Course: Information Systems for Managers

Answer 1:

Business that carry personal details about customers are popular target for hackers, they also
are among one of the most sophisticated enterprises in the world from a security perspective.
This is largely because security and online shopping so hand-in-hand. Consumers want the
confidence that their financial information will be protected, regardless of how it’s accessed.
The business have reputation, brans and highly sensitive personal data to protect, and in the
main, they take that very seriously. The retail sector has changed over the years. Due to
globalization, increased completion, demand for pioneer products and latest technology trends,
this sector is developing at a very fast rate.

IT Infrastructure:

The components required to operate and administer company IT environments are referred to
as Information Technology Infrastructure, or IT Infrastructure. IT infrastructure can be utilized
to provide services or resources to the customer inside or outside the company. IT infrastructure
consists of Hardware, Software, networks and services that are needed for an organization to
function. IT infrastructure is built based on the organization needs.

As we discussed IT infrastructure consists of Hardware, in hardware different kinds of

computer and devices are attached to them are known as peripherals. In Software different kind
of softwares are used application software used to run the applications needed and systems
softwares to run the hardware. Network that connects different computers of organization and
organization to the internet. Organizations with long history in IT field have complex structures
of different computers. It’s hard to maintain the complex systems consisting new and old
systems working together. For the organizations growth it’s important to plan the growth of
infrastructure. It’s important that all the necessary components are present for the organizations
various functions.

Technical Considerations:

IT infrastructure is important for any organization for their growth. During creating the IT
infrastructure organizations needs to keep in mind some important factors:

1. Scalable: While building the infrastructure, organizations have to keep mind that
infrastructures must be scalable i.e., in future structure must be able to expandable
based on the future to account for larger processing needs.

2. Interoperable: IT infrastructures must be able to work with each other. They should
have built in capabilities to allow them to work with different data standards, file
formats, communication standards. Interoperable technologies are the best suited for
 the complex infrastructures but this type of technologies also introduce inefficiencies,
so organizations have to keep balance.

3. Data Backup & Recovery: A data loss incident can be devastating to a company and
can mean days or weeks of downtime, plus expensive data recovery or data recreation
costs. When a ransomware attack or hard drive failure hit, it’s too late to be thinking
about your data backup. It’s important to have a reliable data backup and recovery
platform in place that can ensure all your business data is being captured and stored
safely offsite and that it’s in a tool that can quickly restore that data back to a device
when needed.

4. Make or Buy: In the matter of IT infrastructure, organizations have to decide whether

they want the in-house components or buy them from a vendor. This is complex
thinking that requires a detailed assessment of organization’s internal IT skills.

5. Vendor Support: Most of the organizations have to rely on vendors for supporting
their IT Infrastructure. Sometimes technology can be purchased from dealer but for the
support they have to rely on Vendor support.

Business Considerations:

1. Needs of components: In terms of components, it depends on the organization’s needs.

Technology choices have to be based on what specific business needs are being met.
2. Competition: Commercial firm’s infrastructure choices have to reflect their
competitive needs. At the initiation of the technology acquisition process and later at
the use stage of the acquired technology.
3. Standard: As the name suggests standard means quality of the technology choice in
comparison to the price paid for it.
4. Requirements: Basically organizations have to consider appropriate for a task when it
exactly meets the needs of the task.

There are various rules and laws related to IT infrastructure which should keep in mind by Mr.
Farokh like which type of structure to be deployed, traditional or cloud, how small or big the
company is. There are few points which should be looked upon while developing optimal IT
infrastructure like:

 High performance storage systems store and back up data include a data recovery
system in case of disasters.
 Low latency networks use enterprise level infrastructure component to reduce the delay
of data flow.
 Secure infrastructures include systems that control information access and data
availability. It can also safeguard a business against breaches and cyberattacks
wherever the data resides, maintaining the customers trust.
 WANs manage the network by prioritizing traffic and giving certain applications more
or less bandwidth as needed.
  Virtualization provides faster server programming, increase uptime, improves disaster
recovery and saves energy.
 Zero downtime aims to reduce disruption to business operations and eliminates systems
downtime to keep costs down and profits up.

Answer 2:

Role of CEO:

 The CEO is required to make specific difficult decisions that other members of the
organization cannot. The main focus of the CEO is to ensure that all activities within the
organization are carried out correctly and efficiently.
 CEO K. Padmakar aims to effectively discharge the duties and responsibilities entrusted to
him while contributing positively to the success of the organization.
 The CEO is required to make managerial decisions along with the performance of
supervisory duties, where all tasks performed by middle management and lower
management will be supervised and evaluated by the CEO.
 In order to perform the executive management roles effectively, the CEO will need every
single piece of information regarding the company's past performance, list of inventors,
and list of employees working along with their salary details, cost sheet, budget, and more.
Details of expenditure along with books of accounts and other necessary information. This
will help the CEO make informed decisions as needed.
 The CEO will serve as long as his skills and experience servicing the needs of the
organization. The company will alternate roles and responsibilities to ensure that there is
no bias within the organization.

