Weekly Questions-Week 4

1. What is an IP Address? What is its main function?
An IP address is a unique number assigned to each computer in the world which enables computers to talk to each other.

2. What is Web 2.0, how does it differ from 1.0?
Web 2.0 is read/write web where users can be involved in the website. This can be seen in social networking sites such as Facebook. It differs from Web 1.0, which is a one way publish web, because it allows users to contribute to the website rather than have a webmaster who just publishes onto the site.

 3. What is Web 3.0?
Web 3.0 is a term used to decribe the evolution of web usage and interaction among several separate paths. These include turning the internet into a database, a move towards making content accessible by multiple non-browser applications and the leveraging of artificial intelligence technologies.




4. Describe the different methods an organisation can use to access information
An organisation can use a number of different methods to access information, including intranet, extranet and portals.
Intranet is an internalised portion of the internet, protected from outside access, that allows an organisation to provide access to information and application software to only it employees.

Extranet is an intranet that is available to strategic allies.

Portals are a website that offers a broad array of resources and services, such as email, online discussion groups, search engines and online shopping malls.

5. What is eBusiness, how does it differ from eCommerce?
eCommerce refers to online transactions - buying and selling of goods and/or services over the Internet. eBusiness covers online transactions, but also extends to all Internet based interactions with business partners, suppliers and customers such as: selling direct to consumers, manufacturers and suppliers; monitoring and exchanging information; auctioning surplus inventory; and collaborative product design. These online interactions are aimed at improving or transforming business processes and efficiency.


6. List and describe the various eBusiness models?
Business to business (B2B):applies to businesses buying from and selling to each other over the internet
Business to consumer (B2C): applies to any business that sells tis products or services to consumers over the internet.
Consumer to business (C2B): applies to any consumer that sells a product or service to a business over the internet
Consumer to Consumer (C2C): applies to sites primarily offering goods and services to assist consumers interacting with each other over the internet.

7. List 3 metrics would you use if you were hired to assess the effectiveness and the efficiency of an eBusiness web site?
- Cookie: a small file deposited on a hard drive by a website containing information about customers and their web activities
- Click-through: a count of the number of people who visit one site and click on an advertisement that takes them to the site of the advertiser
- Banner-ad: small ad on one website that advertises the products and services of another business, usually another dot.com business


8. Outline 2 opportunities and 2 challenges faced by companies doing business online?

Oppurtunities
Highly accessible- businesses can operate 24 hours a day, 7days a week, 365 days a year.
Improved information content-in the past customers had to order catalogues or travel to a physical facility before they could compare price and product attributes. Electronic catalogues and web pages present customers with updated information in real time about goods, services and prices.
Challenges
Protecting Consumers-consumers must be protected against unsolicited goods and communication, illegal or harmful goods, insufficient information about goods or their suppliers, invasion of privacy and cyberfraud
Increasing liability- e-Business exposes suppliers to unkown liabilities because internet commerce law is vaguely defined and differs from country to country. The internet and its use in e-business have raised many ethical, social and political issues, such as identify theft and information manipulation


All information sourced from:

- Baltzan, P., Phillips, A., Lynch, K., & Blakey, P. (2010). Business Driven Information Systems. Sydney: McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd.
- Lecture Slides

Weekly Questions-Week 3

1.Define TPS & DSS, and explain how an organisation can use these systems to make decisions and gain competitive advantages
Transaction Processing Systems: the basic business system that serves the operational level(analysts) in an organisation.
Decision Support System: models information to support managers and business professionals during the decision-making process.


2.Describe the three quantitative models typically used by decision support systems.
Sensitivity analysis- study of what happens to the result if you change one or more parts of the system
What-If analysis-study of the impact of a change in an assumption on the proposed solution
Goal-seeking analysis- finds the inputs necessary to achieve a desired level of output.


3.Describe a business processes and their importance to an organisation.
A business process is a set of steps done to achieve a goal. They are important to an organisation as they turn a set of inputs into a set of outputs and without them organisations cannot achieve goals.


4.Compare business process improvement and business process re-engineering.
Business process improvement is all about looking at current processes and making small performance improving changes where necessary whereas business process re-engineering is a complete overhaul of business processes, basing itself on the assumption that current business processes don’t work and as such redesigns the business processes.





5.Describe the importance of business process modelling (or mapping) and business process models
Business process modelling is the activity of creating a detailed flowchart or process map of a work process, showing its inputs, tasks and activities in a structured sequence. A business process model is a graphic description of a process showing the sequence of process tasks, which is developed for a specific purpose and from a selected viewpoint. The purposes of a process model is to expose process detail gradually and in a controlled manner, encourage conciseness and accuracy in describing the process model, focus attention on the process model interfaces and provide a powerful process analysis and consistent design vocabulary. They are an important feature as they provide visibility over the business process.

All information sourced from:
- Baltzan, P., Phillips, A., Lynch, K., & Blakey, P. (2010). Business Driven Information Systems. Sydney: McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd.
- Lecture Slides

Weekly Questions-Week 2

1.Explain information technology’s role in business and describe how you measure success?

Information technology plays mainly a support role in business. The information technology department of a business’ role is to align itself with the strategic direction of the business and to support the business process.

The success of an IT department can be measured using a number of methods. The first is efficiency IT metrics which measure the performance of the IT system itself, such as throughput, speed and availability. The second is effectiveness IT metrics which measure the impact IT has on business processes and activities including customer satisfaction, conversion rates and sell-through increases.

2. List and describe each of the forces in Porter’s Five Forces Model.

Porter’s five forces model determines the relative attractiveness of an industry. It can help a company identify potential opportunities while determining potential rivals.

3. Compare Porter’s three generic strategies.
Once an organisation decides to enter an industry it must formulate a strategy for entring this market. An organisation can follow one of Porter’s three generic strategies, which are:
1) Broad cost leadership
2) Broad differentiation
3) Focused strategy
Competitive scope is a demand-side dimension and looks at the size and composition of the market you intend to target. Cost strategy is a supply-side dimension and looks at the strength or core competency of the firm. In particular he identified two competencies that he felt were most important: product differentiation and product cost.

4. Describe the relationship between business processes and value chains.

A business process is a standardised set of activities that accomplish a specific task. A business uses the value chain approach to evaluate the effectiveness of its business process. By performing certain activities in the value chain a business creates value. The value chain approach views an organisation as a series of processes, each of which adds value to the product or service for the customer. Value creation is the result of effective business processes and efficient value chains.
No matter the purpose whether for efficiency or effectiveness there has to be benchmarks, baseline values the system seeks to attain, set. The third system to measure an It departments success is benchmarking which is the process of continuously measuring results, comparing results and identifying improvements.

 

All information sourced from:

- Baltzan, P., Phillips, A., Lynch, K., & Blakey, P. (2010). Business Driven Information Systems. Sydney: McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd.
- Lecture Slides