MARY THE QUEEN COLLEGE (P)

Institute of Business Education

Guagua, Pampanga

International Business and Trade

JESSIE D. MANAPSAL, Ph.D.

Professor
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• Throughout history, scientific discoveries and their

subsequent applications have altered the course of
humanity’s existence. From the first moment that man
harnessed rocks and stones into weapons, and
discovered fire, man’s way of life has improved in leaps
and bounds. Since then, every aspect of human living,
has not gone any second without some gadget or
invention in aiding it.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• Inventions that changed the World

• 1. GPS – originally develop as a navigation system by
the US Army, the Global Positioning System is now used
in cars, aircraft and boats.
• 2. Sony Walkman – In 1979 Sony spawned the era
wearable technology with its iconic personal stereo.
• 3. Bar code – The boring sets of black and white lines
can now be found on almost every single item bought
from the shop. Norman Woodland first developed an
early form of the bar code in 1949 by combining ideas
from movie soundtracks and Morse code to help him
speed up store checkouts.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• 4. TV dinner – Convenience food really took off in the

1970’s and transformed the way families eat meals, the
high street, the countryside and national health. Traditional
family dinners around the table disappeared and pre-
packaged “ready meals” eaten on the sofa became the
norm.
• 5. Play station – Although game consoles had been
around for some time, Sony’s PlayStation took gaming out
of spotty teenager’s bedrooms and into adult living rooms
when it was released in 1994.
• 6. Social networking – Everyday more than three billion
minutes are spent by computer users on Facebook,
Myspace, Tweeter, and more. It has completely changed
the way we interact and who we interact with.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• 7. Text messaging (SMS) and Twitter – Text messaging

has created a new vocabulary and new grammar that is
almost incomprehensible to those who do not use it.
• 8. Electronic money – Credit cards gave us greater
convenience and security for spending.
• 9. Microwaves – Electromagnetic radiation with
wavelengths ranging between 1 millimetre and one
metre are used by mobile phones, wireless broadband
internet and satellite television.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business
• The topic of technology is very broad. It can refer to
material objects such as machines, hardware or utensils,
but can also cover concepts like systems, methods of
organization, and techniques. While technology’s
pervasiveness affects the business from all fields.
Information Technology (IT), including work and office
computing, has contributed the most in making the world
a smaller place where people can interact with each
other on a global scale.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• IT is revolutionizing the global marketplace

• IT defined – IT refers to the development,
implementation, and maintenance of computer hardware
and software systems to organize and communicate
information electronically (www.dictionary.com).
• It has the potential to integrate information and enable
distributed people to communicate with ease.
• IT, including office computing, has contributed so much
to the exponential increase of office productivity.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• Business Process Reengineering

• For organizations that are just about to employ new
technology or those that desire to upgrade existing ones,
the change process cannot be arbitrary. To optimize the
benefits of such adaptation, a proper approach is
required.

• Most of the reengineering projects are undertaken to

address any of the following areas:
• 1. Automation: Elimination of human labor
• 2. Sequential: Changing process sequence, or enabling
parallel processing
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• 3. Informational: Capturing and tracking process

information
• 4. Analytical: Improving analysis of information and
decision making
• 5. Geographical: Coordinating processes across time
and space
• 6. Integrating: Coordination between task and processes
• 7. Learning: Capturing and distributing intellectual assets
• 8. Disintermediating: Eliminating intermediaries from a
process
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• The success of BPR initiative relies heavily on the

capabilities of the people handling the project. Often,
BPR’s fail because team members are not familiar with
the IT possibilities for a particular problem. Over the
years, different BPR projects have provided some insights
that can be used to improve the success rates of future
initiatives.
• IT is not the solution. It helps improves processes but by
itself will not do much. Therefore BPR needs to be applied
sensitively. For any specific project, it is also important to
start off with realistic targets. IT professionals need to be
involved from the beginning too. However, since BPR is
about business processes, business people should play
an equally active role.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• The Enterprise Planning System

