Final Exam Prep Flashcards
What is organizational strategy?
- Planned approach an organization takes to achieve its goals and mission statement.
- IT is used in operationalizing the organizational strategy.
What is competitive advantage?
Advantage over competitors in some measure (quality, cost, speed) that ensures that an organization can survive. It creates control over market and profit generation.
What is a business process?
Collection of related activities that together, produce a product/service of value to the organization, its business partners, and its internal/external customers.
What are the three elements of business processes?
- Inputs: Materials, services, information that flows and is transformed during business process activities.
- Resources: People, equipment that allow the processes to take place.
- Outputs: Products and services created by the processes.
What do business processes balance?
Effectiveness - Achieving the desired outcome and creating outputs of value
Efficiency - Doing things without wasting resources
What are cross-functional processes?
Processes where multiple organizational areas work together to produce a single output. The processes are coordinated and collaborative.
Give examples of cross-functional processes.
- Procurement
- Fulfillment`
What is the role of IS in business processes?
- Executing the process: Informing employees, providing data, producing tools to complete the task.
- Capturing and storing process data, giving ‘real-time feedback’.
- Monitoring the process performance.
What characterizes an excellent business process?
- Customer satisfaction
- Cost reduction
- Cycle and fulfillment time reduction
- Quality
- Differentiation
- Productivity
What is business process reengineering (BPR)?
- Radical top-down redesign of business processes;
- Takes a ‘clean sheet’ perspective to examine business processes;
- Propelled by unique capabilities of IT - automation, standardization, communication.
Why is BPR difficult to implement?
The strategy is…
- Difficult;
- Radical;
- High cost;
- High-risk;
- Length;
- Comprehensive.
This makes it overwhelming.
When should BPR be used?
When BPI is no longer effective, and/or when there is significant change in the business environment.
What is business process improvement (BPI)?
- Incremental, bottom up approach to move an organization towards business-process-centred operations.
- Focuses on reducing variation in process outputs: Identifies the underlying cause of variation and generates quantifiable results.
- Low-risk, low-cost, time-efficient.
- All employees are trained.
To what extent should BPI be used?
Until such that employees are not overstressed, disinterested.
Managers need to be able to focus their efforts and effectively manage.
What is Six Sigma?
Popular BPI methodology using statistical analysis to ensure that business processes have less than or equal to 3.4 defects per million outputs.
What are the basic phases of successful BPI?
- Define: Document ‘as-is’ process activities, resources, inputs, outputs, customers. Describe the problem.
- Measure: Define the ‘baseline’, identify metrics, collect data, combine process data.
- Analyze: Examine the process map and metrics. Identify root causes using process simulation software.
- Improve: Identify possible solutions, map ‘to-be’ process alternatives, select and implement the solution that eliminates irrelevant activities.
- Control: Re-measure using the established metrics, monitor improvement.
What advantages do process simulation software bring?
- Quick way to simulate for a specific amount of time;
- Estimates process performance;
- Allows for multi-scenario analysis;
- Identifies bottlenecks, cycle times, resource allocation;
- Risk-free, inexpensive.
What is business process management (BPM)?
Management technique that consists of the tools and methods that support the design, implementation, and optimization of core business processes over time.
BPM integrates different BPI initiatives, ensuring a consistent strategy.
What are the two components of BPM?
- Process modelling: Graphical depiction of BP steps, relationships, IS, information
- Business activity modelling: ‘Real-time’ measurements of business processes –> Create process reports
What is a business process management suite (BPMS)?
An integrated set of applications used for BPM.
Why is BPM advantageous?
Short-term: Profits, cost advantage.
Long-term: Competitive advantage, flexibility, customer satisfaction, compliance.
What is the business environment?
Social, economic, legal, physical, political factors in which businesses conduct operations.
Change in a single factor creates business pressures.
What are market pressures?
- Globalization
- Changing workforce
- Powerful customers
What are technological pressures?
- Technological innovations and obsolescence
- Information overload
- Digital divide
What are social/political/legal pressures?
- Sustainability
- Government regulations and deregulation compliance
- Protection against terrorist attacks
- Ethical issues
How do organizations respond to business pressures?
- Strategic systems
- Customer-centred approach
- Continuous improvement efforts ERP
- Business process restructuring
- Intelligent data management
- On-demand mass customization
- Business alliances
- E-commerce
What is a competitive strategy?
Statement that identifies how a business plans to compete, what its goals are, and the policies and plans that it undertakes to pursue those goals.
Why are IS strategic in nature?
They provide a competitive advantage.
What are the five forces in Porter’s model that determine competitive advantage?
- Threat of entry of new competitors
- Bargaining power of suppliers
- Bargaining power of customers
- Threat of substitutes
- Rivalry
What is a value change?
The sequence of activities through which inputs are transformed into valuable outputs.
In Porter’s value chain model, what are primary activities and support activities?
PRIMARY
-Inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, services
SUPPORT
-Administration, management, HR, R & D, procurement
What competitive advantage strategies can businesses take?
- Cost leadership
- Differentiation
- Innovation
- Opperational effectiveness
- Customer orientation
What is Business-IT alignment?
Tight integration of IT functions in the organizational strategy and the ensuing mission and goals. In this case, IT directly supports business objectives, by being an ‘engine of innovation’.
Why is Business-IT alignment challenging?
Differing organizational and IT objectives;
Lack of recognition of expertise of each department;
Poor communication.
What is IT governance?
Processes that ensure the effective and efficient use of IT, enable an organization to achieve its goals.
It is spearheaded by the CIO and the IT steering committee.
What are ethics?
Principles of right and wrong that guide people’s conduct and decision-making.
What are the five primary ethical frameworks?
- Utilitarian: The ethical decision is the one that produces the most good, does the least harm.
