LU 1

Explain how a business can perform better through effectively sourcing and
managing the right information

There is a growing interdependence between a firm’s ability to use information technology

and its ability to implement corporate strategies and achieve corporate goals:

- what a business would like to do in five years often depends on what its systems will be
able to do -> depend more and more on the kinds and quality of information systems.

Business firms invest heavily in information systems to achieve six strategic business
objectives:
- Operational excellence
Seeking to improve the efficiency of their operations in order to achieve higher profitability
- New product / services and business models
A business model describes how a company produce, delivers and sells a product or service
to create wealth.
Apple is example it transformed an old business model of music distribution based on vinyl
records, tapes and CD’s into an online model based on its iPod technology platform.
- Customer and supplier intimacy
When you really know your customers and serves them well -> returning and purchasing
more
- Improved Decision Making
Information systems and technologies have made it possible for managers to use real-time
data from the marketplace when making decisions.
- Competitive Advantage
You gain competitive advantage when you have gain some of these business objectives.
- Survival
Firms also invest in information systems because they are necessities of doing business ->
driven by industry changes (competitors doing it like ATM machines)
Information technology
Consists of all the hardware and software that a firm needs to use in order to achieve its
business objectives. -> includes hardware and software
Hardware = computer machines, storage devices, handheld mobile devices.
Software = Windows, Linux
Operations systems = Microsoft Office.

Information system
An information system is a set of interrelated components that:
- Collect
- Process
- Store
- Distribute information
All in order to support the decision making and control in an organization.

Information systems contain information about significant people, places and things within
the organization or in the environment surrounding it.

By information we mean data that have been shaped into a form that is meaningful and
useful for people.
Data are streams of raw facts representing events occurring in organizations or the physical
environment before they have been organized and arranged into a form that people can
understand and use.

Three activities in an information system produce the information that organizations need to
make decisions control operations, analyses problem and create new products.
1. Input
Captures or collects raw data from within the organization or from its external
environment
2. Processing
Converts this raw input into a meaningful form
3. Output
Transfers the processed information to the people who will use it or to the activities
for which it will be used.
!
(An information system contains information about an organization and its surroundings
environment. Three basis activities – input, processing and output – produce the information
organizations need. Feedback is output returned to appropriate people or activities in the
organization to evaluate and refine the input. Environmental actors, such as customers,
suppliers, competitors, stockholders and regulators agencies, interact with the organization
and its information system)

Information systems also require feedback, which is output that is returned to appropriate
members of the organization to help them evaluate or correct the input stage.

Although computer-based information systems use computer technology to process raw data
into meaningful information, there is a sharp distinction between a computer and a computer
program on the one hand and an information system on the other hand. Computers and the
related software programs are the foundation, the tools and material, of modern information
systems. The provide the equipment for storing and processing information.

To understand information systems, you must understand the problems they are designed to
solve, their architectural and design elements, and the organizational processes that lead to
the solution
Dimensions of Information Systems
To fully understand information systems, you must understand the broader organization,
management and information technology dimensions of systems and how they provide
solutions to challenges and problems in the business environment.

(Using information systems effectively requires an understanding of the organization,

management, and information technology shaping the systems. An information system
creates value for the firm as an organizational and management solution to challenges posed
by the environment)

Information systems literacy: Broad-based understanding of information systems that

includes management and organizational dimensions of systems as well as technical
understanding.

Computer literacy is just focusing primarily on knowledge of information technology.

MIS: Management information systems – > tries to achieve information systems literacy.
- Deals with behavioral issues as well as technical issues

The three dimensions of information systems:

- Organizations
- Management
- Technology

Organizations
Information systems are an integral (geheel) part of organizations -> for some companies
there would be no business without an information system.

An organization coordinates work through its hierarchy and through its business processes.
Most of these processes include formal rules that have been developed over a long time for
accomplishing tasks. Information systems automate many business processes.
Each organization has a unique culture, or fundamental set of assumptions, values, and ways
of doing things, that has been accepted by most of its members. Part of an organization’s
culture can always be found in its information systems.

