CHAPTER 7: STORING ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION

RELATIONAL DATABASE FUNDAMENTALS

 -    Information is everywhere in an organization

-  Information is stored in databases

      Database – maintains information about various types of objects (inventory), events (transactions), people (employees), and places (warehouses)

 -     Database models include;

      Hierarchical database model – information is organized into a tree-like structure (using parent/child relationships) in such a way that it cannot have too many relationships.

 

      Network database model – a flexible way of representing objects and their relationships

 

      Relational database model – stores information in the form of logically related two-dimensional tables

 

ENTITIES AND ATTRIBUTES

-    Entity – a person, place, thing, transaction, or event about which information is stored

      The rows in each table contains the entities

-    Attributes (fields, columns) – characteristics or properties of an entity class

      The columns in each table contain the attributes

KEYS AND RELATIONSHIPS

-    Primary keys and foreign keys identity the various entity classes (tables) in the database

      Primary key – a fields (or group of fields) that uniquely identities a given entity in a table

      Foreign key – a primary key of one table that appears an attribute in another table and acts to provide a logical relationships among the two tables

 

RELATIONAL DATABASE ADVANTAGES

-    Database advantages from a business perspective include;

      Increased flexibility

      Increased scalability and performance

      Reduced information redundancy

      Increased information integrity (quality)

      Increased information security

INCREASED FLEXIBILITY

-     A well-designed database should;

      Handle changes quickly and easily

      Provide users with different views

      Have only one physical views

      Physical view – deals with the physical storage of information on a storage device

      Have multiple logical views

      Logical view – focuses on how users logically access information

INCREASED SCALABILITY AND PERFORMANCE

-      A database must scale to meet increased demand, while maintaining acceptable performance levels

      Scalability – refers to how well a system can adapt to increased demands

      Performance – measures how quickly a system performs a certain process or transaction

REDUCED INFORMATION REDUNDANCY

-      Databases reduce information redundancy

      Redundancy – the duplication of information or storing the same information in multiple places

-     Inconsistency is one of the primary problems with redundant information

INCREASED INFORMATION SECURITY

-      Information is an organization asset and must be protected

-      Databases offer several security features including;

      Password – provides authentication of the user

      Access level – determines who has access to the different types of information

      Access control – determines types of user access, such as read-only access

DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

-     Database management systems (DBMS) – software through which users and application programs interact with a database

 

DATA-DRIVEN WEB SITES

-       Data-driven Web sites – an interactive Web site kept constantly updated and relevant to the needs of its   customers through the use of database

 

DATA-DRIVEN WEB SITE BUSINESS ADVANTAGES

-         Development

-         Content Management

-         Future Expandability

-         Minimizing Human Error

-         Cutting Production and Update Costs

-         More Efficient

-         Improved Stability

DATA-DRIVEN BUSINESS INTELLIGENT

-         BI in a data-driven Web site

 

INTEGRATING INFORMATION AMONG MULTIPLE DATABASES

-      Integration – allows separate systems to communicate directly with each other

•   Forward integration – takes information entered into a given system and sends it automatically to all downstream systems and processes

 

•             Backward integration – takes information entered into a given system and sends it automatically to    all upstream systems and processes

 

 -          Building a central repository specifically for integrated information

CHAPTER 6: VALUING ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION

ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION

• Information is everywhere in an organization.
• Employees must be able to obtain and analyze the many different levels, formats, and granularities of organizational information to make decisions.
• Successfully collecting, compiling, sorting and analyzing information can provide tremendous insight into how an organization is performing.
• Levels, format and granularities of organizational information.

THE VALUE OF TRANSACTIONAL AND ANALYTICAL INFORMATION

• Transactional information verses analytical information.

THE VALUE OF TIMELY INFORMATION

• Timeliness is an aspect of information that depends on situation.
• 1. Real-time information : immediate such as message, email, TV and etc.
• 2. Real-time system : provides real-time information in response to query requests.

THE VALUE OF QUALITY INFORMATION

• Business decisions are only as good as the quality of the information used to make the decisions.
• Characteristics of high-quality information include: 
• 1. accuracy 
• 2. completeness 
• 3. consistency
• 4. timeliness
• 5. uniqueness

UNDERSTANDING THE COSTS OF POOR INFORMATION

• Four primary sources:

1. online customers intentionally enter inaccurate information to protect their privacy.
2. information from different systems have different entry standards and formats.
3. call center operators enter abbreviated or erroneous information by accident or to save time.
4. third party and external information contains inconsistencies, inaccuracies and errors.

• potential business effects resulting from low quality information include:

- inability to accurately track customers.

- difficulty identifying valuable customers.

- inability to identify selling opportunities.

UNDERSTANDING THE BENEFITS OF GOOD INFORMATION

• high quality info can significantly improve the chances of making a good decision.
• good decisions can directly impact an organization's bottom line.

CHAPTER 5: ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES THAT SUPPORT STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES

Organizational employees must work closely together to develop strategic initiatives that create competitive advantages. Ethics and security are two fundamental building blocks that organizations must base their businesses upon.

IT ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Information technology is a relatively new functional area, having only been around formally for around 40 years.  
• Recent IT-related strategic positions:

(i) Chief Information Officer(CIO)
(ii) Chief Technology Officer(CTO)
(iii) Chief Security Officer(CSO)
(iv) Chief Privacy Officer(CPO)
(v) Chief Knowledge Office(CKO)

Chief Information Officer
-Oversees all uses of IT and ensures the strategic alignment of IT with business goals and objectives.
-Broad CIO function include:
Manager: ensuring the delivery of all IT projects, on time and within budget.
Leader: ensuring the strategic vision of IT is in line with the strategic vision of the organization.
Communicator: building and maintaining strong executive relationships.

