5 Managing Information

Chapter 5 Managing Information

©2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited

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What Would You Do?  

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The PC industry is very competitive How can Dell and its suppliers work more closely together? How can Dell handle all the information it generates?

©2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited

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Moore’s Law Prediction that every 18 months, the cost of computing will drop by 50 percent as computerprocessing power doubles.

Adapted from Exhibit 5.1 ©2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited

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Learning Objectives: Why Information Matters After reading this section, you should be able to: 1. explain the strategic importance of information 2. describe the characteristics of useful information ©2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited

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Strategic Importance of Information 

First-mover advantage

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Sustaining a competitive advantage

©2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited

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Using Information to Sustain a Competitive Advantage  

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Does the information create value? Is the information different across firms? Can another firm create or buy the technology?

Adapted from Exhibit 5.2 ©2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited

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Characteristics of Useful Information    

Accurate Complete Relevant Timely

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The Costs of Useful Information     

Acquisition Processing Storage Retrieval Communication

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Learning Objectives: Getting and Sharing Information After reading the next two sections, you should be able to: 3. explain the basics of capturing, processing, and protecting information 4. describe how companies can share and access information and knowledge ©2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited

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Capturing Information 

Manual 

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completing forms

Electronic   

bar code electronic scanner optical character recognition

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Disadvantages of Different Kinds of Storage Devices       

Paper Microfilm CDs DVDs Data storage tapes Hard drives RAID

Adapted from Exhibit 5.3 ©2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited

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Processing Information 

Processing information 

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transforming raw data into meaningful information that can be used in decision making

Data mining 

process of discovering unknown patterns and relationships in large amounts of data

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Data Mining  

Data warehouse Two types  

supervised unsupervised    

association or affinity patterns sequence patterns predictive patterns data clusters

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Protecting Information 

Protecting information 

Process of insuring that data are reliably and consistently retrievable for authorized users only    

firewalls virus data encryption virtual private networks

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Security Threats to Data and Data Networks  

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Denial of service Web server attacks Corporate network attacks Unauthorized access to PCs Viruses, worms, Trojan horses

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 

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Malicious scripts and applets E-mail snooping Keystroke monitoring Referrers Spam Cookies

Adapted from Exhibit 5.4 ©2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited

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Accessing and Sharing Information    

Communication Internal access and sharing External access and sharing Sharing knowledge and expertise

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Communication      

E-mail Voice messaging Conferencing systems Document conferencing Application sharing Desktop videoconferencing

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Internal Access and Sharing 

Executive Information System (EIS)

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Intranets

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Executive Information System 

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Uses internal and external sources of data Used to monitor and analyze organizational performance Must be easy to use and must provide information that managers want and need

©2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited

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Characteristics of Bestselling Executive Information Systems Ease of use 

few commands, important views saved, 3-D charts, geographic dimensions

Analysis of information 

sales tracking, easy-to-understand displays, time periods

Identification of problems and exceptions 

compare to standards, trigger exceptions, drill down, detect and alert newspaper, detect and alert robots

Adapted from Exhibit 5.5

©2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited

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Intranets 

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Private company networks Allow employees to easily access, share, and publish information using Internet software Very popular

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Why 80% of Companies Now Use Intranets Intranets:  are inexpensive  increase efficiencies and reduce costs  are intuitive and easy to use  work across all computer systems and platforms  can be built on top of existing networks  work with programs to convert electronic documents to HTML Adapted from Exhibit 5.6 ©2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited

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External Access and Sharing Electronic Data Exchange

Extranet

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Internet

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Sharing Knowledge and Expertise

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Knowledge is the understanding one gains from information. Decision support systems (DSS) 

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use models to acquire and analyze information

Expert systems 

Replicate experts’ decisions

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What Really Happened? 

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Dell shares information with suppliers Dell is on the cutting edge of technology Dell uses information to determine actual sales

©2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited

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