A CEO needs to make fast, accurate and effective decisions and could not rely only on his
managers instincts for the business decisions. He consults with his managers and decides to
implement a computer-based information system for the company. As most of the business
operations use technology, it is important for a CEO to implement computer-based information
system. Computer-based information system have following features:

 It process data accurately and fast, using various techniques like operations research,
simulation etc.
 It performs tasks such as collective, organizing, manipulation and updating large
amount of data, coming from different internal and external sources.
 It provides real time information without any delay.
 It supports various output formats and follows the latest rules and regulations in
practice.
 It provides structured and related information for all levels of management.
 It targets the flexibility in data storage and retrieval.
CEO of an organization always thinks about long-term and take necessary decisions
accordingly. Objectives are related to business growth and expansion which belongs to long-
term only. Time frame could be 3 to 10 years and information needed would be related to
performance of business, clients’ details, resources available etc.

Information System:

Information systems, an integrated set of components for collecting, storing, and processing
data for providing information, knowledge and digital products. Information systems are
collection of computers, softwares, networks and people who create, store, modify, and
distribute the data in any organization. Information system is the integral part of any
organization. Information technology and computers are the key ingredients of modern
information system.

For ex: whenever person visits bank to withdraw or deposit the money in bank, we provide
cash or cheque to cashier and some information regarding the account. How the data manages
by bank? Bank uses information system to store the data of their customers. Every organization
needs the information system to store the data and wants to take its full advantage.

Need of IS:

 Communication: it helps organization in gathering the information needed to achieve

their goal.
 Operations: As IS stores the information so it’s easy to perform business operations.
 Records: To resolve any issue in an organization, we have to find the root cause of it.
We can find the root cause by searching the records. IS helps in storing all financial and
monitoring purposes.

Primary Information system:

An information system is used for collecting, processing, storing and distributing information
for a specific purpose. An information system that uses computer technology to perform these
tasks is called computerized information system. Primary information system consists of the
following components:

 Hardware: Term hardware refers to various devices such as input, output, processing
and storage devices of an organization
 Software: Term software refers to computer programs that enable h/w to process the
data. Programs are stored in storage devices such as hard disks.
 Networks: Basically it acts like a bridge between two systems that helps in sharing the
data.
 Data: Data are used as input to CIS to process it. The processes provides valuable
information
 Procedures: Basically it’s set of commands for the components to process the data.
Supporting Information System:

Operation support systems: OSS software is specifically designed for telecommunications

service providers and especially used for supporting network processes to preserve network
inventors, configure network components, and deliver services and manages faults.

 Transaction processing system gather, store, alter and retrieve the transactions of an
organization. A transaction is an event that produces or changes data that is eventually
stored in an information system.
 Process control system monitors and controls physical processes in an organization. It
manages manufacturing environment and electronically controls the process based on
restriction defined by the user.

Management Support Systems: MSS are computer based systems that provide information
that is useful for the management. MSS are a collection of all advanced computer technologies
for supporting solutions od managerial decision making.

 Management information system is a computer-based system that provides information

to the management, to help in decision making and effective business management.
 Decision making plays a significant and vital role in carrying out the activities of an
organization successfully. The process of decision making involves identifying and
selecting the best possible alternative from various options.
 Executive information system is a type of MIS that facilities and supports information
and decision making needs at the senior executive level.

Answer 3:

a) Business can derive a lot of benefit by leveraging upon the mobility technology.
However, for this they need to understand the impact, opportunities and challenges
related to mobility. Businesses also need to determine the impact of mobility on their
business and their customer. It’s also necessary that businesses determine various
unique challenges that a CIO may grace while adopting mobile technologies. In the last
one and a half decade, there has been an unprecedented increate in the use of mobile
devices such as mobiles, tablets, laptops, etc. by employees and consumers of
businesses. Currently, there are more than 3 billion internet users and a majority of the
users access the internet using some kind of mobile devices. Businesses all over the
world show a high adoption rate. Businesses may be able to derive maximum advantage
from mobility technology provided they understand the evolution and perspective
future of these technologies.

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)

In today’s world, technology is playing vital role. Technologies such as mobiles, laptops,
tablets play a crucial role in handling various work-related tasks. Employees these days, take
their personal mobiles and laptops to the workplace and also use them accordingly. They use
the devices for work activities such as checking email, editing documents, reading reports, etc.,
along with their personal use. The trend of employee bringing their own devices was dubbed
bring-your-own-device by the industry. Once this trend became prominent in organizations, it
also raised management issues. The main issues were regarding data access from the
organization’s systems and security of the devices. Since users brought a wide variety of
hardware devices and platforms, there was no screen sizes or formats that could be used to
design report from systems.

Beginning BYOD

Working with BYOD policy

Checking out of BYOD

Beginning BYOD: In the first level, disclosure about BYOD policy is to be given. If
employee’s device will be monitored, it is essential that the BYOD policy transparently
explains the scope f access and the purpose of the access. The policy should also address how
the company will go about protecting the private information that it comes into contact with
when carrying out monitoring. All employees should have clarity abut BYOD policy so that
they work accordingly without violating any rules and provisions.