!
(business organizations are hierarchies of three principal levels. Information systems serve
each of these levels)

Management
Managers must do more than already exist. They must create new products and services and
even re-create the organization from time to time. One of their responsibilities is creative
work driven by new knowledge and information. Information technology can play a powerful
role in helping managers design and deliver new products and services and redirecting and
redesigning their organization.

Information Technology
Information technology is one of many tools managers use to cope with change.
Computer hardware – is the physical equipment used for input processing and output
activities in an information system.
Computer software – consist of the detail, programmed instructions that control and
coordinate the computer hardware components in an information system.
Data management technology – consists of software governing the organization of data on
physical storage media.
Networking and telecommunications technology –
Network – links two or more computers to share data or resources such as a printer
-> internet is the largest and widely used network.
Intranets – internal corporate networks based on internet technology
Extranets – private internets extended to authorized users outside the organization
-> firms use this to coordinate their activities with other firms for making purchases,
collaborating on design and other interorganizational work. .
World-wide-web – is a service provided by the internet that uses universally accepted
standards for storing, retrieving, formatting and displaying information in a page format on
the internet.
Information technology infrastructure:
Provides the foundation, or platform, on which the firm can build its specific information
system.
- Carefully and manage the IT infrastructure so that it has the set of technology services
it needs for the work it wants to accomplish with information systems.

A business perspective on information systems:

The decision to build or maintain an information system assumes that the return on this
investment will be superior to other investments in for example building, machines or other
assets. For an business perspective an information system is an important instrument for
creating value for the firm. The systems enables the firm to increase its revenue or decrease
its cost by providing information that helps managers make better decisions or that improves
the execution of business processes.

Every business has an information value chain in which raw information is systematically
acquired and then transformed though various stages that add value to that information.

Organizational Capital and the right business model

Information technology investments alone cannot make organizations and managers more
effective unless they are accompanied by supportive values, structures, and behavior patterns
in the organization. Business firms needs to change how they do business before the can
really get the advantages of new information technologies.

Complementary assets – are assets required to derive (afleiden) value from a primary
investment.

These investments in organization and management are also known as organizational and
management capital.
Explain what a project is and the objectives of project management.
When an information system does not meet expectations or costs too much to develop,
companies may not realize any benefit from their information system investment, and the
system may not be able to solve the problems for which it was intended.
-> That is why it’s essential to have some knowledge about managing information systems
projects and the reason why they success or fail:

Consequences of poor project management:

The systems produced by failed information projects are often not used in the way they were
intended or are not used at all.

The user interface is the part of the system with which end users interact.
-> an input form or data entry screen may be so poorly arranged that no one wants to submit
data or request information.
-> Website may discourage visitors from exploring further as they are cluttered and poorly
arranged.

Project Management Objectives

A project is a planned series of related activities for achieving a specific business objective.

Information systems projects include the development of new information systems,

enhancement of existing systems or upgrade or replacement of the firm’s information
technology infrastructure.

Project management – refers to the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to
achieve specific targets within specified budget and time.

Project management information systems must deal with: scope time, cost, quality and risk.
Scope: defines what work is or not included in a project.
Project management defines all the work required to complete a project successfully, and
should ensure that he scope of a project does not expand beyond what was originally
intended.
Time: amount of time required to complete the project
Cost: based on the time to complete a project multiplied by the cot of human resources
requires to complete the project.
Quality: is an indicator of how well the end result of a project satisfies the objectives
specified by management -> also considers the accuracy and timeliness of information
produced by the new system and ease of use
Risk: refers to potential problems that would threaten the success of a project.
LU 2
How Information Technology can be used to measure business goals
identified in the Strategy Map.
A strategy map enables an organization to describe and illustrate, in clear and general
language, its objectives, initiatives, and targets.

To understand how organizations create value in the information age, the balanced scorecard
has been developed. Which measures a company’s performance from four major
perspectives:
- Financial
- Customer
- Internal process
- Learning and growth

Each dimension is measured by KPI’s.

ESS: Decision support for senior management
- Helps executives focus on important performance information

Data for ESS:

- Internal data from enterprise applications
- External data such as financial market database
- Drill down capabilities

BPM – Business Performance Management

Translate firm’s strategy into operational targets
Key performance indicators to measure progress towards targets

A balanced scorecard tells you the knowledge, skills and systems that your employees will
need to innovate and build the right strategic capabilities and efficiencies that deliver specific
value to the market, which will eventually lead to higher shareholder value.

