Chapter 19 – OUTSOURCING IN THE 21ST CENTURY

CHAPTER 19 : OUTSOURCING THE 21ST CENTURY

                                     

This is chapter 19 – OUTSOURCING IN THE 21^ST CENTURY

OUTSOURCING PROJECTS

• Insourcing (in house development) – common approach using the profesional expertise within an organization to develop and maintain the organization’s information technology system
• Outsourcing – an arrangement by which one organization provides a service or services for aother organization that chooses not to perform them in house.

                         

                     

                 

reasons company outsource

                           

• Onshore outsourcing – engaging another company within the same country for services
• Nearshore outsourcing -  contracting an outsourcing arrangement with a company in nearby country. Often this country will share a border with a native country.
• Offshore outsourcing – using organizations from developing countries to write code and develop systems. The country is geographically far away.

                                                    

OUTSOURCING BENEFITS

• -          Increased quality and efficiency of a process, service or function
• -          Reduce operating expenses
• -          Access to advanced technologies
• -          No costly outlay of capital funds
• -          Reduce time to market for products or services.

OUTSOURCING CHALLENGES

• Contract length
• Competitive edge
• Confidentially
• Scope definition

Chapter 15 : Creating collaborative Partnerships

CHAPTER 15

Creating Collaborative Partnerships

Content sharing through open sourcing

• Open system - consists of nonproprietary hardware and software based on publicity known standards that allow third parties to create add-on products to plug into or inter operate with the system.

• Source code - Contains instruction written by a programmer specifying the actions to be performed by computer software.

• Open source - any software whose source code in made available free for any third party to review and modify.

Characteristics of Business

• User-contributed content

- is created and updated by many users for many users.

- reputation system - where buyers post feedback on sellers.

• Collaboration inside the organization

- is a set of tools that supports the work of teams or groups by facilitating the sharing and flow of information.

• Explicit and Tacit knowledge

- Explicit knowledge - consists of anything that can be documented,archived,and codified,often with the help of IT.

- Tacit knowledge - is the knowledge contained in people's heads. The challenge inherent in tacit knowledge is figuring out how to recognize,generate,share, and manage knowledge that resides in people's heads.

• Collaboration outside the organization

Social tagging

• Tags - are specific keywords or phrases incorporated into website content for means of               classification or taxonomy.
• Social tagging - describe the collaborative activity of making shared online content with                                 keywords or tags as a way to organize it for future navigation, filtering,or                               search.
• Folksonomy - is similar to taxonomy except that crowdsourcing determines the tags or                              keyword-based classification system.
• Website bookmark - is a locally stored URL or the address of a file or Internet page                                                saved as a shortcut.
• Social bookmarking - allows users to share,organize,search and manage bookmarks.

Business 2.0 Tools for Collaborating

1. Blogs
2. Wikis
3. Mashups

Chapter 14 : Ebusinss

CHAPTER 14

Ebusiness

Ebusiness models

Business model - is a plan that details how a company creates, delivers, and generates revenues. Some models are quite simple: A company produces a good and service and sells it to customers.

Ebusiness models fall into one of the four categories : 

1. Business-to-business
2. Business-to-customer
3. Comsumer-to-business
4. Consumer-to-consumer

Ebusiness Models

 

Business-to-business

- Electronic marketplace (e-marketplace) – interactive business communities providing a central market where multiple buyers and sellers can engage in e-business activities.

Business-to-consumer 

- Common B2C e-business models include:

–e-shop – a version of a retail store where customers can shop at any hour of the day without leaving their home or office

–e-mall – consists of a number of e-shops; it serves as a gateway through which a visitor can access other e-shops

Business types:

–Brick-and-mortar business

–Pure-play business

–Click-and-mortar business

Consumer-to-business

-Priceline.com is an example of a C2B e-business model

- The demand for C2B ebusiness will increase over the next few years due to customers' desire for greater convenience and lower prices. 

Consumer-to-consumer

  

Ebusiness tools for connecting and communicating

- Email

- Instant Messaging

- Podcasting

- Videoconferencing

- Web Conferencing

- Content management system

The challenges of Ebusiness

- Identifying limited market segments

- Managing consumer trust

- Ensuring consumer protection

- Adhering to taxation rules

Chapter 12 : Integrating the organization from end to end- enterprise resource planning

(Chapter 12)Integrating The Organization From End to End - Enterprise Resource Planning 

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Enterprise resource planning systems serve as the organization's backbone in providing fundamental decision-making supports.

