Expert answer:Need management help to answer each question about

Answer & Explanation:Case: Sew
What? The Role of Information Technology in Small Business Success.
Case Summary
1. Provide a summary overview of the case in your own words.
Case Analysis
2. What role does IT play in small businesses that are not
ecommerce companies? Do brick and mortar companies need IT just as much as
ebusinesses?
Case Application
3. In narrative form, define and describe at least three
technologies that small businesses should embrace in their IT work.
Note: Case is found on page 41-42 on the provided attachment. More research can be found online for the case. Please answer each question with 250 or more word count, and 750 or more for the entire paper. Use only APA format, include in-text citation and a reference page, minimum of 3 references. Please provide the questions in the paper as well, with each answers documented to that question. Read 1.pdfread_1.pdfread_1.pdf
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obr76817_fm_i-xxxiv_1.indd Page i 8/25/10 2:00 PM F-497
MANAGEMENT
INFORMATION
SYSTEMS
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obr76817_fm_i-xxxiv_1.indd Page iii 8/25/10 2:00 PM F-497
MANAGEMENT
INFORMATION
SYSTEMS
Tenth Edition
James A. O’Brien
College of Business Administration
Northern Arizona University
George M. Marakas
KU School of Business
University of Kansas
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Management
Challenges
MODULE I
Business
Applications
@bWh_X
< Development Processes Information Technologies Foundation Concepts FOUNDATION CONCEPTS W R systems? Why do businesses need information hy study information technology? What I do you need to know about the use and management of information technologies in business? The introductory G chapters of Module I are designed to answer these fundamental questions about H in business. the role of information systems of Information Systems in Business presents an • Chapter 1: Foundations T overview of the five basic areas , of information systems knowledge needed by W • business professionals, including the conceptual system components and major types of information systems. In addition, trends in information systems and an overview of the managerialSchallenges associated with information systems are presented. H Chapter 2: Competing with Information Technology introduces fundamental E concepts of competitive advantage through information technology and illustrates major strategic applications of information systems. R Completing these chapters R will prepare you to move on to study chapters on information technologies (Module II), business applications (Module III), Y (Module IV), and the management challenges systems development processes of information systems (Module V). 2 7 9 3 B U 2 obr76817_ch01_002-044.indd Page 3 09/09/10 9:50 AM user-f501 207/MHRL043/kno31619_disk1of1/0070131619/kno31619_pagefiles: Management Challenges CHAPTER 1 Business Applications Module I Development Processes Information Technologies Foundation Concepts FOUNDATIONS OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN BUSINESS W Ch apt er Highligh t s Section I Foundation Concepts: Information Systems in Business The Real World of Information Systems Real World Case: eCourier, Cablecom, and Bryan Cave: Delivering Value Through Business Intelligence The Fundamental Roles of IS in Business Trends in Information Systems The Role of e-Business in Business Types of Information Systems Managerial Challenges of Information Technology Section II Foundation Concepts: The Components of Information Systems System Concepts: A Foundation Real World Case: The New York Times and Boston Scientific: Two Different Ways of Innovating with Information Technology Components of Information Systems Information System Resources Information System Activities Recognizing Information Systems Real World Case: Sew What? Inc.: The Role of Information Technology in Small Business Success Real World Case: JetBlue and the Veterans Administration: The Critical Importance of IT Processes R I L ea r n i n g O bj ect i v e s G H 1. Understand the concept of a system and how it relates to information systems. T 2. Explain why knowledge of information systems is , important for business professionals, and identify S H E R R Y 2 7 9 3 B U 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. five areas of information systems knowledge that they need. Give examples to illustrate how the business applications of information systems can support a firm’s business processes, managerial decision making, and strategies for competitive advantage. Provide examples of several major types of information systems from your experiences with business organizations in the real world. Identify several challenges that a business manager might face in managing the successful and ethical development and use of information technology in a business. Provide examples of the components of real world information systems. Illustrate that in an information system, people use hardware, software, data, and networks as resources to perform input, processing, output, storage, and control activities that transform data resources into information products. Demonstrate familiarity with the myriad of career opportunities in information systems. 