Case Study: Apple- Merging Technology, Business, and Entertainment

Question 1

1. Customer focus - Apple is driven by customer satisfaction and ensures customer are deeply involved in product development and application development.
2. Resources and capabilities - Apple invest in research and development to take advantage of new technologies, improve facilities and cloud infrastructures.
3. Strategic vision - Apple has a clear alignment of its vision, mission, and business leadership and goals.
4. Branding - Apple is the leader in brand loyalty as it has achieved cult status with its authentic product image.
5. Quality focus - Apple has an outstanding commitment to quality. 

Question 2

• Employees - John Lin created a prototype of a remote control for the iPod and took his prototype to Macworld, where he found success.

• Executives - Jeff Holden, CEO of Pelago Inc, when he created his social networking company he fully intented to follow the conventional wisdom for how to build a sizable, fast growing software company.

Case Study: New Technology- Who or What is Responsible

Question 1

- They facing serious financial problems.
- They facing a massive distribution problem, as result many stores lacking Hershey products before Halloween and Christmas.
- The pharmaceutical distributor Fox Mayer caused te company to announce a $500 million lawsuit          against SAP and Andersen Consulting, British Organization.

Question 2

- Flexible: Must be able to quickly respond to the changing needs of the organization.
- Modular and open: Must have an open system architecture, meaning that any module can be                                                interface, with or detached whenever required without affecting the other                                              modules.
- Comprehensive: Must be able to support variety of organizational functions for a wide range of                                        business.
- Beyond the company: Must support external partnerships and collaboration efforts.

Case Study: Air Asia- Now Everyone Can Fly

Question 1

• Air Asia has low cost fare compare to other firm
• Air Asia has low distribution cost
• Pioneered low cost travelling in Asia then followed by other firm
• Has been monopoly Malaysia Airlines for a long time.
• The first airline to implement unassigned seat

Question 2

The Porter's generic strategies that was applied by AirAsia is broad cost leadership. Air Asia has low cost fare compare to other firm. AirAsia operates in broad market. Asia's largest low fare,no frills airline. Pioneered low cost travelling in Asia then followed by other firm.

Question 3

Air Asia Buyer Power
Air Asia assessed by analyzing the ability of buyers to directly impact the price to pay for an item. As an example Air Asia giving  a low cost travelling to their customers. Many airline has high buyer power because of many choices.

Air Asia Supplier power
Air Asia have high supplier power when they are the only airline that offer ticket at lower cost and lower supplier power when they have competition from other airline. Air Asia use private exchange because they are currently the main customer of the Airbus A320. The company has place an order of 175 units of the same plane to service its route.

Chapter 15 – Outsourcing in the 21st Century

Outsourcing Project

• Insourcing (in-house-development) – A common approach using the professional expertise within an organization to develop and maintain the organization’s information technology systems
• Outsourcing – An arrangement by which one organization provides a service or services for another organization that chooses not to perform them in-house

• Onshore outsourcing – engaging another company within the same country for services
• Near shore outsourcing – contracting an outsourcing arrangement with a company in a nearby country
• Offshore outsourcing – using organizations from developing countries to write code and develop systems
• Big selling point for offshore outsourcing “inexpensive good work”

• Factors driving outsourcing growth include;

• Core competencies
• Financial savings
• Rapid growth
• Industry changes
• The Internet
• Globalization

• According to PricewaterhouseCoopers “Businesses that outsource are growing faster, larger and more profitable than those that do not”
• Most organizations outsource their noncore business functions, such as payroll and IT

Outsourcing Benefits

Outsourcing benefits include;

• Increased quality and efficiency
• Reduced operating expenses
• Outsourcing non-core processes
• Reduced exposure to risk
• Economies of scale, expertise and best practices
• Access to advanced technologies
• Increased flexibility
• Avoid costly outlay of capital funds
• Reduced headcount and associated overhead expense
• Reduced time to market for products or services

Outsourcing challenges

Outsourcing challenges include;

• Contract length

• Difficulties in getting out of a contract
• Problems in foreseeing future needs
• Problems in reforming an internal IT department after the contract is finishe

• Competitive edge
• Confidentiality
• Scope definition 

Chapter 14 – Creating Collaborative Partnerships

Teams, Partnerships, and Alliances

• Organizations create and use teams, partnerships and alliances to;

• Undertake new initiatives
• Address both minor and major problems
• Capitalize on significant opportunities

• Organizations create teams, partnerships and alliances both internally with employees and externally with other organizations
• Collaboration system – supports the work of teams by facilitating the sharing and flow of information

 

• Organizations from alliance and partnerships with other organizations based on their core competency

• Core competency – An organization’s key strength, a business function that it does better than any of its competitors
• Core competency strategy – Organization chooses to focus specifically on its core competency and forms partnerships with other organizations to handle nonstrategic business processes
• Information technology can make a business partnership easier to establish and manage
• Information partnerships – Occurs when two or more organizations cooperate by integrating their IT systems, thereby providing customers with the best of what each can offer
• The internet has dramatically increased the ease and availability for IT – enabled organizational alliance and partnerships

Collaboration System

• Collaboration solves specific business tasks such as telecommuting, online meetings, deploying applications, and remote project and sales management
• Collaboration system – An IT- based set of tools that supports the work of teams by facilitating the sharing and flow of information.
• Two categories of collaboration

• Unstructured collaboration (information collaboration) – includes document exchange, shared whiteboards, discussion forums, and email.
• Structured collaboration (process collaboration) – involves shared participation in business processes such as workflow in which knowledge is hard-coded as rules