Bringing the organizational together

• information has traditionally been isolated within specific departments, whether on an individual database, in a file cabinet, or on an employee's.
•  ERP enables employees across the organization to share information across a single, centralized database.

Evolution of ERP

•  ERP solutions were developed to deliver automation across multiple units of an organization, yo help facilitate the manufacturing process and address issues such a raw materials, inventory, order entry, and distribution.
•  ERP handle document management, such as cataloging contracts and purchase orders.

Integrating SCM, CRM and ERP

•  this application are the backbone of ebusiness.
•  is the key success of the company.
•  allows unlocking of information to make it available to any user, anywhere, anytime.

Integrating tools

•  achieved using middleware- several different types of software that sit in the middle of and provide connectivity between two or more software applications.
•  enterprise application integration (EAI) middleware represents a new approach to middleware by packaging together commonly used functionality.
•  if one applications performs poorly, the entire customers value delivery systems will affected.

CHAPTER 11

Building customer centric Organization - Customer Relationship Management

Customer Relationship Management

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

- CRM allows an organization to gain insights into customer's shopping and buying behaviors.

The Benefits of CRM

• companies that understand individual customer needs are best positioned to achieve success.
• building successful customer relationship is not a new business practise , however, implementing CRM systems allows a company to operate more efficiently and effectively in the area of supporting customer needs.

Evolution of CRM

1. CRM Reporting technologies - help organizations segment their customer across other applications.
2. CRM Analysis technologies - help organizations segment their customer into categories such as best and worst customers.
3. CRM Predicting technologies - help organizations predict customer behavior, such as which customers are at risk of leaving

Operational And Analytical CRM

- Operational CRM supports traditional transactional processing for day to day front office operations or systems that deal directly with the customers.

Chapter 10 : Extending The Organization - Supply Chain Management

Chapter 10 : Extending The Organization - Supply Chain Management

 Supply Chain Management

• The average company spends nearly half of every dollar that it earns on production.
• In the past, companies focused primarily on manufacturing and quality improvements to influence their supply chains.

Basics of Supply Chain

• The supply chain has three main links :

1. Materials flow from suppliers and their “upstream” suppliers at all levels.
2. Transformation of materials into semi finished and finished products through the organization’s own production process.
3. Distribution of products to customers and their “downstream” customers at all levels.

•  Organizations must embrace technologies that can effectively manage supply chains.

 

Information Technology's Role In The Supply Chain

• IT’s primary role is to create integrations or tight process and information linkages between functions within a firm.

 Factors driving SCM :

Visibility

• Supply chain visibility – the ability to view all areas up and down the supply chain.
• Bull whip effect – occurs when distorted product demand information passes from one entity to the next throughout the supply chain.

Consumer Behaviour

• Companies can respond faster and more effectively to consumer demands through supply chain enhances.
• Demand planning software – generates demand forecasts using statistical tools and forecasting techniques.

Competition

• Supply chain planning (SCP) software – uses advanced mathematical algorithms to improve the flow and efficiency of the supply chain.
• Supply chain execution (SCE) software – automates the different steps and stages of the supply chain.
• SCP and SCE in the supply chain 

oyo

Supply Chain Management Success Factors

• SCM industry best practices include :

1. Make the sale to suppliers.
2. Wean employees off traditional business practices.
3. Ensure the SCM system supports the organizational goals.
4. Deploy in incremental phases and measure and communicate success.
5. Be future oriented.

SCM Success Stories

• Top reasons why more and more executives are turning to SCM to manage their extended enterprises.

• Numerous decision support systems (DSSs) are being built to assist decision makers in the design and operation of integrated supply chains.
• DSSs allow managers to examine performance and relationships over the supply chain and among :

1. Suppliers
2. Manufacturers
3. Distributors
4. Other factors that optimize supply chain performance

 

Chapter 9 - Enabling the organization - Decision making

Chapter 9 – Enabling the Organization-Decision Making

Decision Making 

#  Reasons for Growth of Decision Making Information System

• People need to analyze large amounts of information – Improvements in technology itself, innovations in communication, and globalization have resulted in a dramatic increase in the alternatives and dimensions people need to consider when making a decision or appraising an opportunity
• People must make decisions quickly – Time is of the essence and people simply do not have time to sift through all the information manually
• People must apply sophisticated analysis techniques, such as modeling and forecasting, to  make good decisions – Information systems substantially reduce the time required to perform these sophisticated analysis techniques
• People must protect the corporate asset of organizational information – Information systems offer the security required to ensure organizational information remains safe.

