strategic:
- Activities of other charities
- Government (and in some cases overseas government) policy
- Public attitudes
Tactical:
- Percent of revenue spent on admin
- Average donation
- ‘Customer’ satisfaction statistics
Operational:
- Households collected from/approached
- Banking documentation
- Donations
What are the qualities of good information?
- Accurate
- Complete
- Cost-Beneficial
- User-targeted
- Relevant
- Authoritative
- Timely
- Easy to use
Define information management strategy.
Strategy specifying who controls and uses the technology provided.
Define information systems strategy.
Strategy specifying how hardware, software and telecommunications can achieve delivery of the information systems strategy.
Define information technology strategy.
Strategy specifying the systems that will best enable the use of information to support the business strategy.
What are the benefits of a proposed information system?
- Increased revenue
- Cost reduction
- Enhanced service
- Improved decision making: Forecasting, developing scenarios, market analysis, project evaluation
When formulating an overall IS/IT strategy, what aspects should be taken into consideration?
- What are the key business areas which could benefit most from an investment in information technology?
- What form should the investment take, and how could such strategically important units be encouraged to use such technology effectively?
- Will maintenance of the new system be provided in-house or be outsourced?
- How much would the system cost in terms of software; hardware; management commitment and time; education and training; conversion; documentation; operational manning; and maintenance?
- The importance of lifetime application costs must be stressed – the costs and benefits after implementation may be more significant than the more obvious initial costs of installing an information technology function.
- What criteria for performance should be set for information technology systems?
- What are the implications for the existing work force – have they the requisite skills; can they be trained to use the systems; will there be any redundancies?
What are the recommendations of Earl’s systems audit grid?
- A system of poor quality and little value should be disposed of (divest).
- A system of high business value and low technical quality should be renewed (invested in).
- A system of high quality but low business value should be reassessed.
- High quality systems with a high business value should be maintained.
How can IS/IT be used in operation?
- Process control
- Machine tool control: Numerical control, computer numerical control, direct numerical control
- Robotic automation
- Computer aided manufacturing
- 3D printing
- Computer Integrated Manufacturing
- Enterprise Resource Planning
How can IS/IT be used in logistics?
- The use of IT in inbound logistics includes stock control systems such as MRP, MRPII, ERP and IT.
- Warehousing: the use of barcodes can increase knowledge about the quantity and nature of stock in hand.
- It is possible to create computer models, or virtual warehouses, of stock actually held at suppliers.
How can IS/IT be used in marketing?
- Social media
- Buying data about customer purchasing habits
- A variety of market research companies use IT/IS as a way of interacting with consumers.
- Supermarkets can use automated EPOS
What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?
Customer relationship management (CRM) describes the methodologies, software, and usually internet capabilities that help an enterprise manage customer relationships.
What does CRM consist of?
- Helping an enterprise to identify and target their best customers, manage marketing campaigns with clear goals and objectives, and generate quality leads.
- Assisting the organisation to improve telesales, account, and sales management by optimising information shared, and streamlining existing processes
- Allowing the formation of relationships with customers, with the aim of improving customer satisfaction and maximising profits; identifying the most profitable customers and providing them with the highest level of service.
- Providing employees with the information and processes necessary to know their customers
How can IS/IT be used in support activities?
- Procurement.
- Technology development
- HR
What are five ways in which Big Data and Data Analytics can help organisation?
- Enhanced data transparency
- Enhanced performance
- Market segmentation and customisation
- Improved decision-making
- New products and services
What are the criticisms of Big Data and Data Analytics?
- Latest buzzword
- Correlation and causation
- Data overload
- Ability to verify
- Sustainable competitive advantage
- Representative data
What are barriers to introducing Big Data and Data Analytics?
- The unknown destinations
- The underlying technology challenges
- The lack of a holistic approach
- The shortage of talent
- The fear of cyber attack
- The difficulty of building the business case
- The need for legal and regulatory compliance
- The need for customer data
Define knowledge.
Is the potential for action based on data, information, intuition and experience.
Define explicit knowledge.
Is knowledge that the company knows that it has. This includes facts, transactions and events that can be clearly stated and stored in management information systems.
Define tacit knowledge.
Is personal knowledge and expertise held by people within the organisation that has not been formally documented.
Define knowledge management.
Describes a range of strategies and tools that capture all the knowledge that is valuable to an organisation, and deliver it to the people in such a way that it can be acted on quickly, to the competitive advantage of the business.
What does knowledge management concern?
- Designing and installing techniques and processes to create, protect and use explicit knowledge.
- Designing and creating environments and activities to discover and release tacit knowledge.