- Rights: Recognizes that humans have fundamental rights that must be considered and fulfilled when making an ethical decision.
- Justice: The ethical decision is the one that leads to fairness or equal profit.
- Common good: Recognizes that as part of a community, one has an obligation to safeguard the basic conditions.
- Deontology: The ethical decision is the one respecting the duties and obligations imposed.
What is the traditional approach to resolving ethical issues?
- Recognize.
- Collect facts.
- Evaluate alternative actions.
- Make & test the decision.
What is the giving voices to values (GVV) approach to resolving ethical issues?
- Identify.
- Purpose & Choice.
- Stakeholder Analysis.
- Powerful Response.
- Scripting, Coaching.
What is the code of ethics?
Collection of principles intended to guide an organization’s members’ decision-making.
What are the fundamental tenets of ethics?
- Responsibility: Accepting consequences of decisions and actions.
- Accountability: Determining who is responsible for decisions and actions.
- Liability: Right to recover damage done by other individuals, organizations, systems.
What is privacy?
Right (balanced against social needs) of people, groups, institutions to be left alone, free of unreasonable personable intrusion.
What is information privacy?
RIght to determine when and to what extent information can be gathered and communicated to others.
What are threats to privacy?
- Data aggregators, digital dossiers, profiling
- Electronic surveillance
- Personal information stored in databases
- Information released on internet bulletin boards, in newsgroups, on social networking sites
How is privacy protected?
- Privacy codes and policies
- Informed consent, using an opt-in model that prohibits information collection until specifically authorized, or an opt-out model that stops collecting information when specifically requested.
What is a platform for privacy preferences (P3P)?
Protocol that automatically communicates privacy policies between a website and its visitors.
What is the importance of high-quality information privacy?
- Protects brand image and reputation.
- Helps maintain and enhance trust, promotes confidence.
- Helps achieve competitive advantage.
- Ensures that legal requirements are met.
- Reduces administrative and data handling costs.
What is information security?
Processes and policies that are designed to protect an organization’s information and IS from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction.
Its goal is to minimize vulnerability and the potential exposure threat for information resources.
What factors increase the vulnerability of information resources?
- Interconnectedness of today’s world
- Access to cheaper, portable, faster computer devices and storage mediums
- Decreasing skills needed to become a hacker
- Organized crime
- Lack of management support
What are human mistakes?
Unintentional errors resulting from carelessness, opening questionable emails, poor password selection and use.
Especially important when employees are high level and have high access privileges –> IT and HR departments.
What is social engineering?
Attack in which the perpetrator uses social skills to trick/manipulate a legitimate into providing confidential information, by…
- Tailgating: Entering restricted areas;
- Shoulder-surfing: Watching computer screens.
What are the types of deliberate attacks to IS?
- Espionage/Trespass
- Information Extortion
- Sabotage/Vandalism
- Theft of Equipment/Information
- Identity Theft
- Compromise to Intellectual Property
- Software Attacks
- SCADA Attacks: Attacks to specific sensors that control physical, chemical, transport systems.
- Cyberterrorism
What are the types of software attacks?
Malware: ‘Infection’
Virus: Attaching malicious segments to another program.
Worm: Spreading malicious segments.
Trojan horse: Reveals designated behaviour when activated.
Phishing attack: Deceptive communications.
Distributed denial-of-service attacks: Hijacking computers to form a ‘botsnet’, to flood internet traffic and preventing access to sites and services, by crashing the system.
Backdoor: Creating an unique password that allows without-security access.
Ransomware: Using encryption to deny access.
Alien software: Adware, spyware, spamware, cookies.
What is risk?
Probability that a threat will impact an information resource.
What is risk management?
Identifying, controlling, minimizing the impacts of threats, thus reducing risk to an acceptable level.
Consists of risk analysis, risk mitigation, and controls evaluation.
How can organizations ensure risk mitigation?
- Acceptance
- Limitation
- Transference
What types of controls help minimize threats to information security?
-Physical controls
- Access controls:
(a) Authentication, using something the person is/has/does/knows, and
(b) Authorization, by identifying privileges.
-Communication controls: Firewalls, anti-malware systems, whitelisting/blacklisting, encryption, VPN, Transport Layer Security, Employee Monitoring Systems
What are application controls?
Security countermeasures for specific functional area applications.
Where do password controls need to be supported?
- Control environment - Enforce proper management
- General controls - Login
- Application controls - Specific passwords
What is business continuity planning (BCP)?
Chain of events linking planning to protection to recovery, ensuring that critical systems are available and operating upon a disaster, and that normal operations can be restored ASAP.
How is BCP implemented?
Using a hot site, warm site, and cold site.
What is information systems auditing?
The examination of IS, inputs, outputs, processing, efficiency, effectiveness.
Produces a report using established criteria and standards.
Why is data difficult to manage?
- Amount of data increases exponentially: High volumes of Big Data
- Data is scattered, dispersed
- Data comes from many sources
- Data becomes outdated
- Data media rots
- Data security, quality, integrity are critical, and can be compromised
- Legal requirements need to be met
What is data governance?
The management of information across the entire organization, to generate a ‘single version of the truth’.
It involves a formal set of business processes and policies, a master plan for prevention and recovery.
It requires for well-defined, unambiguous manual and IT rules.
What is master data management?
Strategic subset for implementing data governance. A process spanning across all business processes and applications.
Creates a master blueprint to store, maintain, exchange, and synchronize data.
What is transactional data?
Activities and events captured by operating systems, stored in transaction files, or as tables in a database.
High in volume, dynamic.
What is master data?
Core, static data spanning the entire organization’s information systems, applied to multiple transactions. It is stored in a master file, or as tables in a database.
It is used to categorize, aggregate, evaluate transactional data.
