chapter 7: Storing Organizational Information-Databases

• Database- maintains information about various types of object, event , inventory, people and place.

• Hierarchical database model-information is organized into a tree-like  structure in such a way that it cannot have too many relationships.
• Network database model-a flexible way of representing objects and their relationships.
• Relational database model-stores information in the form of logically related two-dimensional tables.

• Entity- a person, place, thing or event about which information is stored.
• Attributes- characteristics or properties of an entity class.

• Primary key- a field that uniquely identifies a given entity in a table.
• Foreign key- a primary key of one table that appears an attribute in another table and acts to provide a logical relationship among two tables. 

• Relational database advantages:-

           -Increased flexibility
           -Increased scalability and performance
           -Reduced information redundancy.
          -Increased information integrity.
          -Increased information security.

1. Increased flexibility-handle changes quickly and easily, provide users with the different views, have only one view, have mutiple logical views.

•  A database must scale to meet increased demand, while maintaining acceptable performance levels.

          -Scalability-refers to how well a system can adapt to increased demands.
          -Performance-measures how quickly a system performs a certain process.

     2 .  Reduced information redundancy

• Redundancy-the duplication of information or storing the same information in multiple place. 

    3.  Increased information integrity:-       
          -Information integrity-measures the quality of information.
          -Integrity constraint-rules that help ensure the quality of information.

     4.  Increased information security
         - information is an organization asset and must be protected.

• Database features:-

1. password-provides authentication of the user.
2. access level-determines who has access to the different types of information.
3. access control -determines types of user access.

• Database management systems-software through which users and application programs interact with a database.

• Data-driven web sites-an interactive web site kept constantly updated and relevant to the needs of its customers through the use of database.

• advantages:

1. Development
2. Content management 
3. Future expandability
4. More efficient

• Integrating Information among Multiple Database.

1. Forward integration-takes information entered into a given system and sends it automatically to all downstream system process.
2. Backward integration-takes information entered into a given system and sends it automatically to all upstream systems and process.
3. without integration, an organization will spend considerable time entering the same info in multiple system.

Chapter 6 -Valuing Organizational Information.

Organizational Information

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

• Levels, formats, and granularities of organizational information.

• The value of transactional and analytical information.

• The value of timely information

1. Real-time-information-immediate, up-to- date information.
2. Real -time system-provides real-time information in response to query requests.

• The value of quality information

1. Business desicions are only as good as the quality of the information used to make the decisions.
2. Characteristics of high-quality information:-                                                                                                                                                                          -accuracy, completeness,consistency,uniqueness,timeless.

• The 4 primary sources of low quality information:

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 errorenous information by accident or to save time.
4. Third party and external information contains inconsistencies, inaccuracies and errors.

• Potential business effects resulting from low quality information:-

         -Inability to accurately track customers.
         -Difficulty identifying valuable customers.
         -Marketing to nonexistent customers.

• High qualiy information can significantly improve the chances of making a good decision.
• Good decisions can directly impact an organization's bottom line.

                                                      

Chapter 5-Organization Structure that support strategic initiatives

Recent IT-related strategic position:

• Chief Information Officer (CIO)
• Chief Technology Officer (CTO)-responsible for ensuring the throughout speed, accuracy, availability and reliability.
• Chief Security Officer (CSO)-responsible for ensuring the security of IT systems.
• Chief Privacy Officer (CPO)-responsible for ensuring the ethical and legal use of information.
• Chief Knowledge Office (CKO)-responsible for collecting, maintaining and distributing the organization's knowledge.

 

CIO-oversees all uses of IT and ensures the strategic alignment of IT with business goals and objectives.
Function:

• 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.
• Communication-building and maintaining strong executive relationship.

 

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

• 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:
• Intellectual property-intangible creative work that is embodied in the physical form.
• Copyright-The legal protection afforded an expression of an idea such as song, video games and others.
• Pirate software-The unauthorized use, duplication, distribution, sale of copy righted software.
• Fair use doctrine-in certain situations, it is legal to use copyrighted material.
• Counterfeith software-Software that is manufactured to look like real thing sold as such.

 

Security-organizational information is intellectual capital-it must be protected.

• Information security-the protection of information from accidental by persons inside or outside an organization.
• E-business automatically creates tremendous information security for organization.

Chapter 4-Measuring the Success of Strategic Initiatives

Measuring Information Technology's Success

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

Efficiency IT metic-measures the performance of the IT system 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 increases.


Benchmarking-Baselining Metrics

• Benchmarks-baseline values the system seeks to attain
• Benchmarking-a process of continuously measuring system results, comparing those results to optimal system performance, and identifying steps and procedures to improve system performance.