• For most multinational corporations, a big component of
the role of IT is in the management and support of the
business Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

• ERP refers to the potentially integrated system that

allows information to enter at a single point in the
process.
• A business ERP is usually a part of a larger systems
environment and can be extended to support Electronic
Commerce, Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
and Supply Chain Management (SCM) functions.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• The Internet
• The advent of the Internet, the global network of
interconnected computers, has revolutionized the way
people find information, and the manner in which they
communicate and interact with each other.
• Traditional word of mouth, or the phenomenon marketers
look out for as having a powerful impact on a brand’s
reputation, is now taking place beyond one’s immediate
circle of peers, and into online or virtual discussion
boards, and social networking sites.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• The internet and its derivative applications have dramatic

and limitless implications for business – the way inter-
office communication is taking place through employees
blogs.

• The Virtual Marketplace (Electronic Commerce)

• Electronic Commerce (e-commerce or EC) refers to
business transactions that are conducted online using
any of the application that rely on the Internet, such as e-
mail, instant messaging, shopping carts, Web services.
The transactions can be between two businesses
transmitting funds, goods, services or data, or between a
business and a customer.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• E-commerce is premised on technical and philosophical

openness. The Internet is fundamentally open and non-
proprietary. In this environment, customers and suppliers
can be partners.
• On the side of the consumers, their openness to engage
in electronic transactions may be hampered by privacy
and consumer protection concerns.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• Michael Rappa provided a comprehensive description

of business models that have evolved with the
emergence of e-commerce:
• 1. Brokerage model. Brokers are market-makers. They
bring buyers and sellers together and facilitate
transactions. Brokers play a frequent role in business to
business (B2B), business to consumer (B2C) or consumer
to consumer (C2C) markets.
• 2. Advertising model. The web advertising model is an
extension of the traditional media broadcast model.
• 3. Infomediary model. Data about consumers and their
consumption habits are valuable, especially when that
information is carefully analyzed and used to target
marketing campaigns.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• 4. Merchant model. Wholesalers and retailers of goods

and services.
• 5. Manufacturer (Direct) model. The manufacturer or
“direct” is predicated on the power of the web to allow a
manufacturer.
• 6. Affiliate model. In contrast to the generalized portal,
which seeks to drive a high volume of traffic to one site,
the affiliate model provides purchase opportunities
wherever people may be surfing.
• 7. Community model. The viability of the community
model is based on user loyalty.
• 8. Subscription model. Users are charged periodic –
daily, monthly or annual – fee to subscribe to a service.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• 9. Utility model. The utility or “on –demand” model is

based on metering usage, or a “pay as you go”
approach.

Wireless Technology
• Another advancement that has improved communication
infrastructure dramatically is wireless connectivity, the
technology that allows machines to make connection on
air without the discomfort and mess of wires.

• Wireless technology can be any of the following:

• 1. Mobile technology – GSM networks for mobile phones
and laptops.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• 2. Wireless internet. This refers to an RF-based service

that provides access to Internet e-mail and the World
Wide Web.
• 3. 3G technologies also enable network operations to
offer users a wider range of more advanced services
while achieving greater network capacity.
• 4. HSDPA, short for High-Speed Downlink Packet
Access is new protocol for mobile telephone data
transmission.
• 5. WIMAX. A major development in wireless will be the
ability for users to seamlessly switch between wireless
networks so that focus can be shifted to getting the work
done instead of managing how to do it.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• 6. Other Wireless connection like Infrared, Bluetooth,

and or WAP/GPRS, and LAN

• RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)