How technology helps to achieve strategic goals

To identify the types of systems that provide a strategic advantage to their firms, managers
should ask the following questions:
1. What is the structure of the industry in which the firm is located?
- What are some of the competitive forces? Are there new entrants to the industry?
- Is the basis of competition quality, price or brand?
2. What are the business, firm and industry value chains for this particular firm?
- How is the company creating value for the customer?
- Does the firm understand and manage its business processes using the best practices
available?
3. Have we aligned IT with our business strategy and goals?
- Have we correctly articulated our business strategy and goals?
- Is IT improving the right business processes and activities to promote this strategy?
Porter's Business Value Chain model and how to use it to improve the value
proposition.
The value chain model highlights specific activities in the business where competitive
strategies can best be applied and where information systems are most likely to have strategic
impact.

-> views the firm as a series or chain of basic activities that add a margin of value to firm’s
products or services.

These activities can be categorized as either primary or support activities.

!
Primary activities: are mostly related to the production and distribution of the firm’s product
and service, which creates value for the customer.

Supportive activities: make the delivery of the primary activities possible and consist of
organization infrastructure, human resources, technology and procurement.

At each stage of the value chain you ask

- how can we use information systems to improve operational efficiency, and improve
customer and supplier intimacy?

Or how can information system improve the relationship with customers and suppliers who
lie outside the firm’s value chain -> but they are absolutely critical to the success.
What is strategy:
Differentiation: strategy is about being different -> the creation of a unique valuable position
Value-creation: An origination’s strategy describes how it intends to create value for its
shareholders, customers and citizens.

Value Chain model

- Views firms as series of activities that add value to products or services
- Highlights activities where competitive strategies can be best applied
Primary activities vs support activities
- At each stage, determine how information systems can improve operational efficiency
and improve customer and supplier intimacy
- Utilize benchmarking, industry best practices

By making improvements in your business value chain, which the competitor might miss
(benchmark and best practices), you can achieve competitive advantage by
- Attaining operational excellence
- Lowering costs
- Improving profit margins
- Forging a closer relationship with customers and suppliers.

How an organization's operational activities can be improved and

optimized through the use of technology.
Over the last decade, information systems have fundamentally altered the economics of
organizations and greatly increased the possibilities for organizing work.

Economic Impacts
IT changes relative costs of capital and the costs of information. Information systems
technology is a factor of production, like capital and labor.

- Information systems should result in a decline in the number of middle managers and
clerical workers as information technology substitutes for their labor.
- Over time we should expect managers to increase their investments in IT because of
its declining cost relative to other capital investments.

IT affects the cost and quality of information and changes economics of information.
Information technology helps firms contract in size because it can reduce transaction costs.
(the cost of participating in markets)
- Outsourcing
So therefore transaction cost reduces and firm size should shrink because it becomes easier
and cheaper for the firm to contract for the purchase of goods and services in the marketplace
rather than to make the product or offer the service itself.

Transaction cost theory: firms and individuals seek to economize on transaction cost.
Agency theory: Information systems, by reducing costs of acquiring and analyzing
information, permits organizations to reduce agency cost because it becomes easier for
managers to oversee a greater number of employees.

Because IT reduces both agency and transaction costs for firms, we should expect firm size
to shrink over time as more capital is invested in IT. Firms should have fewer managers, and
we expect to see revenue per employee increase over time.
IT flattens organizations
- IT pushes decision-making rights lower in the organization because lower-level
employees receive the information they need to make decisions without supervision.
- Because managers receive more accurate information on time, they become faster in
making decisions, so fewer managers are required.
- Managers cost decline as a percentage of revenue and the hierarchy becomes more
efficient.
- Increase span of control -> manage and control more workers
- Eliminated the middle managers as a result of these changes

Postindustrial organizations
- Organizations flatten because in postindustrial societies, authority increasingly relies
on knowledge and competence rather than formal positions
-> Therefore, the shape of the organizations flattens because professional workers
tend to be self-managing, and decisions making should become more decentralized as
knowledge and information become more widespread throughout the firm.