What are database management systems (DBMS)?
Tools that help create and manage databases, minimizing redundancy, isolation, and inconsistency, while maximizing security, integrity, and independence.
What does the data hierarchy consist of?
Bit: Single binary digit.
Byte: Group of 8 bits, representing a single character (letter, number, symbol).
Field: Logical grouping of characters that form a word, small group of words, or an identification number. It may contain multimedia.
Record: Logical grouping of related fields.
Data file/table: Collection of logically-related records that an application requires.
Database: Logical grouping of related data files.
What is a data model?
Diagram representing entities (records) in their databases, and the relationships ensuing.
Each entity for which information is maintained is characterized by ___ and ___.
Instances and attributes.
What are primary, secondary, foreign keys?
Primary: Unique identifiers, for each record.
Secondary: Identifier that may or may not be unique.
Foreign: Field in one table that uniquely identifies a record in another table, enforcing and establishing a link between two tables.
What is structured data?
Organized data in fixed fields, found in data repositories such as relational databases.
What is Big Data?
Diverse, high-volume, high-velocity information assets require sophisticated information systems to enable enhanced decision-making, discovery, and process optimization. It is about making predictions.
Why is Big Data advantageous?
- High volume of information
- Configured to self-improve
What does Big Data consist of?
Traditional enterprise data
Machine-generated sensor data
Social data
Images
What are the risks associated with Big Data?
It can come from untrusted sources;
It is dirty (inaccurate, incomplete, incorrect, duplicate, erroneous;
It changes.
What is the value of Big Data?
It can be distributed to stakeholders, used to conduct experiments, used to microsegment customers, used to create new business models, and used to analyze further data.
What is Query by example (QBE)?
Query language that allows users to fill out a grid/template, constructing a sample/description of the data that needs to be extracted.
What are the advantages of data marts/warehouses, over databses?
- Search-friendly
- Read-only (no extra processing)
- Access multiple records simultaneously (consolidated data)
- Can be used for extensive user analysis
What is a data warehouse?
Repository of historical data, organized by subject, used to support decision-making. It is used by large companies.
What is a data mart?
Scaled-down data warehouse, that means the needs of Strategic Business Units. Allows for local control and an eased implementation.
What characterizes data warehouses and data marts?
- Organized by subjects
- Uses Online Analytical Processing (LAP)
- Integrated data
- Time-variant: Historical and recent data
- Non-volatile data
- Multidimensional structures
What does a data warehouse environment include?
- Source systems that provide data
- Data integration technology that processes and prepares data for use
- Data storing architecture
- Metadata
- Business Intelligence governance
- Users (information consumers and producers)
What is a data lake?
A central repository storing all organization data, regardless of its source, format, structure, and degree of consistency.
Uses ‘schema-on-read’ architecture, not transforming data until it is actually used.
What is knowledge management?
A process that helps organizations manipulate important knowledge that forms an organization’s memory.
What is knowledge?
Actionable, relevant, contextual information (Intellectual capital), consisting of both explicit and implicit/tacit knowledge.
What are knowledge management systems (KMS)?
The use of modern IT to systematize, enhance, and expedite intrafirm and interfirm knowledge management.
What is the KMS cycle?
Rationale: Knowledge is dynamically refined over time.
Create –> Capture –> Refine –> Store –> Manage –> Disseminate
What is a structured query language?
Tool that allows users to perform complicated searches, using relatively simple statements/keywords.
What is normalization?
Method for analyzing and reducing a relational database to its most streamlined form, minimizing redundancy, maximizing data integrity, and ensuring best processing performance.
What is e-commerce?
The process of buying, selling, transferring, or exchanging products, services, and information via computer networks.
What is e-business?
Broader definition of e-commerce that also includes customer service, partner collaboration, e-learning, and intraorganizational e-transactions.
What is an organization’s degree of digitization?
- Brick and mortar: Purely physical organizations in which both product and delivery agents are physical.
- Virtual: Pure-play, digital-only organizations using e-commerce exclusively.
- Click and mortar: Partial use of e-commerce, but use of showrooming.
What types of e-commerce exist?
B2B, C2C, B2C, B2E, G2C (E-government), M-Commerce, Social Commerce, Conversational (Chat) Commerce.
What are the primary e-commerce business models?
- Online direct marketing
- E-tendering systems (B2B - Reverse auctions)
- Name-your-own-price
- Find-the-best-price
- Affiliated marketing
- Viral marketing
- Group purchasing
- Online auctions
- Product customization
- E-marketplaces, e-exchanges
- Online bartering
- Deep discounters
- Membership-based access
What are the primary e-commerce mechanisms?
- E-catalogues: ‘Backbone’ of e-commerce sites, including a database, a directory, search capabilities, and a presentation function
- E-auctions: Competitive selling/buying where prices are determined by competitive bidding. When conducted electronically, the cycle time is reduced, administrative costs are eliminated, and there is a bigger customer base. Forward auctions occur when sellers solicit bids from potential buyers, whereas reverse auctions occur when a buying company solicits bids from potential suppliers, through a ‘Request for Quotation’.
- E-storefronts: Websites that represent a single store.
- E-malls: Consolidated collection of individual shops.
What are the various forms of e-payment?
- E-cheques (used in B2B)
- Electronic credit cards
- Purchasing cards (used in B2B, equivalent of e-credit cards)
- Stored value money cards
- EMV smart cards
- Payment gateways
What are the pros of e-commerce?
- Accessibility to national, international markets
- Cost savings
- Accessibility to vast products and services
- 24/7 availability
- Delivers to all areas, including developing and rural ones
What are the limitations to e-commerce?