3 obr76817_ch01_002-044.indd Page 4 7/28/10 10:10 AM user 4 ● /Volumes/207/MHSF191/foe85387_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387_pagefiles Module I / Foundation Concepts SECTION I Foundation Concepts: Information Systems in Business The question of why we need to study information systems and information technology has evolved into a moot issue. Information systems have become as integrated into our daily business activities as accounting, finance, operations management, marketing, human resource management, or any other major business function. Information systems and technologies are vital components of successful businesses and organizations—some would say they are business imperatives. They thus constitute an essential field of study in business administration and management, which is why most business majors include a course in information systems. Since you probably intend to be a manager, entrepreneur, or business professional, it is just as important to have a basic understanding of information systems as it is to understand any other functional area in business. W Information technologies, including Internet-based information systems, are playRbusiness. Information technology can help all kinds of ing vital and expanding roles in businesses improve the efficiency I and effectiveness of their business processes, managerial decision making, and workgroup collaboration, which strengthens their comG marketplaces. This benefit occurs irrespective of petitive positions in rapidly changing whether the information technology is used to support product development teams, H customer support processes, e-commerce transactions, or any other business activity. Information technologies andTsystems are, quite simply, an essential ingredient for business success in today’s dynamic , global environment. The Real World of Information Systems Let’s take a moment to bring the real world into our discussion of the importance of information systems (IS) and S information technology (IT). See Figure 1.1, and read the Real World Case about using information technology to better understand and H satisfy customer needs. If we are to understand information systems and their functions, we first need to E be clear on the concept of a system. In its simplest form, a system is a set of interreR defined boundary, working together to achieve a lated components, with a clearly common set of objectives. Using R this definition, it becomes easy to see that virtually everything you can think of is a system, and one system can be made up of other sysY We will expand on this concept later in the next tems or be part of a bigger system. section, but for now, this definition gives us a good foundation for understanding the focus of this textbook: information systems. What Is an Information System? We begin with a simple definition that we can expand upon later in the chapter. An 7 information system (IS) can be any organized combination of people, hardware, soft9 data resources, and policies and procedures that ware, communications networks, stores, retrieves, transforms, and 3 disseminates information in an organization. People rely on modern information systems to communicate with one another using a variety of physical devices (hardware)B , information processing instructions and procedures (software), communications channels (networks), and stored data (data resources). AlU though today’s information systems are typically thought of as having something to do with computers, we have been using information systems since the dawn of civilization. Even today we make regular use of information systems that have nothing to do with a computer. Consider some of the following examples of information systems: 2 • Smoke signals for communication were used as early as recorded history and can account for the human discovery of fire. The pattern of smoke transmitted valuable information to others who were too far to see or hear the sender. • Card catalogs in a library are designed to store data about the books in an organized manner that allows readers to locate a particular book by its title, author name, subject, or a variety of other approaches. obr76817_ch01_002-044.indd Page 5 7/28/10 10:10 AM user /Volumes/207/MHSF191/foe85387_disk1of1/0073385387/foe85387_pagefiles Chapter 1 / Foundations of Information Systems in Business REAL WORLD CASE V 1 5 eCourier, Cablecom, and Bryan Cave: Delivering Value through Business Intelligence isitors to the eCourier Web site are greeted with the words “How happy are you? Take the eCourier happy test today!” Those words and the playful purple Web site represent the company’s customer satisfaction focus. And the company achieves that happiness through its focus on operational business intelligence. Business intelligence is moving out of the ivory tower of specialized analysts and is being brought to the front lines. In the case of eCourier, whose couriers carry 2,000 packages around London each day, operational business intelligence allows the company to keep real-time tabs on customer satisfaction. “This is a crucial differentiator in London’s competitive same-day courier market, where clients are far more likely to take their business elsewhere than they are to report a problem to their current courier,” says the company’s chief technology officer and cofounder Jay Bregman. Just one online directory, London Online, shows about 350 listings for courier services. Before implementing operational business intelligence, eCourier sought to define IT as a crucial differentiator. Cofounders Tom Allason, eCourier’s CEO, and Bregman ditched the idea of phone dispatchers and instead gave their couriers GPS-enabled handhelds so that couriers can be tracked and orders can be communicated electronically. They also focused on making online booking easy and rewarding, and much was invested in user-friendly applications: Customers can track online exactly where their courier is, eliminating the package delivery guesswork. Today, 95 percent of deliveries are booked online; this means that eCourier needs a much smaller staff for monitoring, tracking, and placing orders, which in turn makes the company more scalable. Bregman says this is notable in F IGUR E 1.1
Access to quality information about customers helps
companies succeed at delivering value to shareholders.