Extra information:

Sustaining competitive advantage

- Competitors can retaliate and copy strategic systems
- Systems may become tools for survival

Aligning IT with business objectives

- Performing strategic systems analysis
- Structure of industry
- Firm value chains

Managing strategic transitions

- Adopting strategic systems requires changes in business goals, relationships with
customers and suppliers, and business processes

Value-proposition
Pitfalls of strategic alignment : the strategy is unsupported by existing information systems
Direct correlation between alignment and profitability -> cost reduction, less labor, minor
errors
LU 3
What is the role of knowledge management systems in business?
Knowledge management and collaboration are closely related. Knowledge that cannot be
communicated and shared with others is nearly useless. Knowledge becomes useful and
actionable when shared throughout the firm.

Well-executed knowledge-based projects have been known to produce extraordinary returns

on investment, although the impacts of knowledge-based investments are difficult to
measure.

Important Dimensions of Knowledge

There is an important distinction between data, information, knowledge and wisdom.

Data: is a flow of events or transactions captured by an organization’s systems that, by itself,

is useful for transacting but little else.

To turn data into useful information, a firm must expend resources to organizing data into
categories of understand, such as monthly, daily or store-based reports of total sales.

To transform information into knowledge, a firm must expend additional resources to

discover patterns, rules, and contexts where the knowledge works.

Wisdom: is thought to be the collective and individual experience applying knowledge to the
solution of problems. Wisdom involves where, when, and how to apply knowledge.

Tacic knowledge: knowledge residing in the minds of employees that has not been
documented – if your employee leaves than you don’t have the information anymore.
Explicit knowledge: knowledge that has been documented
Dimensions of knowledge:
- Knowledge is a firm intangible asset
The information of data into useful information and knowledge requires organizational
resources
Its value increases as more people share it
- Knowledge has different forms
Knowledge can be either tacit or explicit
Knowledge involves know-how, craft and skill
Knowledge involves knowing how to follow procedures
Knowledge involves knowing why things happen (not simply when)
- Knowledge has a location
Knowledge is a cognitive event involving mental models and maps of individuals
There is both social and an individual basis of knowledge
- Knowledge is situational
Knowledge is conditional (onvoorwaardelijk) -> knowing the procedures
Knowledge is related to context; you must know how to use certain tool and under what
circumstances.

With knowledge, firms become more efficient and effective in their use of scarce resources.
Without knowledge, firms become less efficient and less effective in their use of resources
and ultimately fail.

Align information requirements with KPI’S

To develop an effective information systems plan, the organization must have a clear
understanding of both its long and short term information requirements. This can be
determined by KPI’s.

KPI’s are shaped by the industry, the firm, the manager and the broader environment. New
information systems should focus on providing information that helps the firm meet these
goals implied by key performance indicators.
Tools that are used in business to access information
Businesses use their databases to keep track of basic transactions, such as paying suppliers,
processing orders, keeping track of customers, and paying employees. But they also need
databases to provide information that will help the company run the business more efficiently,
and help managers and employees make better decisions.

Most data collected by organizations used to be transaction data that could easily fit into rows
and columns of relational database management systems.
-> now we are gathering an explosion of data from web traffic, social media, email etc..
These data may be unstructured or semi-structured and thus not suitable for relational
database products that organize data in the form of columns and rows.

Big data are data sets with volumes so huge that they are beyond the ability of typical DBMS
to capture, store and analyze. Big data are produces in much larger quantities and much more
rapidly than traditional data. Businesses are interested in big data because they can reveal
more patterns and interesting relationships than smaller data sets, with the potential to
provide new insights into customer behavior, weather patterns, financial market activity, or
other phenomena. Capturing, storing and analyzing big data can be expensive, and
information from big data may not necessarily help decision makers.

Structured and unstructured data – but it too big to structure in a table.

Tools that are used in a business to access information

The traditional tool for analyzing corporate data has been the data warehouse.
Data warehouse: is a database that stores current and historical data of potential interest to
decision makers throughout the company. The data originate in many core operational
transaction systems:
- Sales
- Customer accounts
- Manufacturing
- Website transactions

Three kinds of analytics:

▪Descriptive Analytics (What has occurred?)
▪Prescriptive Analytics (What should occur?)
▪Predictive Analytics (What will occur?)

