Chapter 6 : VALUING ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION

ORGANIZATION INFORMATION

• Information is everywhere in an organization
• Employees must be able to obtain and analyze the many different levels, formats, and granularities of organizational information to make decisions
•  Successfully collecting, compiling, sorting, and analyzing information can provide tremendous insight into how an organization is performing. 
• Levels, formats and granularities of organization information.          

The value of transactional and analytical information

- Transactional information verses analytical information. 

- Timeliness is an aspect of information that depends on the situation :

    i) Real-time information : immediate, up-to-date information

    ii) Real-time system : provides real-time information in respond to query request 

The value of quality information

-          Business decisions are only as good as the quality of the information used to make the decisions

-          You never want to find yourself using technology to help you make a bad decision faster

  Characteristics of high-quality information include:

Low quality information example

Understanding the Costs of Poor Information

-The four primary sources of low quality information include:

1.       Online customers intentionally enter inaccurate information to     

         protect their privacy

2.       Information from different systems have different entry 

         standards and formats

3.       Call center operators enter abbreviated or erroneous. 

         information by accident or to save time

4.       Third party and external information contains inconsistencies, 

         inaccuracies, and error 

- Potential business effects resulting from low quality information include:

                                                        I.            Inability to accurately track customers

                                                      II.            Difficulty identifying valuable customers

                                                    III.            Inability to identify selling opportunities

                                                    IV.            Marketing to nonexistent customers

Understanding the Benefits of Good Information

•          High quality information can significantly improve the chances of making a good decision 

•          Good decisions can directly impact an organization's bottom line

Chapter 5 : ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE THAT SUPPORT STRATEGIC INITIATIVE

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES that support Strategic Initiatives.

•          Organizational employees must work closely together to develop strategic initiatives that create competitive advantages

•          Ethics and security are two fundamental building blocks that organizations must base their businesses upon

IT ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

•          Recent IT-related strategic position

–      Chief Information Officer (CIO)

–      Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

–      Chief Security Officer (CSO)

–      Chief Privacy Officer (CPO)

–      Chief Knowledge Office (CKO)

1    Chief Information Officer (CIO) – oversees all uses of IT and ensures the strategic alignment of IT with business goals and objectives

Broad CIO functions include:

–      Manager : ensuring the delivery of all IT projects, on time and within budget

–      Leader : ensuring the strategic vision of IT is in line with the strategic vision of      

                        the organization

–      Communicator : building and maintaining strong executive relationships.

2.       Chief Technology Officer (CTO) – responsible for ensuring the throughput, speed, accuracy,    

                                                                    availability, and reliability of IT

3.       Chief Security Officer (CSO) – responsible for ensuring the security of IT systems

4.       Chief Privacy Officer (CPO) – responsible for ensuring the ethical and legal use of information 

5.        Chief Knowledge Office CKO) - responsible for collecting, maintaining, and distributing the    

                                                                 organization’s knowledge

Skills pivotal for success in executive IT roles

THE GAP BETWEEN BUSINESS PERSONNEL AND IT PERSONNEL

•          Business personnel possess expertise in functional are as such as marketing, accounting, and sales  

•          IT personnel have the technological expertise 

•          This typically causes a communications gap between the business personnel and IT personnel

•          Business personnel must seek to increase their understanding of IT

•          IT personnel must seek to increase their understanding of the business

•          It is the responsibility of the CIO to ensure effective communication between business personnel and IT personnel

                ETHICS

•         Ethics and security are two fundamental building blocks that organizations must  

           base their businesses on to be successful

 Ethics – the principles and standards that guide our behavior toward other people

•         Privacy is a major ethical issue

Privacy – the right to be left alone when you want to be, to have control over your own personal possessions, and not to be observed without your consent

•         Issues affected by technology advances

•  One of the main ingredients in trust is privacy 

•  Primary reasons privacy issues lost trust for ebusiness 

Protecting Intellectual Assets

•         Organizational information is intellectual capital - it must be protected 

•         Information secur ity – the protection of information from accidental or intentional misuse by persons inside or outside an organization

•         Ebusiness automatically creates tremendous information security risks for organizations

chapter 4 : MEASURING THE SUCCESS OF STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

MEASURING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY'S SUCCESS

- Key performance indicator : measures that are tied to business drivers
- Metrics are detailed measures that feed KPIs
- Performance metrics fall into the nebulous area of business intelligence that is neither technology,  
   nor business centered, but requires input from both IT and business professionals.

Efficiency and Effectiveness

• Efficiency IT metric : measures the performance of the IT sysytem itself including throughput, speed and availability
• Effectiveness IT metric : measures the impact IT has on business processes and activities including customer satisfaction, conversion rates and sell-through increase   

Bechmarking-baselining metrics

The interrelationships of efficiency and effectiveness IT metrics

METRICS FOR STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

Metrics for measuring and managing strategic initiatives include:

•             Website metrics
•             Supply chain management (SCM) metrics
•             Customer relationship management (CRM) metrics
•             Business process reengineering (BPR) metrics
•             Enterprise resource planning (ERP) metrics

The balanced scorecard enables organizations to measure and manage strategic initiatives

chapter 3: STRATEGIC INITIATIVES FOR IMPLEMENTING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

Organization can undertake high-profile strategic initiatives including :

•  Supply chain management (SCM)
• Customer relationship management (CRM) 
• Business process reengineering (BPR)
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP)

1. Supply chain management

         -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

          i) Supply chain strategy : strategy for managing all resources to meet customer demand.

          ii) Supply chain partner : partners throughout the supply chain that deliver finished products,                                                        raw materials and service

          iii) Supply chain operation : schedule for production activities

          iv) Supply chain logistics : product delivery process

'THE ENTIRE SUPPLY CHAIN DOES NOT HAVE TO BE IN ONE COUNTRY,SO SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT ALLOWS IRISH BASED COMPANIES COMPETE IN THE WORLD MARKET AS PART OF A GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN’ 

2. Customer relationship management

       

       - Involves managing all aspects of a customer's relationship with all organization to increase                  customer loyalty and retention and an organization's profitability.