• RFID can be argued as another form of wireless
technology. It uses radio waves to transmit data and
workers by labeling products with a tag that can be read
electronically and a distance even without visual contact.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• Knowledge Management
• Business have started to realize that company
information and the wealth of learning from the collective
experiences of their employees and learning from
processes comprise a strategic asset that needs to be
managed properly.
• KM comprises the organization’s practices used to
identify, create, represent, distribute and enable adoption
of knowledge across the organization. Many large
companies have resources dedicated to internal KM
efforts, often as part of their business strategy,
information technology, or human resource management
departments.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• KM efforts typically focus on organizational growth,

market leadership and development. It can help
individuals and groups to share information, to reduce
training time for new employees, to retail intellectual
capital as employees turnover in an organization, and to
adapt to changing environments and markets (Mc. Adam
and Mc Creedy, 2000; Thompson and Walsham 2004)

• Knowledge creation – Initially create knowledge and

identify it as “Knowledge”. Continually revise and
maintain the knowledge overtime.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• Knowledge development – Validate the knowledge

and/or its source. Prepare the knowledge and/or its
source to facilitate knowledge transfer and use.

• Knowledge reuse – Users locate and select new

knowledge for their use. Users “contextualize”
knowledge in their environment and gradually refine it
over time as they learn to use it.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• Robotics
• One area in technology, which is still in its relative
infancy, but which holds a lot of promise for
revolutionizing business is robotics. Robotics is the
engineering science and technology of robots, and their
design, manufacture, and application.

• Fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, proposed the three laws

of robots that he believed should guide all creation
and programming of robots.
• 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through
inaction allow human being to come to learn.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• 2. A robot must obey any order given to it by human

being except such orders would conflict with the first law.
• 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such
protection does not conflict with the first and second law.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• The matter of innovation

• Scientific inventions, and discoveries, which eventually
lead to new technologies, are in most cases not products
of accidents. Technology arises sometimes by chance,
but is in most cases caused by a deliberate process that
starts with innovation.
• The term innovation means a new way of doing
something. It may refer to incremental, radical, and
revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes,
or organizations.
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• Innovation is the entire spectrum of activities necessary to

provide new value to customers and a satisfactory return
to the company.

• The sources of innovation may come from the

following:
• 1. Individual creativity
• 2. Organizational creativity
• 3. Innovation by users
• 4. Research and development by firms
• 5. Firm linkages with customers, suppliers, competitors,
and complementors
• 6. Universities and Government funded research
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• 7. Private Non-profit organizations

• 8. The professional inventor

• Innovation can be looked at in terms of the

dimensions they affect:
• 1. Product vs. Process innovation
• 2. Radical vs. Incremental innovation
• 3. Competence-enhancing vs. Competence-destroying
innovation
• 4. Architectural vs. Component innovation
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• Innovation can give birth to:

• 1. New markets
• 2. New customers
• 3. New customer segments
• 4. Services
• 5. Products
• 6. Selling methods
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business
• Some of the barriers to employee creativity are the
following:
• 1. Fear of taking risk. Always playing safe
• 2. Fear of change. Prefer to do things the same way
• 3. Fear of challenging rules, standards, and conventions
• 4. Desire to always conform to accepted behavior
• 5. It won’t work
• 6. That can’t be done
• 7. That is not serious
• 8. It will not work here; maybe elsewhere
• 9. You do not really understand the situation
• 10. That’s a silly idea
• 11. That’s impossible!
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• Technology is a double-edged sword.

• Definitely, technology has improved the lives and lot of
men. However, not all technology is benevolent. An
advances in technology have made the apocalyptic end
of the human race possible at the push of a button.
Pollution is one of the many unwanted by products of
technological processes.
• In the workplace, one ethical issue arising from
advancement of technology is the utilization of
companies to machines to watch over or monitor
employees (Elmuti, 2006).
 C3 Information Tech as Catalyst for Intl. Business

• Employers have three (3) motivations for monitoring

employees.
• 1. Mitigating legal liability
• 2. Reducing the misuse of company resources
• 3. Protecting intellectual property

• The monitoring of employees has resulted in

organizations being able to reprimand or terminate
employees based on their misuse of company email or
the internet
 Reference

• Mondejar, R. et al (2010) Introduction to International

Business & Globalization, Manila, SINAG-TALA
Publishers
Thank you!