IT-Enabled Business Transformation

1. IT-Enabled Business Transformation

2. Organizational Factors in MIS • Product Line • Manufacturers • Merchandisers • Service Organizations • Expansion Strategy • Vertical integration • Geographic expansion by acquiring similar firms • Size

3. Org. Factors in MIS (cont.) • Organizational Structure • Function • Product • Customer • Place • Hybrid • Centralization/Decentralization • Profit versus Nonprofit • Public Sector vs. Private Sector

4. People Issues in MIS • Physiological Factors • Ergonomics • Worker skills and abilities • Physical and mental abilities • Computer intelligence/sophistication • Memory processes • Learning

5. People in MIS • Perception • Bias • Attitudes • Risk-taking tendencies • Willingness to change • Stress • Culture • Motivation • Flexibility • Information overload • Optimism/pessimism

6. Benefits of Information Systems • Operational efficiency • Functional effectiveness • Spotting and taking advantage of opportunities • Better service • Product Creation and improvement • Altering the basis of competition • Client lock-in • Competitor lock-out McGraw-Hill, Inc. 1993

7. Processing Data into Information Data From data to decision Information Manager Decision

8. DSS • More advanced decision support systems also include capabilities that allow users to create a model of the variables affecting a decision. Models allow users to ask what if questions by changing one or more variables. • Example: Frito lay can now analyze important trends in days or weeks instead of the months it once used to take. Good tool to make what it decisions about their product and competitor’s product.

9. ESS • Higher level executives usually want customized reports showing nuances of information that may not be available to other executives. ESSs often demand more development time and greater customization.

10. ESS Features • Designed for senior managers who may not be familiar or comfortable with computer systems • Designed with features that are user-seductive and easy to use • Often designed with interfaces such as touch screen/remote control device for executives unfamiliar with the keyboard • Designed to rely heavily on graphic presentation of information • Designed to focus on strategic issues, such as access to external databases (Dow Jones News/Retrieval service)

11. ESS: What’s wrong? • Many ESSs have not been successfully implemented and many executives have stopped using them. • Why? • Mistake of not modifying the system to the specific needs of the individual executive users • Mistake of not providing information in a particular sequence with the option of seeing different levels of supporting detailed information such as cost data on a spreadsheet • Mistake of not tailoring the system to the individual executive’s requirements.

12. ESS Model ESS Workstation Menus Graphics Communications Local Processing • Internal data • TPS/MIS data • Financial data • Office Systems • Modeling/analysis • External data • Dow Jones • Gallup Poll • Standard & Poor’s

13. Questions • Should senior executives know how to use a spreadsheet program? • Will knowing how to use a spreadsheet program be an important attribute for those seeking a promotion in a typical company? • Is it really important for people in top positions to use a computer? • Would you agree/disagree that people in strategic positions are paid for their business acumen and decision-making ability regardless of whether they are techno-literate or not?

14. Ethical and Legal Responsibilities • Five common ethical traps • The false-necessity trap • Convincing yourself that no other choice exists • The doctrine-of-relative-filth trap • Comparing your unethical behavior with someone else’s even more unethical behavior • The rationalization trap • Justifying unethical actions with excuses • the self-deception trap • Persuading yourself that a lie is not really a lie • The ends-justify-the-means trap • Using unethical methods to accomplish a desirable goal Guffey, 1994 Wadsworth

15. The Privacy Revolution In early America, if you missed church or your children misbehaved in public, community watchers would follow-up with you to ensure good behavior. According to Arthur Miller (Computers and Privacy, DeJoie text) no changes have been made to Privacy Legislation since 1909)

16. But What about…. • The Fair Credit Reporting Act • Family Educational Right and Privacy Act of 1974 • Privacy Act of 1974 • Remember: the privacy laws require that the injured part correct the mistake. It is the responsibility of the injured party to correct misinformation, not the organization to ensure its accuracy. Http://newton.uor.edu/FacultyFolder/Rguthrie/is415/lectures/is415s2_3.html

17. Data Errors Integrated data from numerous sources/powerful info package on individuals Data errors become more harmful as they are more readily propagated. Result: an “electronic clone,” a personal profile in digital form that provides detailed and predictive insight into an individual’s medical condition, buying habits, personal tastes, economic status, vacation choices, ethnic background, political and religious affiliations and even causes and programs he/she supports

18. Information Privacy in the Electronic Age • Privacy experts believe that lists track more than two billion names. • The average American is on at least 25 and as many as 100 of these lists at any one time. • The danger: without our knowledge we are profiled and placed on specialized lists and classified as a gambler, a foreign policy hawk, an affluent ethnic professional, etc.

19. Corporate Privacy Policies • Some industry groups have adopted codes and principles, some have not. • Corporate Privacy policies are sometimes inadequate in digital context or non-existent • A significant exists between announced policies and actual policies • Bottom line: the vast majority of personal information can be sold, shared, exchanged, and disseminated without notice to, or input from, the data subject. Http://www.iitf.nist.gov/ipc/privacy.htm

20. Is the Pursuit of happiness really a Myth? A German philosopher, Immanuel Kant believed that doing one’s duty is more important than being happy or making others happy. He stated that though scientists may predict what man will do next, the predictions do not interfere with man’s free will.