- Lack of universally-accepted standards
- Insufficient telecommunications bandwidth, expensive Internet access in developing countries
- Perception that e-commerce is insecure
What is the primary challenge in B2B?`
Large number of buyers, small number of sellers, abundant transactions
What is e-tailing?
Direct sale of products and services through e-storefronts/e-malls, using e-catalogues and e-auctions.
Why is e-tailing advantageous to retailing?
It allows for easy comparison, detailed product information.
What is long-tailing?
Selling a large number of unique items, each in small quantity.
What issues arise in e-tailing?
Channel conflicts, when manufacturers disintermediate their channel partners, by selling products directly to consumers over the internet.
Multichannelling, which causes potential difference prices in offline and online channels.
Supply chain issues during order fulfillment, including locating the product to be shipped, packaging the product, arranging for speedy customer delivery, and handling returns.
Personalized pricing, where items are priced based off consumers’ willingness to pay.
What is the online services industry?
The industry that consists of fintech, online securities trading, online jobs markets, travel services, and online advertising.
What various methods are used for online advertising?
Banners, pop-up ads, pop-under ads, permission marketing, viral marketing/spanning.
What the primary B2B business models?
- Sell-side marketplaces: Organizations that sell to other organizations electronically, using their own e-marketplace of that of a third party. Use of forward auctions, e-catalogues, and third-party auction sites.
- Buy-side marketplaces: Organizations buying from other organizations electronically, using reverse auctions and group purchasing.
- Electronic exchanges:
(a) Private: Many sellers, one buyer;
(b) Public: Third-party exchanges, as initial points of contact between business partners. They can be vertical (within-industry), horizontal (across-industry), and functional (as-needed).
What are ethical and legal issues pertinent to e-commerce?
- Threats to privacy
- Job loss
- Internet fraud
- Domain name competition
- Cybersquatting: Registering, trafficking, using an Internet domain name with bad faith intent, to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else
- Domain tasting
- Collection of taxes and other fees
- Copyright
What is meant by ‘wireless’?
Refers to telecommunications in which electromagnetic waves, rather than wires/cables, carry signals between communicating devices.
Contrasts from ‘mobile’, which means something that changes location over time.
What is mobile computing?
Real-time, wireless connection between a mobile device and other computing environments.
What is mobile commerce?
E-commerce transactions that are conducted using a mobile device.
What is the Internet of Things?
Scenario in which objects, animals, people are provided with unique identifiers and are granted the ability to automatically transfer data over a network, without requiring for human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.
Wireless technologies include…
Wireless devices and wireless transmission media.
Why are wireless devices advantageous?
- Small enough to carry/wear;
- Sufficient computing power to perform productive tasks;
- Communicate wirelessly with the Internet, and other devices.
What is dematerializaiton?
Found in modern smartphones, the process that occurs when functions of many physical devices are included in a single physical device.
What is the risk posed by the use of smartphones?
Information confidentiality.
What are the three types of wireless transmission media?
Microwave - Electromagnetic waves
Satellite - Communication satellites
Radio - Radio wave frequencies
What are the pros/cons to microwave wireless transmission media?
Pros: High-volume, large-distance
Cons: Environmental interference, line-of-sight required
What are the pros/cons to satellite wireless transmission media?
Pros: High bandwidth, large coverage area
Cons: Line-of sight required, expensive, incurs a propagation delay, encryption is used for security
What are the pros/cons to radio wireless transmission media?
Pros: Signals travel through office walls, inexpensive, easy to install, data passes at high speeds
Cons: Electrical interference, susceptibility to snooping
What are the three types of satellites circling the Earth?
Geostationary-earth-orbit (GEO): Few satellites for global coverage, transmission delay, expensive to build and launch, long orbital life, used in TV signals. Stationary relative to point on Earth.
Medium-earth-orbit (MEO): Moderate number of satellites for global coverage, requires medium-powered transmitters, negligible transmission delay, less expensive, used in GPS. Move relatively to point on Earth.
Low-earth-orbit (LEO): Satellites move rapidly, large number needed for global coverage, least expensive, used for telephones.
What are global positioning systems (GPS)?
Wireless systems that use satellites, from which users can determine their position anywhere on Earth.
Used for navigation, 911, mapping, surveying.
Supported by MEO satellites shared worldwide.
What is Internet over Satellite (IoS)?
Allows for Internet connection without cables. An inexpensive means wherein users access Internet from GEO satellites, using a dish mounted on the side of their homes.
What is commercial imaging?
A satellite application using nanosatellites.
Generates Earth images used for tracking moving objects, zooming in on physical objects, and examining land and sky.
What is satellite (digital) radio?
Offers uninterrrupted, near-CD quality transmission beamed to your radio, from space?
What is Google Loon?
Ballons providing Internet access, by creating aerial wireless networks.
What are Internet blimps?
SuperTowers providing the functionality of cellular towers, but with a larger footprint.
What are the different types of wireless network threats?
- Rogue access point: Unauthorized access point
- Evil twin attack, that may use a hotspotter
- War driving
- Eavesdropping
- Radio frequency (RF) jamming
What are the varying types of short-range wireless networks?
- Bluetooth: Creates personal-area networks used for communications among computer devices, located to one person.
- Ultra-wideband
- Near-field communication
What are the types of medium-range wireless networks?
Wireless local area networks (WLANs)
(a) Wi-Fi: The transmitter’s antenna is used as a ‘wireless access point’, with it being the ‘hotspot’ that services users in a small geographical perimeter.
(b) Wi-Fi Direct: Peer-to-peer communication within a hotspot, without a wireless access point.
(c) Mi-Fi: Small, portable wireless device providing users with a permanent Wi-Fi hotspot.
(d) Visible communications system using light to transmit data and position.
What are the types of wide-area wireless networks?
- Cellular radio
- Wireless broadband (WiMAX)
What is throughput?