       - CRM is not just a technology, buy also a strategy, process and business goal that an                              organization must embrace on an enterprisewide level.

3. Business process reengineering

   

       - Business process : A standardized set of activities that accomplish a specific task such as                                                  processing a customer's order.

     - Business process reengineering : The analysis and redesign of workflow within and between                                                                    enterprise.

4. Enterprise resource planning

     Integrates all departments and functions throughout an organization into a single IT systems so            that employees can make decisions by viewing enterprisewide information on all business                    operations

Chapter 2 : IDENTIFYING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

IDENTIFYING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

• To survive and thrive an organization must create a competitive advantages

          - Competitive advantages: a product or service that an organization's customs place a greater               on the similar offering from a competitor.

          - First-move advantage: Occurs when an organization can significantly impact its market                      share by being first to market with a competitive advantage. 

•  Organization watch their competition through environmentals scanning : the acquisition            and analysis of events and trends in the environment external to an organization.
•  Three common tools used in  industry to analyze and develop competitive advantages include:  

          - Porter's Five Forces Model ( for evaluating industry attractiveness)

          - Porter's Three Generic Strategies ( for choosing a business focus)

          - Value Chain ( for executing business startegy)

 The five forces model-Evaluating business segments

1. 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 through loyalty programs.

              - Loyalty program : Rewards customers based on the amount of business they do with a particular organization.

              - Switching cost : Cost that can make customers reluctant to switch to another product or service.

          

        2. Supplier chain 

          

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

             - Supply chain: Consist of all parties involved in the procurement of a product or new materials.

•                Organization that are buying goods and services in the supply chain can create a                        competitive advantage by locating alternative supply source through B2B                                    marketplaces

               - Business-to-business marketplace : an Internet-based service that brings together many buyers and sellers.

                  

•             Two types of B2B marketplace :

                       -Private exchange : a single buyer posts its needs and opens the biding to any supplier who could care a                                 bid

                              -Reverse auction : An auction format in which increasingly lower bids are solicited from organizations                                  willing to supply product or service at an increasing lower price.

 3. Threat of substitutes product or services
   
     High when there are many alternatives to a product or service and low when there are few                   alternatives from which to choose.

       Switching cost : Costs that can make customers reluctant to switch to another product or service.

 4. Threat of new Entrants
   
     High when it is easy for new competitors to enter a market and low when there are significant              entry barriers to entering a market.
    -Entry barriers : A product or service feature that customers have come to expect from organizations in a particular              industry and must be offered by an entering organization to compete and survive.

 5. Rivalry among existing competitors

•      High when competition is fierce in a market and low when competition is more complacent.
•     Although competition is always more intense in some industries than in others, the overall         trend is towards increased competition in just about every industry.

Three Generic Strategies- creating a business focus

1. Value creation
    Once on organization chooses its strategy, it can use tools such as the value chain to determine the     success or failure of its chosen strategies.
    - Business process : A standardized set of activities that accomplish a specific task, such as procesing a customer's                order.
     - Value chain : Views an organization as a series of processes, each of which adds value to the product or service for            service customer.

chapter 1 : BUSINESS DRIVEN TECHNOLOGY

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY'S ROLE IN BUSINESS

Information technology is everywhere in business

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY'S IMPACT ON BUSINESS OPERATIONS

Business technology has revolutionized the way companies conduct business. Small businesses can implement business technology and level the playing field with larger organizations. Small businesses use computers, servers, websites and personal digital products to develop competitive advantages in the economic marketplace. Small business owners should consider implementing technology in their planning process. This allows owners to create operations using the best technology available.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY BASICS

• Information technology : a field concerned with the use of technology in managing and processing                                                 information.
• Information technology is an important enabler of business success and innovation.
• Management information systems : a general name for the business function and academic discipline covering the application of people, technology, and produces to solve business problems.
• MIS is business function, similar to accounting, finance  and human resources
• It is important to understand data,information and business intelligence, IT resources and IT cultures.

            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.

    1.    For example, if you were building a system yo track students:

            - Data might include height, name and address.

            - Information might include student to professor ratio, percentage of marketing majors who are female,                 number of students who pass the courses.

      2.  IT Resources

         - People use
         - Information technology to work with
         - Information
     
       3.  IT Cultures
          Organizational information cultures include:
            - Information-functional culture : Employees use information as a means of exercising influence or power               over others. For example, a manager in sales refuses 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 culture : Employees across departments trust each other to use information                         (especially about problems and failures) to improve performance.

            - Information-inquiring culture : Employees across departments search for information to better                             understand the failure and align themselves with current trend and new directions.

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