#  Model – A simplified representation or abstraction of realit

IT systems in an enterprise

Transaction Processing System

Moving up through the organizational pyramid users move from requiring transactional information to analytical information

• Transaction processing system – the basic business system that serves the operational level (analysis) in an organization
• Online transaction processing (OLTP) – the capturing of transaction and event information using technology to (1) process the information according to defined business rules, (2) store the information, (3) update existing information to reflect the new information
• Online analytical processing (OLAP) – the manipulation of information to create business intelligence in support of strategic decision making

What-if analysis

Goal-seeking analysis

Executive information system 

1. Executive information sysem (EIS) – A specialized DSS that supports senior level executives within the organizatioN
2. Most EISs offering the following capabilities;

•  Consolidation – involves the aggregation of information and features simple roll-ups to complex groupings of interrelated information
• Drill-down – enables users to get details, and details of information
• Slice-and-dice – looks at information from different perspectives 

Interaction between a TPS and an EIS

Interaction between a TPS and a DSS

Digital dashboard – integrates information from multiple components and presents it in a united display

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Ø  The ultimate goal of AI is the ability to build a system that can mimic human intelligence

Ø  Intelligent system – various commercial applications of artificial intelligence

Ø  Artificial intelligence (AI) – simulates human intelligence such as the ability to reason and learn

Ø  Four most common categories of AI include;

1.       Expert system – computerized advisory programs that imitate the reasoning processes of experts i                  solving difficult problems

2.       Neural network – attempts to emulate the way the human brain works

          Fuzzy logic – a mathematical method of handling imprecise or subjective information

3.       Genetic algorithm – an artificial intelligent system that mimics the evolutionary, survival-of-the-fittest                process to generate increasingly better solutions to a problem

4.       Intelligent agent – special-purposed knowledge-based information system that accomplishes specific             tasks on behalf of its users

Data Mining

#Data-mining software includes many forms of AI such as neutral networks and expert systems

Chapter 8 : Accessing organization information - Data warehouse

CHAPTER 8

ACCESSING ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION - DATA WAREHOUSE

History of Data Warehousing

•Data warehouses extend the transformation of data into information

•In the 1990’s executives became less concerned with the day-to-day business operations and more concerned with overall business functions

•The data warehouse provided the ability to support decision making without disrupting the day-to-day operations

Data Warehouse Fundamentals

•Data warehouse – a logical collection of information – gathered from many different                                   operational databases – that supports business analysis activities                                and decision-making tasks

•The primary purpose of a data warehouse is to aggregate information throughout  an organization into a single repository for decision-making purposes

•Extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) – a process that extracts information from internal and external databases, transforms the information using a common set of enterprise definitions, and loads the information into a data warehouse

•Data mart – contains a subset of data warehouse information

Multidimensional Analysis And Data Mining

•Databases contain information in a series of two-dimensional tables

•In a data warehouse and data mart, information is multidimensional, it contains

  layers of columns and rows

       –Dimension – a particular attribute of information

•Cube – common term for the representation of multidimensional information

•Data mining – the process of analyzing data to extract information not offered

                              by the raw data alone

•To perform data mining users need data-mining tools

            –Data-mining tool – uses a variety of techniques to find patterns 

                                                 and relationships in large volumes of information and                                             infers rules that predict future behavior and guide                                                      decision making

  Information Cleansing Or Scrubbing

•An organization must maintain high-quality data in the data warehouse

•

•Information cleansing or scrubbing – a process that weeds out and fixes or discards inconsistent, incorrect, or incomplete information

•Contact information in an operational system

•Standardizing Customer name from Operational Systems

•Information cleansing activities

•Accurate and complete information

Business Intelligence 

•Business intelligence – information that people use to support their decision-making efforts

•

•Principle BI enablers include:

–Technology

–People

–Culture