The actual amount of bandwidth available for use.
What are the characteristics and value-added attributes of mobile computing?
Characteristics: Mobility & broad reach
Value-added characteristics: Ubiquity, convenience, instant connectivity, customization, localization
What are the drivers of m-commerce?
- Widespread availability of mobile devices;
- Declining prices of devices;
- Bandwidth improvement.
What are the various types of m-commerce applications?
- Financial services
- Location-based applications and services
- Mobile advertising
- Intrabusiness applications
- Information access
- Telemetry (remote sensors)
What is the underlying technology to the Internet of Things?
Wireless sensors: Autonomous devices that monitor its own condition, as well as physical and environmental conditions around it, collecting data from many points over an extended space.
What is radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology?
Technology that allows manufacturers to tag product with antennas and computer chips, to then track movement using radio signals/
Active RFID tags use internal batteries for powers and and broadcast radio waves to a reader, over greater distances.
Passive RFID tags rely entirely on readers for power.
Why were bar codes replaced by RFID?
- Require line-of-sight;
- Paper can be ripped, lost, soiled;
- Identifies the product and manufacturer, not the actual item.
Why are QR codes better than bar codes?
- Store much more data;
- Store many types of data;
- Smaller in size (horizontal and vertical info);
- Can be read from any direction/angle;
- Resistant to damage.
Where is IoT used?
Smart home, digital twins, health care, automotive industry, SMC, environmental monitoring, infrastructure and energy management, agriculture, transportation, farming.
What is a transaction processing system (TPS)?
System that supports the monitoring, collection, and processing of data generated from basic business transactions.
How can TPS process data?
- Batch processing: Data is collected in real time, grouped in batches, and processed periodically.
- Online transaction processing (OLTP): Data is collected in real time, processed instanteously.
What characterizes TPS?
- Continuous, real-time data collection;
- Critical in nature, by supporting core operations;
- Efficiently handle high volume, varied data;
- Inputs to FAIS, BI systems, business operations;
- Avoid errors and downtimes;
- Records results accurately and securely, generating detailed reports.
What are functional area information systems (FAIS)?
IS supporting particular functional areas, increasing that area’s efficiency and effectiveness, conveying information in a variety of reports.
In which functional areas are FAIS employed?
Accounting and finance, marketing, operations, HR management.
What is the product life-cycle management?
A business strategy that enables manufacturers to share product-related data that supports product design, development, and supply chain operations, all using web-based technologies.
What different types of reports can be generated?
- Routine
- Ad-hoc (on-demand): Drill-down, key indicator, comparative
- Exception
What are enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems?
Systems correcting the lack of communication among FAIS. ERP systems tightly integrate FAIS through a common database, enabling communication to flow seamlessly among them.
What are ERP II Systems?
Interorganizational ERP systems providing web-enabled links among a company’s key business systems and its customers, suppliers, distributors, etc by integrating internal-facing ERP applications with externally-focused SCM and CRM.
What are the core ERP modules?
- Accounting and Financial Management
- Operations Management
- HR Management
What are extended ERP modules?
- CRM
- SCM
- Business Analytics
- E-Business
What are the pros to ERP?
- Organizational flexibility and agility
- Decision support tools
- Improved business processes
What are the limitations of ERP?
- May need to change business processes, to fit the pre-defined ones in the ERP software
- Could result in loss of competitive advantage
- Complexity, costs, and time in implementation
Why does ERP implementation fail?
- Failure to involve affected employees in planning, developing, managing change
- Doing too much, too fast when converting
- Insufficient training
- Failure to properly convert data and test
How are ERPs implemented on-premise?
- Vanilla approach: Standard ERP package, built in configuration options
- Custom approach: Specifically-developed functions
- Best-of-breed approach: Mixes and matches ERP modules from various suppliers.
How can ERPs be implemented off-premise?
Software-as-a-Service vendors that rent out ERP systems, with this vendor assuming responsibility for maintenance and updates.
What are the pros to cloud-based ERP systems?
- Can be used from any location (secure VPN)
- Avoidance of initial hardware, software expenses
- Scalable solution (new ERP modules can be purchased)
What is an alternative to ERP systems?
Enterprise Application Systems (EAI), integrating existing systems using software as the ‘middleware’ to connect multiple applications.
What business processes do ERP systems support?
Cross-functional processes, including procurement, fulfillment, production.
What is ERP Supply Chain Management?
A system with the capability to place automatic purchase requests from suppliers.
What is ERP Customer Chain Management?
System that forecasts analyses of product consumption, based on critical variables.
What is customer relationship management (CRM)?
Customer-focused, customer-driven organizational strategy that aims to maximize a customer’s lifetime value and minimize customer churn.
Assesses customer requirement to provide a high-quality, responsive customer experience, creating customer intimacy.
Uses IT systems and applications.
What are the steps in the CRM process?
- Solicit prospects
- Turn prospects into customers
- Turn customers into repeat customers
- Identify high and low value repeat customers
What is customer churn?
The process by which organizations inevitably lose a certain % of their customers.
What are CRM systems?
IS designed to support an organization’s CRM strategy, providing the infrastructure for doing so.
Consists of two components: Operational and analytical CRM systems.
Implementation can be done on-premise, or on-demand.
What differentiates high and low-end CRM systems?
Low-end CRM systems are designed for enterprises with many small customers.
High-end CRM systems are designed for enterprises with a few large customers.
What characterizes successful CRM policies?
- Identifies many types of customer touchpoints, the interactions between organizations and customers.
- Consolidates customer data using a data warehouse, providing a 360 degree view.
What are collaborative CRM systems?
Systems providing effective and efficient, interactive communication with the customer, such as direct feedback.
What is customer identity management?