 Collaborative business functions

Collaboration systems include;

• Knowledge management systems
• Content management systems
• Workflow management systems
• Groupware systems

Knowledge Management Systems

• Knowledge management (KM) – involves capturing, classifying, evaluating, retrieving and sharing information assets in a way that provides context for effective decisions and actions
• Knowledge management system – supports the capturing and use of an organization’s “know-how”

Explicit and Tacit knowledge

• Intellectual and knowledge-based assets fall into two categories;

• Explicit knowledge – consists of anything that can be documented, archived, and codified, often with the help of IT
• Tacit knowledge – knowledge contained in people’s heads

• The following are two best practices for transferring or recreating tacit knowledge

• Shadowing – less experienced staff observe more experienced staff to learn how their more experienced counterparts approach their work
• Joint problem solving – a novice and expert work together on a project

Content Management

• Content management system (CMS) – provides tools to manage the creation, storage, editing and publication of information in a collaborative environment
• CMS marketplace includes;

• Document management system (DMS)
• Digital assets management system (DAM)
• Web content management system (WCM)

Working wikis

Wikis web based tools that make it easy for users to add, remove, and change online content

• Business wikis – collaborative web pages that allows users to edit documents, share ideas or monitor the status of a project

Workflow Management Systems

Work activities can be performed in series or in parallel that involves people and automated computer systems

• Workflow – defines all the steps or business rules, from beginning to end, required for a business process
• Workflow management system – facilitates the automation and management of business processes and controls the movement of work through the business process
• Messaging-based workflow system – sends work assignments through an email system
• Database-based workflow system – stores documents in a central location and automatically asks the team members to access the document when it is their turn to edit the document

Groupware systems

Groupware technologies

Web conferencing

Video conference – A set of interactive telecommunication technologies that allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously 

Instant message

Email is the dominant form of collaboration application, but real-time collaboration tools like instant messaging are creating a new communication dynamic

• Instant messaging – types of communications service that enables someone to create a kind of private chat room with another individual to communicate in real-time over the internet

Chapter 13 E-Business

E Business

• The internet is a powerful channel that presents new opportunities for organization to;

• Touch customers
• Enrich products and services with information
• Reduce costs

• How do ecommerce and e business differ?

• Ecommerce – the buying and selling of goods and services over the internet
• E business – the conducting of business on the internet including, not only buying and selling, but also serving customers and collaborating with business partners

Industries Using E business

E Business Modal

•  E business model – An approach to conducting electronic business on the Internet

 




Business-to-Business (B2B)


Electronic marketplace (E market place) – interactive business communities providing a central market where multiple buyers and sellers can engage in e business activities.


Business-to-Consumer (B2C)

Common B2C e business models include;

• E shop – A version of retail store where customers can shop at any hour of the day without leaving their home or office
• E mall – consists of a number of e shops; it serves as a gateway through which a visitor can access other e shops

Business types;

• Brick-and-mortar business
• Pure-play business
• Click-and-mortar business

Consumer-to-Business (C2B)

• Priceline.com is an example of a C2B e business model
• The demand for C2B e business will increase over the next few years due to customer’s desire for greater convenience and lower prices

Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C)

Online auctions

• Electronic auction (E auction) – Sellers and buyers solicit consecutive bids from each other and prices are determined dynamically
• Forward auction – Sellers use as a selling channel to many buyers and the highest bid wins
• Reverse auction – Buyers use to purchase a product or service, selecting the seller with the lowest bid

C2C communities

• Communities of interest – People interact with each other on specific topics, such as golfing and stamps collecting
• Communities of relations – People come together to share certain life experiences, such as cancer patients, senior,citizens, and car enthusiasts
• Communities of fantasy – People participate in imaginary environments, such as fantasy football teams and playing one-to-one with Michael Jordan

E Business benefits and challenge

• E business benefits include;

• Highly accessible
• Increased customer loyalty
• Improved information content
• Increased convenience
• Increased global reach
• Decreased cost

• E business challenges include;

• Protecting consumers
• Leveraging existing systems
• Increased liability
• Providing security

Chapter 12 - Integrating The Organization From The End To End - Enterprise Resource Planning

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

• Serve as the organization's backbone in providing fundamental decision-making support.
• At the heart of all ERP systems is a database, when a user enters or updates information in one module, it is immediately and automatically updated throughout the entire system

Bringing the Organization Together

ERP enables employees across the organization to share information across a single,centralized database.

The Evolution of ERP

• to deliver automation across multiple units of an organization 
• to help facilitate the manufacturing process and address issues such as raw materials, inventory, order entry and distribution

Integrating SCM, CRM, and ERP

• SCM, CRM, and ERP are the backbone of e-business
• Allows the unlocking of information to make it available to any user, anywhere, anytime
• Integration of these applications is the key to success for many companies

Integration Tools

Many companies purchase modules from an ERP vendor, an SCM vendor, and a CRM vendor and must integrate the different modules together

• Middleware – several different types of software which sit in the middle of and provide connectivity between two or more software applications 
• Enterprise application integration (EAI) middleware – packages together commonly used functionality which reduced the time necessary to develop solutions that integrate applications from multiple vendors

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

• Flexible – must be able to quickly respond to the changing needs of the organization
• Modular and open – must have an open system architecture, meaning that any module can be interface, with or detached whenever required without affecting the other modules.
•  

  Comprehensive – must be able to support a variety of organizational functions for a wide range of businesses
• Beyond the company – must support external partnerships and collaboration efforts