Source: © Digital Vision/Alamy.
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a market where many courier companies use telephone dispatchers and guesswork about package whereabouts. Booking and tracking automation—although innovative—did not
complete the customer happiness puzzle. Without leadingedge business intelligence, account managers could miss
the same issues that plagued other courier services—late
deliveries, surly couriers, or even an unnoticed ramp-up in
deliveries. “We’re only one delivery away from someone
deciding to use a different delivery firm,” says Bregman.
So eCourier started to use software from a company called
SeeWhy to try to generate customer data more quickly.
“What’s unique about SeeWhy,” says Bregman, “is its ability to
report what’s happening with customers instantly.” When a
new booking enters eCourier’s database, the information is duplicated and saved into a repository within SeeWhy. The software then interprets the data by comparing it with previous
information and trends, and if it notices an anomaly, it takes
action. If a customer typically places an eCourier order every
Thursday morning between 9:30 and 10:00 and there’s been
no contact during that time, eCourier’s CRM team will receive
an alert shortly after 10:00 that includes the client’s history and
the number of bookings it typically places in a day. Bregman
says there’s a fair amount of fine-tuning to get the metrics right.
For example, the company had to tweak the system to recognize
expected shifts in activity so that it doesn’t send a slew of alerts
once the after-Christmas drop in business occurs. Getting that
perfect balance of when to send alerts and how best to optimize the system is an ongoing process, he says.
The SeeWhy software is designed to establish a “normal”
client booking pattern from the first use, which is deepened
with each subsequent booking. A sharp drop-off in bookings,
an increase in bookings, or a change in dormant account activity generates an alert that is sent to that client’s account
manager; the manager uses the opportunity to problem-solve
or, in the case of increased activity, upsell to overnight or international services. “These capabilities have provided a big
payoff,” says Bregman. He also believes the system saves his
company the expense of having to hire people to monitor
“who’s happy and who’s not—we’re able to do a lot more on
our customer team with a lot less.”
Other approaches to judging customer dissatisfaction
exist. Cablecom, a Swiss telecom company, used SPSS’s
statistical software to mine customer data, primarily from
trouble tickets—such as the average duration of a ticket, or
how many tickets had been opened for a customer over a
specific time period—to build a model that could flag when
a customer was at a high risk of leaving. “But the model
proved to be only about 70 percent accurate,” says Federico
Cesconi, director of customer insight and retention.
So Cesconi used SPSS’s Dimensions survey research
software to create an online customer survey, and from that
he was able to determine that customer dissatisfaction usually begins around the ninth month of service, with the bulk
of the customer losses occurring between months 12 and 14.
Cesconi then created another survey that he now offers to
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Module I / Foundation Concepts
customers in the seventh month of service, which includes an
area where they can type in specific complaints and problems.
“Cablecom calls customers within 24 hours of completing
the survey,” says Cesconi. “The two approaches together
provide the best view of customers ready to bolt, and the
best chance at retaining them.”
