Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi/Kolkata

EPGDIB 2020-2021 (On-campus) and EPGDIB 2020-2021 (Hybrid)

Course Name: IT Applications in Management (including Applications of

Artificial Intelligence)
Course Co-ordinator: Parul Singh
Email: parulsingh@iift.edu

Term: I Credits: 3

Course Introduction

Information Technology has changed the way the businesses operate and succeed in today’s global
economy. Organizations are using IT to transform themselves in various ways and achieve
competitive advantage in the market. IT is no longer considered as merely a back-office tool, rather
the talk is now on the Internet, e-commerce, knowledge management, IT for business transformation
etc. Hence, IT education plays a significant role. Companies are becoming increasingly aware and
sensitive of the need for employees who are conversant with the IT skills. Success in any field – law,
medicine, business, education, entertainment, finance and investment – requires a command of
technology. As the convergence of telecommunications and computing, information technology is the
foundation of the 21st century economy.

The course highlights the way the IT and new emerging trends in the field are changing the present
business environment and the ways the organizations are defining themselves. The course helps
participants to understand the growing importance of role of IT applications in the digital world today.
IT applications has touched almost all part of businesses. These have now become more important in
case of international business where people located all over the world are not only able to
communicate to each other but carry out business transactions. The course helps understand how IT
applications help streamline international business transactions, and how IT applications are helping
simplifying the transfer of documents, critical data, and other everyday business items. These have
simplified the way the information is managed and processed. These have helped save time, save cost,
reduce manpower, etc. E-procurement, E-tendering, E-marketing, E-logistics, E-communication are
some of the areas apart from others in international business where IT applications finds maximum
utility. The organization expects their managers to have the right amount of skills to use IT
applications in their day to day tasks. Various IT enabled tools are available these days which are an
integral part of doing business these days. The course aims to enable students to understand these
tools and make them capable to use them.

Course Objectives

• Understanding Information System in Global Business

• Understand how to get competitive advantage through Information Systems, Information systems
as Decision support system and Strategic Information Systems
• Data management and interpretation using advanced Microsoft Excel
• Extending IS in overall value chain of the organization: Enterprise Wide IT Applications in the
areas of (ERP), SCM, CRM, BI, etc.
• IT Applications in Databases and Business Intelligence
• IT Applications in Business Process Reengineering and Information Systems development life
cycle
• New development trends in computer hardware, enterprise storage environment, data centers,
disaster recovery systems, etc.
• Emerging computing environment like multi-tier systems, distributed computing, cloud
computing, virtualization, etc.
• Applications in the area of IT Security

Programme Learning Goals covered through this Course

LG 2: Innovative Thinking in Complex Business Situations

LO 2.1: Able to apply knowledge of business management concepts to analyze business
problems critically and suggest innovative solutions

Pedagogy

Course will be delivered with the help of lectures, hands-on exercises, assignments, and group
presentations. Group presentations are designed to encourage active participation, co-operative and
creative work, interactive communication and critical thinking. Student’s participation plays an
important role. Students are expected to participate in class so that the sessions are more interactive
and learning. Students are expected to read the cases before coming to the class and participate
actively in case discussions. The relevant reading material such as cases, articles, etc. will be
announced in advance in the class.
 Evaluation Components

• Quizzes 30%
• Assignment 20%
• Class Participation 10%
• End Term 40%

Text Book / Reference Text

Textbook

• Information Systems by Stair and Reynolds, Cengage Learning OR Information Technology for
Management by Turban, Volonino, Wali , Wiley
Apart from the textbook, participants are encouraged to read recent articles and cases on the
Internet. Online references are to be used extensively

Reference Books

• Information Technology for Management by Muthukumaran, Oxford

• Business Driven Technology by Haag, Baltzan and Phillips, McGraw-Hill
• Formulas and Functions: Microsoft Excel 2010 by McFedries, Pearson
• Microsoft Excel 2013 Data Analysis and Business Modeling by Winston, PHI
Session Plan

