Week 5 Flashcards
Organizations in the digital age
IS
IS automates business processes that were doe manually.
IT
IT changes the way a business works and supports new business models.
Systems for different management groups
- Transaction processing system
- Management information system
- Business intelligence system
- Decision-support system
- Executive support system
Transaction processing system
Keeps track of elementary transactions (sales, receipts, cash depostis, payrolls). Computerized system necessary to conduct everyday business.
Business Intelligence System
Contemporary term for data and software tools for analyzing, organizing and providing access to managers and other enterprise users to help make informed decisions.
Management Information Systems
Provide middle managers with report on organization’s current performance. This information helps them monitor and control current performance and predict future performance.
Decision-Support System
Focus on problems that are unique and rapidly changing and don’t have predefined solutions. System brings in external resources.
Executive Support System
Helps senior management make decisions about strategic issues and long-term needs both external and internal. Address non-routine decisions requiring judgement, evaluation and insight.
Intranets
Internal company websites, accessible only to employees.
Extranets
Company website accessible to authorized vendors and suppliers, used to coordinate the movement of supplies to the firm’s production apparatus.
What is an Organization?
- Technical perspective: Organizations are a formal social structures with internal rules and procedures that use environment resources to produce output.
- Organizational perspective: Collection of rights, privileges and responsibilities that delicately balance over a period conflict and conflict resolution.
Business processes
Define how organizations operate, how they turn input into output.
- Logically related set of task that desccribe how specific business processes are performed.
- Specific processes in all departments of an organization and cross functional process.
- IT make business processes mor efficient or completely change them
Collaboration technology
Collaboration comes in different forms due to duration (short vs long-term) and setting (formal vs informal).
Importance of collaboration to organizations increases due to:
- changing culture of work
- emphasis on innovation
- growth of professional work
- changing organization of work
- changing nature of work
Social business
Social business refers to the use of social networking paltforms to engage employees, customers and supplier to deepen relationships and expedite information. (facebook, twiter, internal corporate tools)
Benefits from collaboration technology
Rewards in sales&marketing, research&development.
- productivity: sharing knowledge and resolving problems
- quality: faster resolution of quality issues
- innovation: new ideas for products
- customer service: complaints addressed rapidly
- financial performance: generated by improvements above
Collaborative business culture
- Senior managers rely on teams of employees
- Processes, policies, products and systems rely on teams
- The manager’s purpose is to build teams
Time/space collaboration
- same place, same time: face-to-face interaction
- same place, different times: continuous tasks
- different place, same time: remote interaction
- different place, different time: communication&coordination
Keeping lean
Decision to not have a clear structure or strict strtegy
Requirement for software
Must be able to change over time
CRM: Customer Relationship Management
ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning
The first services Geospin offered
First: work-intensive process to create predicitions and conducts sales
- Data scientist had to manually apply trained models to the city in question, create PDF report for customer
- Sales required reaching out to customer and intensive interaction
Then: service integrated into online platfrom
- Customers can register and acquire this or other services with just a click
Transaction cost theory
Firms aim to economize the transaction costs (costs of entering markets) through vertical integration, hiring employees, buyingsuppliers and distributors.
IT can reduce transaction costs making it worthwhile for firms to transact with other firms with no need to hire more emplyees.
Agency theory
Contradiction between self-interested parties that require supervision. => Agency costs
IT can reduce agency costs allowing firms to grow without adding to the costs of supervising or without adding employees.
Flatter organizaions
IS allows for more self-management and managers to supervise more employees. IT flattens organizations.
Post-industrial organizations
Post-industrial organizations put greater weight on knowldge and competencies rather than formal positions.
Organizational politics
All employees have access to all data of the company IS potentially change organization’s culture, structure, politics and work.
What does IS innovation resistence depend on?
It depends on:
- nature of innovation
- organization’s culture
- organization’s structure
- tasks affected by the innovation
Porter’s five forces model
- competitors
- suppliers
- customers
- threat of new entrants
- substitute products
IT strategies to handle competitive forces
- low-cost leadership: produce at lower prices than competitors
- product differentiation: enable new products, change customer experience. mass customization
- focus on market niche: use IS to enable a focused strategy to a single niche market.
- strengthen customer and supplier intimacy: use IS to develop strong ties and loyalty with customer and suppliers. Increases switching costs.
What kind of technology does Netflix use?
Netflix uses collaborative thinking which collects and analyses customer’s viewing habits to provide personalised reccomendadtions.
- increases customer satisfaction
- enables netflix to predict hoe shows will be perceived