- Capturing good quality information from outside the business as well as within eg, intelligence on competitors.
How can knowledge management help promote competitive advantage?
• The fast and efficient exchange of information
Effective channelling of the information to:
– Improve processes, productivity and performance.
– Identify opportunities to meet customer needs better than competitors.
– Promote creativity and innovation.
What are the risks associated with IT/IS?
– The risk of inadequacy: the failure by the firm to utilise IT/IS as effectively as its rivals will lead to loss of competitive advantage, eg, inferior service, poorer products, excess costs.
– The risk of breakdown: where the firm depends on IT/IS a breakdown in its operations threatens the business.
– The risk of excess expense: IT/IS is a significant budget item. Botched projects, expensive contracts, inappropriate systems or non-adoption presents a direct financial risk.
What are some common mistakes that adversely affect the implementation of a new information system?
Analysis:
- The problem the system is intended to solve is not fully understood.
- Investigation of the situation is hindered by insufficient resources.
- User input is inadequate
- The project team is unable to dedicate the time required.
- Insufficient time spent planning the project.
Design:
- Insufficient user input.
- Lack of flexibility.
- The system requires unforeseen changes in working patterns.
- Failure to perform organisation impact analysis.
- Overlooking organisational factors such as ergonomics, health and safety, compliance with legislation, job design and employee involvement
Programming:
- Insufficient time and money allocated to programming.
- Programmers supplied with incomplete or inaccurate specifications.
- The logic of the program is misunderstood.
- Poor programming technique results in programs that are hard to modify.
- Programs are not adequately documented.
Testing:
- Insufficient time and money allocated to testing.
- Failure to develop an organised testing plan.
- Insufficient user involvement.
- User management do not review and sign-off the results of testing.
Conversion:
- Insufficient time and money allocated to data conversion.
- Insufficient checking between old and new files.
- The process is rushed to compensate for time overruns elsewhere.
Implementation:
- Insufficient time, money and/or appropriate staff mean the process has to be rushed.
- Lack of user training increases the risk of system under-utilisation and rejection.
- Poor system and user documentation.
- Lack of performance standards to assess system performance against.
- System maintenance provisions are inadequate.
What are the three types of theories to explain user resistence?
People-Oriented: Caused by factors internal to users as individuals or as a group. Can be overcome by: Organisation policies, Persuasion, User involvement in system development.
System-Oriented: Caused by factors inherent in the new system design relating to ease of use and functionality. Can be overcome by: User training and education. Improve user-interface. Ensure users contribute to the system design process. Ensure the system ‘fits’ with the organisation.
Interaction: User-resistance is caused by the interaction of people and the system. Can be overcome: Re-organise the organisation before implementing the system. Redesign any affected incentive schemes to incorporate the new system.
Promote user participation and encourage organisation-wide teamwork. Emphasise the benefits the system brings.
What are the risks from IT system?
- Natural threats: Fire, flood, electrical storms.
- Non-compliance with regulations
- Data systems integrity
- Accidents
- Cyber security risks
Define cyber security.
The protection of systems, networks and data in cyberspace.
What are some of the most significant risks that an IT system might encounter?
- Human threats
- Fraud
- Deliberate sabotage
- Viruses and other corruptions
- Denial of Service (DoS) attack
What are some measures that an organisation can take to improve cyber security?
- Embed a greater awareness of cyber risk throughout the organisation’s strategy and operations.
- Build a security focused culture based on continuous improvement in terms of cyber security.
- Articulate the organisation’s approach to managing cyber risks through its reporting mechanisms.
- Reduce complexity in the organisation’s IT environment
- Develop talent management strategies to attract and retain individuals skilled in managing cyber security.
- Corporate boards should demand that suppliers to the organisation comply with relevant cyber security laws and standards as this should help to protect IT assets in the supply chain.
- Organisations should avoid solely relying on point-in-time assessments regarding occasional checks on the security procedures associated with IT infrastructures and instead should make this an on-going activity.
In what aspects can IT security controls be subdivided?
- Prevention
- Detection
- Deterrence
- Recovery procedures
- Correction procedures
- Threat avoidance
What are some practical measures that an organisation can take to combat IT risks?
- Business continuity planning
- Systems access control
- Systems development and maintenance
- Physical and environmental security
- Compliance with any relevant legal requirements
- Personnel security
- Security organisation
- Computer and network management
- Asset classification and control
- Security policy
Define Blockchain.
Is a technology that allows people who do not know each other to trust a shared record of events.
What are the key benefits of Blockchain?
- Building trust
- Reducing costs
- Improving money laundering procedures