Reading
Session Topic and Sub Topics Reference/
Cases
1-4 Text:
Understanding IT Applications in Global Business
Chapters 1, 2,
• Understanding information systems; role and purpose of
information systems in business organizations; aligning IT with 3, 4, 6, 7, 8
business; IT/IS in decision making
• Dynamic nature of Information Systems: Batch processing; TPS;
DSS; Enterprise Wide Systems; SIS/Expert Systems; Business
Intelligence (BI), etc.
• Information Systems classifications w.r.t. breadth of support and
organizational levels; Mapping Information systems to different
management levels
• Strategic Advantage of using Information Technology and its
applications; value chain concept
• Information systems for digital organizations: cross functional
enterprise applications, enterprise collaboration systems, etc. , e-
Business and e-Commerce, types of e-Commerce, e-Commerce
applications and issues
Information Technology Infrastructure, Architecture, and
Emerging Technologies

• Trends in Computer Hardware development; Data centers;

Architecture of Data centers, Establishing Green Data centers;
Justifying and building Disaster recovery systems/sites.
• Storage Systems; Enterprise Storage Environment (Comparing
DAS, RAID, NAS, SAN, etc.);
• Software: Systems Management software; Development
platforms; General & specific purpose Application software’s;
Open source software’s vs. Proprietary software Applications;
etc;

Role of Networks Applications in Business Solutions; Enterprise

Networks
Emerging Computing Environment for IT Applications

• Client server environment; Multi-Tier model for IT deployment

• Distributed computing environment
• Cloud computing; Virtualization of computing infrastructure
resources (Server, desktop, etc) ) using cloud environment
 Choices in Acquisitions for IT Applications

5-11 Data Management and Interpretation using Microsoft Excel Session’s

reading
• Important functions: Index functions, Logical functions,
accounting and mathematical functions (FV, PMT, IRR, etc.), material /
relative cell referencing, conditional statements; multiple level Hands-on
conditional nesting
exercises
• Charts and Graphs in MS Excel
• Advanced Lookup calculation and interlinking multiple
worksheets
• Tools for large data management: data filters, multi-level sort
• Subtotal and Pivot tables: Pivoting for multi-dimensional data
view; Pivot Charts; report filters; Slicers
• Interlinking developer tools (format control list box, Scroll bars,
etc.) for data management and interpretation
• Sensitivity analysis: Data tables, What-if-analysis, Conditional
formatting, Scenario manager; Goal Seek; Solver, etc.
• Data interpretation using analysis tool pack, Histogram
• Importing/Exporting data into MS Excel from multiple data
sources
12-14 Database Management and Information Systems Text:
Chapters 5,
• Data management, understanding database approach, database
management systems
• Overview of databases, database structures, types of databases,
advantages of data management approach
• Data modeling techniques for business Data management using
DBMS
• Exercises and applications with the help of MS Access
15-17 Business Intelligence Applications Text:
Chapters 5
• Understanding Business Intelligence,
• Transaction Processing Vs Analytic Processing: OLTP, OLAP,
Data Models for OLAP & OLTP
• Managing data to improve business performance, concepts of
OLTP
• Data warehouse: concept of data warehouse, ETL, Data
Integration, etc.
• Data marts: concepts of data marts, data marts for decision
making, etc.
• Data mining: data mining for BI, Data Mining Methods, Data
 mining Software tools, OLAP operations on Multidimensional
Data etc
• Hands on Exercises using BI tool
18-20 IT Application in Intra and Inter Firm Processes Integration Text:
Chapters 9
• Understanding IT / systems integration concept, why integrate
systems, system Integration Challenges, methods of integration,
approaches to systems integration
• IT Applications perspectives for Organizational & Functional
Areas: Sales, Accounting & Finance, Production, HR, Marketing,
Manufacturing, etc.
• Business Process reengineering
• Enterprise wide IT Application perspectives: ERP, CRM, and
SCM

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