In the setting of large businesses that have several offerings and brands, knowing who customers are, and how relationships with them have evolved.
What are operational CRM systems?
Systems that support front-office processes by using a unified repository to store customer information, deals and leads.
Includes both customer-facing and customer-touching applications.
What are the advantages of operational CRM systems?
- Provide efficient, personalized marketing, sales, service;
- Ensures customer satisfaction and profit maximization, by enabling a 360 degree customer view;
- Builds effective relationships by granting employees access to historical customer information.
What are customer-facing applications?
- Applications in which sales/service/field representatives interact directly with customers.
- Includes Customer Service and Support, Call Centres;
- Includes Salesforce Automation, which automatically records sale transaction data;
- Includes Campaign Management;
- Includes Marketing, to cross-sell, up-sell, bundle products.
What are customer-touching applications (e-CRM)?
Technologies through which customers interact directly with applications themselves.
Includes search & comparison, customization of products/services, personalized pages, FAQs, technical/other information, emails & automated responses, loyalty programs.
What are analytical CRM systems?
Systems that analyze customer behaviour and perceptions, providing actionable business intelligence.
What are the goals of analytical CRM systems?
- Designing, and executing targeted marketing campaigns;
- Increasing customer acquisition, cross-selling, upselling;
- Providing input into decisions related to products and services;
- Providing financial forecasting and customer profitability analysis.
What is on-demand CRM?
CRM systems hosted by an external vendor, in that vendor’s data centre. While it resolves the expenses, time, and flexibility concerns with on-premise CRM systems, the vendor may be unreliable, and the organization does not have control over the system, meaning it cannot change it, and may be subject to privacy/security breaches.
What is mobile CRM?
Interactive CRM systems enabling organizations to conduct sales, marketing, and customer service activities using a mobile medium.
What are open-source CRM systems?
Systems whose source code are available to developers and users. While they offer favourable pricing, customization, systems maintenance and upgrade, and support information, they are subject to poor quality control.
What are social CRM systems?
Systems using social media technology and services to enable organizations to engage customers in a collaborative conversation. This provides mutually-beneficial value, in a trusted, transparent manner.
What are real-time CRM systems?
CRM systems that respond to customer product searches, requests, complaints, and comments in real time, 24/7/365.
What are supply chains?
The flow of materials, information, finances (money), and services, from raw material suppliers, through factories and warehouses, to end customers.
Why are trust and collaboration important in supply chains?
Visibility - Ability for all organizations to access/view relevant data on purchased materials and outbound goods.
Inventory Velocity - Speed of product and service delivery, upon receiving input material.
What are the segments of supply chains?
Upstream flows, sourcing and procuring from external suppliers.
Downstream flows, distributing and delivering products to customers.
Internal flows, packaging, assembling, and manufacturing products.
Reverse flows, for product returns.
What are the three supplier tiers?
1 - Integrated components;
2 - Subassemblies;
3 - Basic products
What is supply chain management (SCM)?
SCM has the function of planning, organizing, and optimizing the various activities performed along the supply chain, to improve business processes.
What are the steps in SCM?
- Plan: Develop metrics that monitor the efficiency, quality, value, and costs of supply chains;
- Source: Choose suppliers to deliver input materials;
- Make: Establish production, testing, packaging, and delivery processes; Assess using quality, production, worker productivity metrics;
- Deliver: Coordinate orders, develop warehouse networks, select carriers, create invoicing systems.
- Return: Receive and support defective, unwanted, excess products.
What are the advantages to SCM?
- Reduce costs of routine business transactions;
- Improve quality, transfer, and processing of information flow;
- Compresses cycle time;
- Eliminates paper processing;
- Reduce uncertainty and risk.
What is the push model?
Made-to-stock model in which mass production is based on a forecast.
What is the pull model?
Make-to-order model in which production begins only after a customer order is received. Mass customization model.
What are typical supply chain problems?
- Poor customer service
- Poor product quality
- Untimely delivery
- High inventory costs
- Loss of revenues
- Bullwhip effect: Erratic shifts in order quantity, up and down the supply chain.
How do organizations overcome supply chain issues?
- Vertical integration: Business strategy in which a company purchases its upstream suppliers, to ensure that there is consistent availability.
- Just-in-time inventory system (JIT): Minimize inventory on hand by delivering only the required amount of work-in-process inventory to allow for assembly.
- Information sharing, using Vendor-Managed Inventory (VMI).
What technologies support SCM?
- Electronic Data Interchanges (EDI): Communication standards enabling business partners to exchange routine documents electronically. This minimizes errors, maximizes security, efficiency, productivity, customer service. However, business processes may need to be restructured to fit EDI standards, and the initial investment is large.
- Extranets: Use of VPN technologies to link business partners over the Internet.
- Corporate portals, for procurement/distribution.
What is business analytics (BA)?
Process of developing actionable decisions/recommendations based on insight generated from historical data.
Uses a variety of tools, formulates descriptive/predictive/prescriptive analytics models, and communicates results to organizational decision-makers.
What is business intelligence (BI)?
Applications, technologies, and processes that gather, store, grant access to, and analyze data, with the goal of enabling better decision-making.
What is management?
Process by which an organization achieves its goals, using its resources.
What is productivity?
Measure of success - ratio between the inputs and outputs a manager is responsible for.
What are the manager’s three basic roles (Mintzberg)?
- Interpersonal
- Informational
- Decisional
What is a decision?
A diverse, continuous choice made between two or more alternatives.
What are the phases to the decision-making process?
- Intelligence: Examining the situation and identifying the problem/opportunity.
- Design: Constructing a simplified model using assumptions and relationships. Evaluating the model and other alternatives, using test data and set criteria.
- Choice: Selecting the solution/course of action that is best suited.