Working with BYOD policy: In the second level, employees start working as per this policy
and use their devices to perform various official tasks. Companies should clearly notify
employees of any material changes to the policy that impact employees’ rights and
responsibilities. To enable the company to minimize risk, employees’ should be required to
immediately notify the company if they suspect a data breach has occurred. If an employee
decides to upgrade the device, the company may also require the employee to bring the old
device to IT for evaluation. This can be achieved by following ‘the three Rs’:

1. Periodically review the policy to make sure that it accurately reflects the ways personal
devices are used in the company
2. Revise the policy to account for the evolution of industry security measures and
changes to privacy legislation
3. Remind employees that they are bound to the terms of the BYOD policy

Checking out of BYOD: It is important to have the ‘end-of-life’ terms agreed in the BYOD
policy in advance, since not all employees may leave the company on good terms and even
those that do may be sensitive to having their personal device accessed at the end of the
employment relationship. A company’s BYOD policy should explain that the employee is
required to permanently delete all company and employee information from the device before
the end of the employment term. Furthermore, the company should consider whether the
employee will be required to bring the device to IT for evaluation as part of the exit interview.
Companies should also be prepared for a refusal by an employee to hand over his or her device
and consider whether it is technically possible to remotely wipe company data from the device
and whether such remote wiping would capture all data – including company confidential data
or the personal data of other employees. This will largely depend on the device used by the
employee and whether the company obtained the proper employee consents in the BYOD
policy.

b) Pros and Cons of BYOD:

Pros of BYOD

 This policy allows companies to benefit from cutting-edge features and new
devices: Individuals upgrade their technology more frequently than companies.
Workers can often obtain upgrades for their personal devices at a cheaper cost than an
organization. Features like a virtual assistant, 4G LTE access, speed upgrades, high-
quality photographs, and full access to app stores allow workers to be more productive
on a device with which they are familiar.
 A BYOD policy often makes an employee happier: When an organization requires
workers to use company-based technology for their job, it often requires workers to
juggle multiple technology items. If the worker must maintain a work laptop, a work
cell phone, and a work tablet, that means they might be lugging 6+ devices to work
every day. Workers who get to use their own devices are usually happier because they
are more familiar with the device.
 It reduces the costs of technology for companies: Field-service companies often see
the biggest gains when implementing a BYOD policy for the first time. All companies
in every industry, however, experience financial benefits with this type of policy. The
cost of supplying the technology shifts to each worker. That means a company is no
longer responsible for device costs, voice and data plans, service fees, or licensing fees.
 BYOD policies improve the workplace environment: There is less training
downtime for devices when a bring your own device policy is implemented. Workers
already know how to use their personal devices. That means they can get to work faster
and be more productive because they don’t need to be trained on something new.
Workers are more familiar with the full capabilities of their personal devices as well,
which further enhances the productivity that is possible.
 Information access is better: If your company can turn around projects faster, then
you’ll have happier customers. Happier customers usually create more overall
revenues. To achieve these goals, workers need to have information available to them,
no matter where they happen to be. The information needs to be retrieved quickly to
prevent unproductive downtime. Older devices do not retrieve information as quickly
as newer devices. By implementing a BYOD policy, an organization creates a flexible
platform that can keep them up-to-date with everything they need to complete their job.

Cons of BYOD

 It creates a host of security problems: There are ways to work around the security
issues of a BYOD policy. An organization can require that employee devices by
registered with the company to have them monitored. You can require back-up
software, antivirus software, or specific password protection policies be implemented.
 You can create policies that restrict public Wi-Fi use. All of this can lead to lower levels
of employee satisfaction.
 There is no consistency in the quality of devices being used: Some workers always
upgrade to the latest iPhone or Samsung device. Then there are workers who are still
using an iPad 2 or a laptop from 2008 because it works for them. Although companies
do save money on the actual asset costs when a BYOD policy is implemented, there are
added end-user support costs to pay. On a team of 10 people, you might find 8 different
devices supported by 6 different operating systems. Being able to refer someone to the
correct help they need can be a difficult process to follow.
 BYOD creates software difficulties for some users: Employees bringing their own
devices to work may experience difficulties in the installation or usage processes
required for this software. Their devices may not even be compatible with the software.
A thorough review of what is available to workers and how well the software may be
working can be helpful in reducing costs in this area. Implementing a SaaS solution
may be helpful as well. There are always outliers, however, that will struggle to use
their devices.
 There are legal issues to consider: There are several privacy and legal issues which
must be considered before implementing a BYOD policy for the first time. Some data
may be illegal for workers to transfer. There may be legal obligations about retaining,
storing, or deleting certain forms of data. Hourly workers may be able to make a legal
claim for compensation if they access work-related data outside of their regular shift. It
is important for an organization to meet with their legal team to ensure there aren’t any
unpleasant surprises lurking on the horizon.
 A worker’s right to privacy can be difficult to maintain with BYOD: We all want
to have some level of privacy for ourselves and our families. BYOD policies mean
personal information can be accessed by employers. Having personal contact data,
personal emails, and other personal information must be safeguarded. There is an
obligation to protect worker personal data. Failing to do so can provide costly
consequences.