Data warehouse extracts the current and historical data from multiple operational systems
inside the organization. These data are combined with data from external sources and
transformed by correcting inaccurate and incomplete data and restructuring the data for
management reporting and analysis before being loaded into the data warehouse.

Data mart: is a subset of a data warehouse in which a summarized or highly focused portion
of the organization’s data is places in a separate database for specific population users.
Hadoop: tool for handling unstructured and semi-structured data in vast quantities as well as
structured data.

In-memory computing: which relies primarily on a computer’s main memory (RAM) for
data storage). It makes is possible for very large sets of data, amounting to the size of a data
mart or small data warehouse, to reside entirely in memory.

Analytic Platform:

(a business intelligence infrastructure features capabilities and tools to manage and analyze
large quantities and different types of data from multiple sources. Easy-to-use query and
reporting tools for casual business and more sophisticated analytical toolsets for power users
are included)

How is data, text and web mining used in information management

Once data have been captures and organized using the business intelligence technologies we
have just described, they are available for further analysis using software for database
querying and reporting, multidimensional data analysis: Online analytical processing
(OLAP) and Datamining

OLAP: Supports multidimensional data analysis, enabling users to view the same data in
different ways using multiple dimensions. Each aspect of information – product, pricing cost,
region or time period – represents a different dimension. Therefore, it enables users to obtain
online answers to ad hoc questions in a fairly rapid amount of time, even when the data are
stored in very large databases, such as sales figures for multiple years.
Data mining: is discovery-driven. It provides insights into corporate data that cannot be
obtained with OLAP by finding hidden patterns and relationships in large databases and
inferring rules from them to predict future behavior.

Types of information obtainable from data mining:

- Associations: are occurrences linked to a single event. This information helps
managers make better decisions because they have learned the profitability of a
promotion.
- Sequences: events are linked over time.
- Classification: recognize patterns that describe the group to which an item belongs
by examining existing items that have been classified and by inferring a set of rules.
- Clustering: works in a manner similar to classification when no groups have yet been
defined. A data mining tool can discover different groupings within data.
- Forecast: uses predictions by uses a series of exiting values to forecast what other
values will be. Forecasting might find patterns in data to help managers estimate the
future value of continuous variables, such as sales figures.

One popular use for data mining is to provide detailed analyses of patterns in customers data
for one-to-one marketing campaigns or for identifying profitable customers.

Text mining: is a tool that helps businesses analyzing unstructured data – discover patterns
and relationship and summarize the information.

Sentiment analysis: is a software which is able to mine text comments in an e-mail message,
blog, social media conversations, or surveys form to detect favorable and unfavorable
opinions about specific objects.

Web mining: the discovery and analysis of useful patterns and information from the world
wide web. It can help you understand customer behavior, evaluate the effectiveness of a
particular website, or quantify the success of a marketing campaign. Web mining looks for
patterns in data through:
 - Content mining: is the process of extracting knowledge from the content of webpages,
which may include text, image, audio and video data.
- Structure mining: examines data related to the structure of a particular website
- Usage mining: examines user interaction data recorded by usage data records the
user’s behavior when the user browses or makes transactions on the website and
collects the data in a server log.

Linking internal databases to the web

If you tried to use the web to place an order or view a product your website is linked to an
internal corporate database. Many companies now use the web to make some of the
information in their internal databases available to customers and business partners.

-> accessing corporate databases through the web is creating new efficiencies, opportunities,
and business models.
- Web browser software is much easier to use than proprietary query tools.
- Web interface requires few or no changes to the internal database
- It costs much less to add a web interface in front of a legacy system than to redesign
and rebuild the system to improve user access.

How big amounts of data can be utilized in Business Intelligence and

Business Analytics

Evaluating the quality of information

Quality Dimension Description
Accuracy Do the data represent reality?
Integrity Are the structure of data in relationship among the entities and
attributes consistent?
Consistency Are data elements consistently defined?
Completeness Are all the necessary data present?
Validity Do data values fall within defines ranges?
Timeliness Are data available when needed?
Accessibility Are the data accessible, comprehensible (begrijpelijk), and usable?
LU 4 Information & Technology Components
Cloud computing: linking your data to big organizations who have data centers.
- Possibilities for companies and individuals to perform all of their computing work
using a virtualized IT infrastructure in a remote location.