Chief Technology Officer
-Responsible for ensuring the throughput, speed, accuracy, availability, and reliability of IT.

Chief Security Officer
-Responsible for ensuring the security of IT systems.

Chief Privacy Officer
-Responsible for ensuring the ethical and legal use of information.

Chief Knowledge Office
-Responsible for collecting, maintaining, and distributing the organization's knowledge.

ORGANIZATIONAL FUNDAMENTALS

·                     Ethics and security are two fundamental building blocks that organizations must base their businesses on to be successful.

·                     In recent years, such events as the Enron and Martha Stewart, along with 9/11 have shed new light on the meaning of ethics and security.

·                     Ethics

o                  the principles and standards that guide our behavior toward other people

·                     Privacy is major ethical issue

o                  privacy
the right to be left alone when you want to be, to have control over your own personal possessions, and not to be observed without your consent

·                     Issues affected by technology advances

o                  intellectual property.

intangible creative work that is embodied in physical form. for example, from idea to something we can hold. 

o                  copyright
the legal protection afforded an expression of an idea, such as a song, video, game, and some types of proprietary documents.

o                  fair use doctrine

in certain situations, it is legal to use copyrighted materials. for example song from oversea to Malaysia.

o                  pirated software

the unauthorized use, duplication, distribution, or sale of copyrighted software. more cheap and free.

o                  counterfeit software

software that is manufactured to look like the real thing and sold as such. for example, buy antivirus, notify original but not original.

·                     One of the main ingredients in trust is privacy. the system is effective because customer will be satisfied but efficiency because the system can be slow.

·                     Security

o                  organizational information is intellectual capital - it must be protected.

·                     Information security

o                  the protection of information from accidental or intentional misuse by persons inside or outside an organization.

o                  the CSO who save the information.

·                     E-business automatically creates tremendous information security risks for organizations.

THANK YOU 

CHAPTER 4

Chapter 4 – Measuring the Success of Strategic Initiatives

MEASURING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY’S SUCCESS

·                      Key performance indicator – measures that are tied to business drivers

·                      Metrics are detailed measures that feed KPIs

·                     Performance metrics fall into the nebulous area of business intelligence that is neither  technology, nor business centered, but requires input from both IT and business professionals

EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVENESS

·                       Efficiency IT metric – measures the performance of the IT system itself including throughput, speed, and availability

·                      Effectiveness IT metric – measures the impact IT has on business processes and activities including customer satisfaction, conversion rates, and sell-through increases

BENCHMARKING – BASELINE METRICS

·                      Regardless of what is measured, how it is measured, and whether it is for the sake of efficiency or effectiveness, there must be benchmarks –baseline values the system seeks to attain

·                      Benchmarking – a process of continuously measuring system results, comparing those results to optimal system performance (benchmark values), and identifying steps and producers to improve system performance

-          Comparing efficiency IT and effectiveness IT metrics for the government initiatives 

THE INTERRELATIONSHIPS OF EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVESS IT METRICS

-          Common types of efficiency IT metrics

	Efficiency IT Metrics
Throughput	The amount of information that can travel through a system at any point.
Transaction speed	The amount of time a system takes to perform a transaction.
System availability	The number of hours at system is available for users.
Information accuracy	The extent to which a system generates the correct results when executing the same transaction numerous times.
Web traffic	Includes a host of benchmarks such as the number of page views, the number of unique visitors, and the average time spent viewing a web page.
Response time	The time it takes to respond to user interactions such as a mouse click.

-          Effectiveness IT metrics focus on an organization’s goals, strategies, and objectives and include…

	Effectiveness IT Metrics
Usability	The ease with which people perform transactions and/or find information. A popular usability metric on the Internet is degrees of freedom, which measures the number of clicks required to find desired information.
Customers satisfaction	Measured by such benchmarks as satisfaction surveys, percentage of existing customers retained, and increases in revenue dollars per customer.
Conversion rates	The number of customers an organization “touches” for the first time and persuades to purchase its products or services. This is a popular metric for evaluating the effectiveness of banner, pop-up, and pop-under ads on the Internet.
Financial	Such as return on investment (the earning power of an organization’s assets), cost-benefit analysis (the comparison of projected revenues and costs including development, maintenance, fixed and variable), and break-even analysis (the point at which content revenues equal ongoing costs).

-          Security is an issue for any organization offering products or services over the Internet.

-          It is inefficient for an organization to implement Internet security, since it slows down processing.

·         However, to be effective it must implement Internet security.

·         Secure Internet connections must offer encryption and Secure Sockets Layers (SSL denoted by the lock symbol in the lower right corner of browser)

-          Interrelationships between efficiency and effectiveness. 

METRICS FOR STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

-          Metrics for measuring and managing strategic initiatives include;

·         Website metrics.

·         Supply chain management (SCM) metrics

·         Customer relationship management (CRM) metrics

·         Business process reengineering (BPR) metrics

·         Enterprise resource planning (ERP) metrics 

 

WEBSITE METRICS

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT METRICS 

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT METRICS

BPR and ERP Metrics

-          The balanced scorecard enables organizations to measure and manage strategic initiatives. 

THANK YOU !