In 2002, global law firm Bryan Cave faced the milliondollar question: How do you make the most money with
your resources while simultaneously delivering the highest
customer value? The problem was pressing. Clients of the
firm, which now has 800 lawyers in 15 offices worldwide,
were demanding alternatives to the traditional hourly fee
structure. They wanted new models, such as fixed pricing
and pricing that was adjusted during a project.
But making money from these new billing strategies
required the complicated balance of staffing and pricing.
Projects weighted too heavily with a law partner’s time
would be expensive (for the law firm) and not optimized for
profit. Devoting too little of a partner’s time would leave clients feeling undervalued. Optimizing profit and perceived
value had to be achieved by spreading partners’ time throughout a number of cases and balancing the remaining resources
needed for a case with the less-expensive fees of associates
and paralegals. “Clients are most likely to stay with you if you
deliver just the right mix,” says Bryan Cave’s CIO John Alber.
The law firm’s traditional method of analyzing collected
fees and profit used a spreadsheet that was complicated and
took too long. “Spreadsheets provide a level of detail that can
be valuable for analysts,” says Alber, “but the information in a
spreadsheet can be confusing and difficult to work with.” Alber
says he decided it was better to build an easy-to-understand interface using business intelligence tools. Although the company
will not release specific figures, both profitability and hours leveraged—the hours worked by equity partners and all other fee
earners at the firm—have increased substantially since the company implemented its first BI tool in 2004, according to Alber.
The tools also allow lawyers to track budgets in real time
so that they can make adjustments quickly. The BI tools
CASE STUDY QUESTIONS
1. How do information technologies contribute to the business success of the companies depicted in the case? Provide an example from each company explaining how the
technology implemented led to improved performance.
2. In the case of law firm Bryan Cave discussed above, the
use of BI technology to improve the availability, access,
and presentation of existing information allowed them to
provide tailored and innovative services to their customers. What other professions could benefit from a similar
use of these technologies, and how? Develop two different possibilities.
3. Cablecom developed a prediction model to better identify
those customers at risk of switching to other company in
the near future. In addition to those noted in the case,
what other actions could be taken if that information
were available? Give some examples of these. Would you
consider letting some customers leave anyway? Why?
even provide a diversity dashboard, which tracks the hourly
mix of women and minorities working on the firm’s cases, a
feature the company will license to Redwood Analytics for
sale to other law firms. The firm developed this diversity
tool to bring transparency to the diversity reporting process
required by many clients. In other words, the tools provide
Bryan Cave with a method of customizing its fees and helping clients better understand what they get for their money.
As an illustration, Alber points to the customized pricing
one lawyer gave to his real estate client. “Developers think in
terms of square feet,” says Alber, “and this client couldn’t understand why legal fees for a 400,000-square-foot building
might be the same as for a 4,000-square-foot building, though
it required the same amount of the lawyer’s time.” So the lawyer used the pricing and staffing modeling tools and historical
analysis tools to determine whether it made sense for the law
W
firm to charge clients based on the size of their projects.
R He found that while there was risk of underpricing large
buildings, the deal volume in small buildings offset that risk for
I the law firm. The result made per-square-foot pricing possible.
“It may be possible that someone with enough willpower
Gor manpower
could do that using traditional analysis,” says
HAlber, “but this lawyer had the information right at his fingertips.” Business intelligence enables “us to be in touch
Twith clients and shift things around in response to what cus, tomers are asking,” says Alber. Adopting new and improved
project management, pricing, and customer service capabilities required planning, appropriate pacing, and user buy-in.
“In today’s environment, you can’t do value innovation
Swithout
being in touch with the economics of your business,
Hwithout really understanding where you make money and
where you don’t, and that’s what business intelligence tools
Edo,” says Alber. “Our goal,” he says, “is to build the best longRterm relationships in the world.”
Adapted from Diann Daniel, “Delivering Customer Happiness
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