It is a mode of computing in which computer processing, storage, software and other services
are provided as a shared pool of virtualized resources over a network, primarily the internet.

Cloud computing consists of three different types of services:

- Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
Customers use processing, storage, networking, and other computing resources from
cloud service providers to run their information systems. Users pay only for the
amount of computing and storage capacity they actually use.
- Software as a service (SaaS) – Icloud
Customers use software hosted by the vendor on the vendor’s cloud infrastructure and
delivered as a service over a network. Users access these applications from a web
browser, and the data and software are maintained on the provider’s remote servers.
- Platform as a service (PaaS)
Customers use infrastructure and programming tools supported by the cloud service
provider to develop their own applications.

The difference between on-premise and cloud computing:

The biggest difference between these two systems is how they are deployed. Cloud-based
software is hosted on the vendor's servers and accessed through a Web browser. On-
premise software is installed locally, on a company's own computers and servers.
What is an IT infrastructure and his main components:
- The term infrastructure in an information technology (IT) context refers to an enterprise's
entire collection of component
- Information technology infrastructure is defined broadly as a set of information
technology (IT) components that are the foundation of an IT service;

!
(There are seven major components that must be coordinated to provide the firm with a
coherent IT infrastructure)

- Computer hardware platforms

- Operating system platforms (scalable, reliable and less expensive)
As android, windows and iOS
- Enterprise Software Applications
- Data Management and Storage
Is responsible for organizing and managing the firm’s data so that they can be efficiently
accesses and used.
- Networking / Telecommunications Platforms
- Internet Platforms
They must overlap or relate to the firm’s general networking infrastructure and hardware and
software platforms. -> to support the website
- Consulting and System Integration Services
Firm’s do not have the staff, skills, budget or experience to deploy and maintain its entire IT
infrastructure.
Software integration: ensuring the new infrastructure works with the firms’ older legacy
system.
Legacy system: generally older transaction processing systems created for mainframe
computers that continue to be used to avoid high cost of replacing or redesigning them.
Mostly it is not necessary if these older systems can be integrated into a contemporary
infrastructure.

Enterprise systems:
Getting different kinds of systems work together (CRM)
Business become more flexible and productive by coordinating their business processes more
closely.

Explain what collaboration software is and how it benefits a business.

Collaboration: is working with others to achieve shared and explicit goals. Collaboration
focuses on task or mission accomplishment and usually takes place in a business or other
organization and between businesses.

Collaboration can be:

- Short lived
 - Lasting a few minutes
- Longer terms

Team members need to collaborate on the accomplishment of specific tasks and collectively
achieve the team mission. Collaboration and teamwork are more important today than ever
for variety of reasons:

Changing nature of work

The nature of work has changed from factory manufacturing and pre-computer work where
each stage in the production process occurred independently to jobs where interaction is the
primary value adding activity.

Growth of professional work

Professional jobs require substantial education and the sharing of information and opinions to
get work done. Everyone brings specialized expertise to the problem, and you need tot take
one another into account in order to accomplish the job.

Changing organization of the firm

Orders came down the hierarchy, now expertise and decisions-making power have been
pushed down in organizations. Today, work is organized into groups and teams.

Changing scope of the firm

The work of the firm has changed from a single location to multiple locations. With this kind
of global presence, the need for close coordination of design, production, marketing,
distribution and service obviously takes on new importance and scale. Large global
companies need to have teams working on a global basis

Emphasis on innovation
Innovation, in other words, is a group and social process, and most innovations derive from
collaboration among individuals in a lab, a business, or government agencies.

Changing culture of work and business

Resource says that diverse teams produce better outputs faster than individuals.

Social business: is to deepen interactions with groups inside and outside the firm to expedite
and enhance information sharing, innovation, and decision making.

A collaborative, team-oriented culture won’t produce benefits without information systems in

place to enable collaboration and social business.
!