Why do managers need IT support?
- Increased number of alternatives available;
- Increased time pressures for decision-making;
- Increased complexity of decisions;
- Geographically-dispersed people, information.
What is the framework for computerized decision analysis?
A framework that places all problems on two dimensions:
- Degree of problem structure;
- Nature of decision-making (operational, management, strategic)?
How are analytics used in organizations?
- Departmental needs: Analytical applications
- Enterprise-wide needs: Infrastructure
- Organizational needs: Business strategy/model
What are the steps in the business analytics process?
- Define the business problems/organizational pain points;
- Collect and manage data using the Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) process, sending the data to the warehouse;
- Use descriptive, predictive, and/or prescriptive analytics;
- Present findings using presentation tools;
- Take actionable business decisions, or recommend actions.
What technologies enable business analytics?
- Increasingly powerful chips (GPUs);
- Cheaper, high-volume storage;
- Increasingly faster broadband internet;
- Neural networks;
- Machine learning;
- Deep learning.
What are descriptive analytics?
Summarizes past occurrences, and uses them as learning opportunities.
What BI applications are used for descriptive analytics?
- Excel and other statistical procedures
- OLAP - Online Analytical Processing
- Data mining
- Decision Support Systems (DSS) that perform ‘What-If’, Sensitivity, and Goal Seeking Analysis.
What are predictive analytics?
Examines recent and historical data to detect patterns and predict future outcomes and trends.
Where are data mining applications used?
Retailing and sales, banking, manufacturing and prorduction, insurance, police work, health care, marketing, politics, weather, and social good.
What are prescriptive analytics?
Recommends one or more courses of actions and identifies, quantitatively, the outcome of each decision.
What prescriptive analytics tools do organizations use?
Simulation, decision trees, optimization.
What are dashboards?
User-friendly, graphics-supported presentation tool that provides easy access to timely information and management reports.
Enables management to examine exception reports and to drill down into detailed data.
What capabilities do dashboards have?
- Drilling down;
- Identifying critical success factors (CSFs) and key performance indicators (KPIs);
- Providing for status access (real-time information);
- Trend analysis methods;
- Exception reporting.
What are geographic information systems?
Computer-based systems for capturing, manipulating, and displaying data using digitized maps (geocoding).
What is an application portfolio?
A generalized, prioritized list of both existing and potential IT applications that the organization wants to add and modify as needed.
How do organizations plan and justify IT application acquisition?
- They must assess whether the IT application is needed;
- The application needs to be justified in terms of its costs and benefits.
What is IT planning?
The first step in the acquisition process, where strategically, the organization’s objectives and resources are modified to match changing markets and opportunities.
What is the organizational strategic plan?
The plan that identifies the organization’s mission, goals, and how it will achieve its goals.
What is IT architecture?
The technical and managerial information resources that an organisation possesses to accomplish its mission.
What is the IT strategic plan?
The set of long-term goals that describe IT infrastructure. The plan identifies the major IT initiatives needed to achieve organizational goals.
The IT strategic plan must be aligned with the organization’s strategic plan, provide for an IT architecture that seamlessly networks users/applications/databases, and efficiently allocate IS development resources among competing projects to ensure that these projects can be completed on time and within budget.
Who does the IT steering committee comprise?
Managers and staff that represent various organizational units.
What is the role of the IT steering committee?
Establish IT priorities and ensure the MIS function meets organizational needs.
What is the IS operational plan?
The clear set of projects that an IS department and functional area managers will execute, in support of the IT strategic plan.
It includes the mission statement of the IS function, the IT environment, the objectives/constraints of the IT function, the application portfolio, and resource allocation/project management.
Why are costs difficult to assess in IT investments?
- Fixed costs are hard to allocate among differing IT projects;
- Continuous costs for maintenance, debugging, and system improvement need to be predicted.
Why are benefits of an IT investment difficult to assess?
- Benefits are often intangible;
- Organizations use IT for multiple purposes.
How can cost-benefit analysis for an IT investment be done?
- Net Present Value (NPV)
- Return on Investment: Net income generated / Resources invested
- Break-Even Analysis
- Business Case
What are the four decisions in choosing an IT application strategy?
How much code to write?
How to pay for the application?
Where to run the application?
Where to originate the application?
Why are pre-written applications advantageous?
- Many different types of off-the-shelf software available;
- Companies can test out software before purchasing;
- No time needed to build the application;
- No special project personnel hired.
What are the cons to pre-written applications?
- The application may not need the company’s exact needs;
- The software may be difficult to modify or require changes in the business processes, to implement;
- The company may not have control ofter software improvements, and the priorities of the vendor may be misaligned;
- It is difficult to integrate purchased applications with existing systems;
- Vendors could suddenly discontinue a product, or go out of business;
- Knowledge is not gained as to the functionality of the software.
When should pre-written applications NOT be customized?
- Expensive software;
- Software will become obsolete soon;
- Software is difficult to customize.
Who are application service providers (ASPs)?
Vendors assemble software needed by organizations and package it with related services (development, operations, maintenance). The customer accesses the software over the Internet.
Who are Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors?
‘Hosts’ for applications, that provide service over a network.
Used by SME that cannot invest abundantly.
What is the 80/20 rule?
When a software meets 80% of a company’s needs, the company should consider modifying its business processes so that the remaining 20% can be used.
What is continuous application development?
Strategy by which new computer code is steadily added to a software project.
What is the systems development life cycle (SDLC)?
The traditional method for developing in-house software, through which….
- Systems investigation –> Feasiblility study
- Systems analysis
- Systems design
- Programming and testing
- Implementation through direct/pilot/phased/parallel conversion
- Operations and maintenance
What is scope creep?
Adding in functions upon initiation of a project, which then may risk for the project to go over its anticipated budget and time frame.