Efficiency IT metrics focus on technology and include:

• Throughput, Transaction speed, System availability, web traffic.

Efficiency IT metrics

• Throughput-the amount of information that can travel through a system at any point.
• Transaction speed-the amount of the time a system takes to perform a transaction.
• System availability-the number of hours a system is available for users.
• Information accuracy-the extent to which a system generates the correct results when executing the same transaction numerous times.
• Web traffic-includes a host of benchmarks such as the number of page views, the number of unique visitors, and the average time spent viewing a Web page.
• Response time-the time it takes to respond to user interactions such as a mouse click.

 

Effectiveness IT metrics

• Usability-The ease with which people perform transactions and find information. A popular usability metric on the internet is degrees of freedom, which measures the number of clicks required to find desired information.
• Customer satisfaction-Measured by such benchmarks as sactisfaction surveys, percentage of existing customers retained and increases in revenue dollars per customers.
• Conversion rates-the number of customers an organization ''touches'' for the firstime and persuades to purchase its products or services. This is a popular metric for evaluating the effectiveness of banner, pop-up and pop-under ads on the internet.
• Financial-such as return on investment, cost-benefit analysis and break-even analysis.

 

The Interrelationships of Efficiency and Effectiveness IT metrics.

• Security is an issue for any organization offering products or services over the Internet.
• It is inefficient for organization to implement Internet security, sinces it slows down processing.
• Security Internet connections must offer encryption and Secure Sockets Layers.

Metrics for measuring and managing strategic initiatives included:
-web site metric, supply chain management (SCM) metrics


Web Site Metrics

• Abandoned registrations: Number of visitors who start the process of completing a registration page and then abandon the activity.
• Abandoned shopping carts: Number of visitors who create a shopping cart and start shopping and then abandon the activity before paying for the merchandise.
• Click-through: Count of the number of people who visit a site, click on add and are taken to the site of the adversiter.

Supply Chain Management Metric

• Back order: An unfilled customer order. A back order is demand against an item whose current stock level is insufficient to satisfy demand.
• Customer order promised cycle time: The anticipated or agreed upon cycle time of a purchase order. It is a gap between the purchase order creation date and the requested delivery date.
• Customer order actual cycle time: The average time it takes to actually fill a customer's purchase order. This mesure can be viewed on an order line level.

Customer relationship management metrics-sales metric (number of new customers),services metric (customer satisfaction level),marketing metrics (customer retention rate).

BPR and ERP Metrics-the balanced scorecard enables organization to measure and manage strategic initiatives.

Past Year 2009 ( Part D)

 

PAST YEAR 2009

PART D

QUESTION 1

Identify five (5) of competitive advantages used by AirAsia.

• Chief Information Officer (CIO)
• Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
• Chief Security Officer (CSO)
• Chief Privacy Officer (CPO)
• Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO)

QUESTION 2

Which of the Porter's generic strategies were applied by AirAsia in the case study and explain with examples.

-Cost leadership are strategies that applied by AirAsia because it requires lower cost, broad market and satisfy customer's requirement.
-AirAsia promoting their slogan ''everyone can fly'' with lower cost to fly everywhere we want.So, everyone with different level now can go travel to anywhere they want with lower price of ticket they offer.
-They focus this strategies to broad market for example AirAsia will strengthen and enhance its route network by connecting all the existing cities in the region and expanding further into Indochina, Indonesia, Southern China and India. The airline will focus on developing its hubs in Bangkok and Jakarta through its sister companies, Thai AirAsia and Indonesia AirAsia.
-Futhermore, they satisfy customer's requirement with offer that they provided. For example they give good services to customer in term of price ticket, online booking ticket, treat customer with fair and equitable. So, they satisfy what customer want and need.

QUESTION 3

Based on Porter's Five Force Model, analyze AirAsia's buyer power and supplier power.

AirAsia's buyer power- buyer power high when there many choices of whom to buy from and low when their choices are few. For example the buyer power is high when customer get many choice from other airline to travel and lower the buyer power when customer not have choice from other airline to travel.To reduce buyer power, AirAsia need do the loyalty program. For example, appreciate their regular customer by giving reasonable discount or prize holiday.

AirAsia's supplier power-high when buyers have few choices of whom to buy from and lower when their choices are many. For example AirAsia have high supplier power when they are the only airline that offer ticket at lower cost and lower supplier power when they have competition from other airline.Through market B2B marketplaces, the supplier power can be reduced. AirAsia use private exchange because they are currently the main customer of the Airbus A320. The company has placed an order of 175 units of the same plane to service its routes.