Collaboration Software
A collaborative, team-oriented culture won’t produce benefits without information systems in
place to enable collaboration and social business. There are hundreds of tools designed to
deal with the fact that, in order to success in our job, we are all much more dependent on one
another – fellow colleagues, customers, suppliers and managers.

To different types of systems, businesses need special systems to support collaboration and
teamwork.

Examples: Email, Instant messaging, social media, wikis (Wikipedia)

What communication, network and internet software is and how it benefits
a business
An array of technologies provide high-speed wireless access to the internet for PC and
mobile devices.

WiFi is set of standard for wireless LANs and wireless internet access. In most
communication, wireless devices communicate with a wired LAN using access points.
Access point is a box consisting of radio receiver/transmitter and antennas that links to a
wired network, router or hub.

Businesses of all sizes use WiFi networks to provide low-cost wireless LAN’s and internet
access.

!
(Mobile laptop computers equipped with network interface cards link to the wired LAN by
communicating with the access point. The access point uses radio waves to transmit network
signals from the wired network to the client adapters, which convert them into data that the
mobile device can understand. The client adapter then transmits the data from the mobile
device back to the access point, which forwards the data to the wired network)
RFID: (radio frequency identification)
Is a system which provides a powerful technology for tracking the movement of goods
throughout the supply chain. They use tiny tags with embedded microchips containing data
about an item and its location to transmit radio signals over a short distance to RFID readers.

The RFID readers then pass the data over a network to a computer for processing. The tag is
electronically programmed with information that can uniquely identify an item plus other
information about the item such as its location, where, and when it was made, or its status
during production.

Benefit: you can track every unit which can improve on storage operations like what is the
stock stored in warehouses or on retail store shelves. The prices is becoming cost-effective.

-> companies needs to upgrade their hardware and software to process the massive amounts
of data produced by RFID systems.

Wireless sensor networks

It is a group of sensors for monitoring and recording data and organizing collected data at
central location

WSN’s are networks of interconnected wireless devices that are embedded into physical
environment to provide measurements of many point over large spaces. These devices have
built-in processing, storage, and radio frequency sensors and antennas. They are linked into
an interconnected network that route the data they capture to a computer for analysis.

Benefit: Maintenance free, low power requirements and batteries capable of lasting for years.

Wireless sensor networks and RFID are major sources for Big Data that organizations are
starting to analyze to improve their operations and decisions making.
What the business application software is and how it benefits a business
Companies with effective customer relationship management systems realize may benefits,
including increased customer satisfaction, reduced direct marketing costs, more effective
marketing, and lower costs for customer acquisition and retention.

Information from CRM systems increases sales revenues by identifying the most profitable
customers and segments for focused marketing and cross-selling.

Enterprise application: promises of dramatic reduction in inventory costs, order-to-delivery

time, more efficient customer response, and higher product and customer profitability.

Enterprise application challenges

To really obtain value, you must clearly understand how your business has t change to use
these systems effectively. Enterprise applications involve complex pieces of software that are
very expensive to purchase and implement.

- Business needs to make fundamental changes in the way they operate

- Requires deep-seated technological changes
- New functions and responsibilities for employees
- Employees need to learn and understand the information of the system
- New organizational learning

Today, enterprise applications vendors are delivering more value by becoming more flexible,
web-enabled, mobile, and capable of integration with other systems. Next generation
enterprise applications include open source and cloud solutions as well as more functionality
available on mobile platforms.

Using CRM tools, businesses can better engage with their customer by analyzing their
sentiments about their products and services. Social CRM tools enable a business to connect
customer conversations and relationships from social networking sites to CRM processes.

Business value of security and control in information management

Many firms are reluctant to spend heavily on security because it is not directly related to sales
revenues.

Systems that are unable to function because of secure breaches can permanently impact a
company’s financial health. Inadequate security and control may result in serious legal
liability.

Businesses must protect not only their own information assets but also those of customers,
employees and business partners. Failure to do so can be held liable for needless risk and
harm created if the organizations fails to take appropriate protective actions to prevent loss of
confidential information, data corruption, or breach of privacy.
A sound security and control framework that protects business information assets can thus
product a high return on investment. Strong security and control also increase employee
productivity and lower operational costs.
Most important technologies & tools for safeguarding information
resources
Businesses have an array of technologies for protecting their information resources. The
include tools for managing user identities, preventing unauthorized access to systems and
data, ensuring system availability, and ensuring software quality.