How are users and developers involved in the SDLC?
They are most involved in the investigation and operations/maintenance phases.
Who is involved in SDLC?
Users, system analysts, programmers, technical specialists, and system stakeholders.
What are the pros of SDLC?
- Control
- Accountability
- Error detection
- Completeness
What are the cons to SDLC?
- Excessive documentation
- Time
- Costs
- User’s lack of willingness to study the specifications
- Difficulty describing requirements
- Inflexibility
What is Joint Application Design?
Group-based application development approach in which both developers and users meet and agree upon system requirements.
What are the pros to JAD?
- Involves many users;
- Saves time;
- Generates greater user support;
- Improves quality;
- Lower training costs;
- Easy to implement
What are cons to JAD?
It may be hard to get all to attend the JAD meetings.
What is rapid application development (RAD)?
Systems development method combining JAD, prototyping, and iCASE tools, producing a high-quality system rapidly.
Iterative development process in which requirements, designs, and systems are done up rapidly, then improved.
Only produces the functional components to final systems.
What are the advantages to RAD?
- Speeds up the system development;
- Extensively involves users, right from the start;
- Improves the process of rewriting legacy applications.
What is agile development?
Systems development method that delivers functionality in rapid iterations (weeks).
It requires for frequent communication, development, testing and delivery.
Additional user requirements are met as they emerge.
What is the scrum approach?
An agile development approach.
Why is end-user development advantageous?
It bypasses the delays that could be caused by the IT department;
The user controls the applications and implements changes as needed;
It directly meets user requirements;
It frees up IT resources.
What issues are associated with end-user development?
- IS department may eventually need to perform maintenance;
- Inadequate documentation;
- Poor quality control;
- May not easily be integrated;
- Vulnerabilities associated with by-passing IT department security.
What is DevOps?
A development strategy that brings together users and developers, to meet the increased business pressures of the current state of business.
This reduces deployment time, increases the usability of the final product, and lowers the cost of development.
What is prototyping?
An approach that first defines a list of user requirements, builds a model upon this, and refines the system in several iterations, based off user feedback.
What are the pros to prototyping?
- Clarifies user requirements;
- Verifies design feasibility;
- Promotes user participation and develops relationships between developers and users;
- Works well for ill-defined problems;
- Produces parts of the final systems.
Why could prototyping be disadvantageous?
- It may inadequately analyze the problem;
- Impractical, when there are an extensive number of users;
- Incomplete system - Lower quality;
- Users may not want to give the system up when implemented.
What are integrated computer-assisted software engineering tools (iCASE tools)
Upper CASE tools automate the early SDLC stages, while lower CASE tools automate the later SDLC stages.
What are the advantages of iCASE tools?
Systems that employ iCASE tools have longer operational life, better meet user requirements, have a faster development process, are more flexible/adaptive to changing business conditions, and provide for excellent documentation.
What are the cons to iCASE tools?
They are difficult to build and maintain;
User requirements must be well-defined;
It is difficult to customize the end product.
What is computer-based development?
The use of standard components to build applications, meaning that less programming is required, simply more assembly.
What is object-oriented development?
Computer programming model that organizes software design around data/objects, rather than functions/logic.
What are containers?
A method of software development that runs independently of the base server operating system.
The technology is developed, tested, and deployed analogously, in practice and in testing/
What is low-code development?
Use of virtual interface platforms to develop applications, rather than traditional procedural hand-coding.
What are challenges faced by traditional IT departments that use on-premise computing?
- Costs
- Capacity use
- Data management
- Responsiveness
What is cloud computing?
Computing delivering convenient, on-demand, pay-as-you-go access to multiple customers, to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can rapidly and easily be accessed over the Internet.
How has IT infrastructure evolved?
- Standalone mainfames
- Mainframe and dumb terminals
- Standalone personal computers
- Local area networks
- Enterprise computing
- Cloud/mobile computing
What characterizes cloud computing?
- On-demand self-service
- Grid computing: Multiple computers that are geographically dispersed but connected by networks operate simultaneously, working together to jointly accomplish tasks.
- Utility computing: Third-party service providers make computing resources and infrastructure management available as needed to customers, charging a per-use rate, rather than a flat fee.
- Broader network access, as any computing device can be used (open configuration).
- Pooled computing resources.
- Service virtualization: Use of software-based partitions to create multiple virtual servers on a single physical server (server farm), bringing task allocation.
Why is grid computing advantageous?
- Uses computing resources efficiently;
- Applications run faster;
- Provides fault tolerance and redundancy;
- Easy scalability.
What are the advantages to cloud computing?
- No need to procure, configure, maintain IT infrastructure;
- No need to scramble to meet evolving application development needs;
- Reduced upfront capital expenses, operational costs;
- Less maintenance, easy management;
- Organizational flexibility and competitiveness.
What concerns and risks are associated with cloud computing?
- Legacy IT systems are not transferable to the cloud;
- Reliability, privacy, security;
- Regulatory and legal environments;
- Criminal use of cloud computing.
What are the types of clouds?
- Public: Shared, easily-accessible and multi-customer IT infrastructure, available non-exclusively to any entity in the general public;
- Private: IT infrastructure that can be accessed exclusively, over an intranet;
- Hybrid: Public and private clouds that retain their unique entities;
- Vertical: Industry-specific clouds.
What is infrastructure-as-a-service?
In which the customer controls its operating system, applications, and data.
The supplier takes care of the server, virtualization, storage, and networking.
What is platform-as-a-service?
In which the customer controls applications and data.
The supplier manages the operating system, the server, virtualization, storage, and networking.
What is software-as-a-service?
The customer lets the supplier oversee applications, data, operating system, server, virtualization, storage, and networking.
