Information Systems

formation Systems, Organizations, and Strategy

Information systems are an important factor in a growing business today. With increased competition and environmental changes affecting the consumer world, it is crucial to implement information systems in order to stay ahead of the game. Most businesses today require the integration of information systems in order to increase sales and reduce costs. Information technology systems can impact many factors of a business. These factors can include anything from economic to organizational and behavioral.

Competitive advantage is one of the leading factors of success in most businesses. Competition can come from new market entrants, suppliers, substitute products and customers. The most efficient information system strategies for competitive forces are low-cost leadership, product differentiation, focus on market niche and strengthened customer and supplier intimacy.

An organization must use information systems to efficiently transform environmental resources into valuable outputs. Traditional capital and labor can be substituted by information systems technology as a factor of production in order to lower relative costs. The increased use of these IT factors along with the decreasing costs of implementing technology systems lowers the need for expensive capital such as buildings and machinery. Labor can also be reduced as the need for middle managers and clerical workers can be replaced by information systems.

Recommendations

We noticed that your organization does not track past quality concerns or warranty claims which we feel are a mistake. Our recommendation to you is to implement an information system that tracks these concerns and claims in order to spot an error trend that may save crucial amounts of money once fixed. It is also important for your company to coordinate research efforts between all of your research and development departments. This can be done by the use of a computer network system that can increase the speed of communication and information shared. With the use of these recommendations, your organizations costs will be lowered, eventually leading to a more competitive price for consumers.

E-Commerce: Digital Markets, Digital Goods

E-Commerce is the use of the internet for commercial transactions between organizations and individuals. With the rising popularity of the internet, most companies complete a large portion of their business processes online. The e-commerce world has made it easier than ever for consumers to shop and purchase goods or services online. It is estimated that consumer sales online were over $180 billion dollars for 2007 alone (Laudon, 2007). E-Commerce transactions can be anything from business to business, business to consumer, or even consumer to consumer.

Over the past twelve years, e-commerce revenue has grown exponentially. Much of this is due to the fact that global transactions can be done with ease and are very cost effective. E-Commerce also provides universal technical standards lowering the costs of market entry and search costs. It also has many advantages over other methods in that the availability of quality of information is increased, timeliness is increased, and numerous costs are decreased.

The ebay corporation is an example of how e-commerce can expand your business. Ebay is an online marketplace where millions of people can buy and sell goods and services from each other. It was started in 1995 and is now one of the biggest online platforms in the world. Ebay used the internet to create an online trading community for people to establish one on one transactions. By 2005, there were more than $40 billion worth of goods exchanged on ebay.

Recommendations

Your company currently does not market or advertise its products online. As you can see by the information we’ve given you, e-commerce is a must for an organization such as yours to expand. The advancement in technology enables you to easily stay connected to your consumers, which we believe is crucial. We recommend that you market your company’s products and services online to increase sales. It would also be beneficial to increase communication with consumers by making customer service available online. The availability of online services and products will draw in many more consumers and increase the popularity of your company. The overall use of e-commerce can be a deciding factor between your company and a competitor.

(chapter 11)

Knowledge is a key asset to managing information systems. With the emergence of information economy and digital firm, producing, managing and distributing knowledge represents wealth and mangers are realizing the value in knowledge creation. Knowledge has many important dimensions. Not only is it a firm asset, it is situational, has a location and can take many different forms.

Data, the flow of captured events or transactions, is organized into categories of understanding producing general information to the firm. Knowledge then takes this information into concepts, experience and insights that include discovering patterns, rules and contexts where knowledge works. Adjusting business processes and patterns of decision-making to reflect knowledge gained through such experiences and information is beneficial to your organization’s learning and it has been proven that more sensitive and responsive organizations lead to greater success.

There are three major types of Knowledge Management Systems: Enterprise-Wide Knowledge Systems, Knowledge Work Systems and Intelligent Techniques. Knowledge Work Systems are specialized work stations and systems that enable scientists, engineers, and other knowledge workers to create and discover new knowledge. These include Computer-aided Design (CAD), 3D visualization and virtual reality programs. Intelligent Techniques are tools for discovering patterns and applying knowledge to discrete decisions and knowledge domains. These include data mining, neural networks and fuzzy logic systems to name a few. However, the one major type of Knowledge Management System that we feel could be very beneficial to your organization is an Enterprise-Wide Knowledge Management System.

There are three categories of Enterprise-Wide Knowledge Management Systems which are Structured Knowledge Systems, Semi-structured Knowledge Systems and Knowledge Network Systems.

Structured Knowledge Systems store formal, structured text documents, reports and/or presentations whereas Semi-structured Knowledge Systems store less structured documents such as e-mail, voicemail, chatroom discussions,