Encryption and Public Key Infrastructure

Encryption: is the process of transforming plain text or data into cipher text that cannot be
read by anyone other than the sender and the intended receiver. Data are encrypted by using a
secret numerical code, called an encryption key, that transforms plain data into cipher text.

!
(A public key encryption system can be viewed as a series of public and private keys that
lock data when they are transmitted and unlock the data when they are received. The sender
located the recipient’s public key in a directory and uses it to encrypt a message. The message
is sent in encrypted form over the internet or a private network. When the encrypted message
arrives, the recipients uses his or her private key to decrypt the data and read the message)

Digital certificates are data files use to establish the identity of users and electronic assets for
protection of online transactions. A digital certificate system uses a trusted third party to
validate a user’s identity.
-> they protect online transactions by providing secure, encrypted, online communication.
Networking
Rights management: who, when, what, how, which (in certain domains)
Network services:

Blockchain
- Distributed
- Recorded
- …
Eliminating the intermediator

Power of webservices

The role and responsibilities of different management positions

Chief information office (CIO)
Oversees all uses of IT and ensures the strategic alignment of IT with business goals and
objectives.

Chief technology officer (CTO)

Responsible for ensuring the throughput, speed, accuracy, availability and reliability of IT.

Chief knowledge office (CKO)

Responsible for collecting, maintaining and distributing the organization’s knowledge

Chief privacy officer (CPO)

Responsible for ensuring the ethical and legal use of information

Chief security office (CSO)

Responsible for ensuring the security of IT systems

What SLA are and how they are used in information management
SLA – service level agreements -> works to protect both parties involved in the contract.

Formal contract between consumers and their service providers defines the specific
responsibilities of the service provider and the level of service expect by the customer.

Issues can occur:

• Incomplete contracts
• Information asymmetry
• Managing complexity
• Enforcement costs
• Termination costs
Describe the cost components of IT
When investing on IT is must constitute on the firm’s financial performance.
Rent-versus-buy decision: the decision either to purchase your own IT assets or rent them
from external providers.

The total cost of ownership (TCO) model can help to analyze direct and indirect costs to
help firms determine the actual cost of specific technology implications.

- The actual cost of owning technology resources includes the original cost of acquiring an
installing hardware / software, as well as ongoing administration costs for upgrades,
maintenance, training and technical support.

Infrastructure Cost components

components
Hardware Acquisition Purchase price of computer hardware equipment: printers, storage,
computers
Software Acquisition Purchase or license of software for each user
Installation Cost of install computers and software
Training Cost to provide training for information systems specialist and end
users
Support Cost to provide ongoing technical support, help desk and so forth
Maintenance Cost to upgrade the hardware and software
Infrastructure Cost to acquire, maintain and support related infrastructure (storage
backup units)
Downtime Cost of lost productivity if hardware or software failures
Space and energy Real estate and utility cost for housing and providng powers for the
technology
LU 5

How Knowledge Management is utilized in closing knowledge gaps

Change management
CRM is utilized in closing knowledge gaps in a business

Change management needs in ICM/ICT

Risks involved if the ICM/ICT change requirements are not met

Systems differ dramatically in their size, scope, level of complexity and organizational and
technical components. The level of risk is influences by projects size, project structure and
the level of technical expertise of the information systems staff and project team.

Project size:
The larger the projects (as indication by money, implementation off staff, the time) the great
the risk. Very large-scale projects are complex and difficult to control.

The organizational complexity of systems: how many units and groups use it and how much
it influences business processes.

Project structure:
When the requirements are clear and straightforward so outputs and process can be easily
defined. Users know exactly what they want and what the system should do.

Higher risk are projects with relatively undefined and constantly changing requirements; with
outputs that cannot be fixed easily because they are subject to users changing ideas.

Experience in technology
The project risk rises if the project team and the information systems staff lack the required
technical expertise. If the team is unfamiliar with the hardware, software, application
software or database management system propose for the project, it is highly likely that the
project will experience technical problems or take more time to complete because of the need
to master new skills.