E-Business and Content Management Systems

Since being coined a term in 1996 [1] more and more traditional businesses are becoming electronic businesses. An electronic business is a business that uses information systems and the internet to perform all business-related tasks and functions.[2] A subset of electronic business is Customer Relationship Management, or CRM. This subset falls under the ‘Internal Business Systems’[1] category because it is a business system that is used internally as part of an electronic business. 

A customer relationship management system is software that automates and integrates the functions of sales, marketing, and service in an organization.[2] A businesses CRM system typically comes in the form of a software package. These are either applications that business host internally or third party services that businesses uses over the internet. The typical system includes a backend database that stores information about every customer contact in the company. This database of customer data is that accessed, updated and maintained by certain employees from different departments. One usage example would be an customer service employee who takes calls from customers. This employee can utilize the CRM to quickly lookup the customer by a given identifying attribute (name, customer number, ect) and can instantly see all of the data on file for the customer. This results in the employee being able to give fast efficient service to the customer. This employee would be making use of the contact management, sales management, and customer support[2] features of a the CRM. In addition, by inputting data and feedback from the customer other departments can utilize this data to run analysis[2] and improve other areas of the business.

There are many free options out there for small businesses who just need a basic solution, even some that are open source such as OpenCRX (http://www.opencrx.org/) and Zurmo CRM (http://zurmo.org/). There are also more robust paid products for larger companies and organizations. SugarCRM for example has many distributions including an open source community edition and a paid enterprise level versions[4].

In conclusion, customer relationship management is a very useful way for a business to manage their customer base. There are many CRM options that even the smallest business can utilize, such as the free version of SugarCRM[4]. Having a management system in place that stores customer information allows businesses to be more efficient and therefor more profitable. It helps businesses improve their overall customer service by giving employees a quick and efficient way to handle customer relationships. Reference pages 250-251 in the Fundamentals of Information Systems textbook[2] for more examples of CRM implementations.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_business

[2] Fundamentals of Information Systems textbook

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_management

[4] http://www.sugarcrm.com/products

Hardware and Software

With the advances in the telecommunications sector over the last few decades it is becoming exponentially important that business utilize these new technologies as much as possible. Staying current in the mobile world is critical in keeping up with the competition and is an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage. There is an ever growing number of products and services on the market business can utilize in the mobile regime of work.

A cell phone is a critical piece of hardware that can help even the smallest business go mobile. A cell phone contains a mobile operating system which is core system software that gives it a user friendly interfaced focused on usability. This operating system is displayed on the cell phones display monitor, which is hardware that makes digital content visible. Recently the emergence of touch-sensitive displayshas made this piece of hardware even more user friendly, which increases productivity. Cell phones also can take advantage of speech-recognition technology, pen input devices, and also many often contain built-in digital cameras.

A common but critical piece of software a small business can use to advance its mobile productivity is e-mail management software such as Microsoft Outlook. This software is primarily used on the windows operating system, and its purpose is to making sending, receiving, and managing emails easier than other methods.

Cloud storage is yet another highly valuable technology that a small business can take advantage of. Having company data and documents on not only an external storage device, but one that is part of a cloud that everyone in the organization can access on a variety of devices, makes mobility considerably easier. 

Monitoring Social Networks

Social media networking is a relatively new type of technology that brings together consumer data in a way that has never been done before. With these companies now collecting personalized data from a good chunk of the worlds population (twitter approaching 1 billion users) it is an increasingly important avenue for businesses to utilize.

Social media monitoring companies make it considerably easier for a company to make sense of the vast amount of data that is being input by the second. They help businesses answer age old questions such as “How does the public like our new product?” or “Is our new ad campaign gaining traction?”. Businesses pay these third party companies so they can acquire useable breakdowns of data which can be useful in many different aspects of the organization. While many are paid subscription based, these social monitoring companies are not all paid services. There are free services such ashttp://backtweets.com/ and even http://www.google.com/alerts that search and produce breakdowns of data for free.

Take for example Gardener’s Supply, the largest direct marketing gardening supply company in the United States. Their marketing department utilizes a third party company called marketwire to measures success using several metrics: number of replies to emails, which stories are written about most, and how often the stories are retweeted. In addition to this analysis, the company was looking for a solution that would allow bloggers and other gardening focused journalists to easily find stories, images and video. For this they were able to use another marketwire service called ‘Marketwire Impress’ which aggregates blog posts and social media into one location, dubbed the “newsroom”.[1]

1 - http://www.marketwire.com/getattachment/knowledge_Sharing/Case-Studies/CaseStudy_Gardiners.pdf 

Systems

A system is a term used to refer to a collection of processes brought together to perform a task. There are systems all around us, in science and in nature, both naturally and artificially created. As broad of a definition as it may sound, systems come in an exremely wide variety of types and are applied to nearly everything imaginable.

Since systems encompass such a vast amount of things and seem to be endlessly interconnected with one another. “Rather than reducing an entity (e.g. the human body) to the properties of its parts or elements (e.g. organs or cells), systems theory focuses on the arrangement of and relations between the parts which connect them into a whole (cf. holism).[1]” What this means is that instead of getting tied up in the seemingly endless amount of individual entities that make up a system, system theory tries to focus on their relationships from a broad perspective. This gives is a distinction to ‘system theory’ when compared to just using the term “system”.

“A system, as a unit of analysis, may be both part of a whole (a component of subsystem) and the whole for a set of lower level components.”[2] A simple yet robust example of a system is the human digestive system. This essentially Inputs food, Processes it by extracting nutrients and breaking down the waste, and outputs the useful and wasteful components. The digestive system even provides feedback by letting us know if it is working properly via the central nervous system. It is fascinating that an analogy can be built by something inside of our own bodies to explain the same processes that are found in information systems.

Of course there are the more technology and information based systems more the central focus of this class, which are generally man-made. There are hardware, software, or organizational systems that people have created to efficiently accomplish a task. One thing that I did not realize coming into this course was how it information systems correlate to systems found in nature. It seems that nature itself and the human condition when confronted with a task is to apply a system to it and perpetually evolve the systems efficiency to provide a better output. This can be evident in nature via the Developmental Systems Theory, which is a framework for understanding how humans evolve as a species, which argues that human species as whole follow the four same stages of development that individuals follow: codependence, counterdependence, independence and interdependence. Similar to the stages of an information system, and all other systems, “each stage contains essential developmental processes that must be completed in order for an individual, couple, family, group, organization or nation-state to move on to the next stage. The most critical factor in our model is making sure that children are able to complete these processes on time and in a healthy family environment. Then they are able to move forward in their development.” [3]

[1] http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/SYSTHEOR.html

[2] Organization - communication. 5. The renaissance in systems thinking http://books.google.com/books?id=q3JYZmgk0UgC&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=system+theory+subsystems+digestive&source=bl&ots=xUiv35VcGO&sig=4ciHXD3K7zV5p5MAvkdJ7Qk2muQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=UVDkUbaoDta-4AOnmoG4Bg&ved=0CFUQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=system%20theory%20subsystems%20digestive&f=false  (Google eBook)

[3] http://weinholds.org/developmental-systems-theory/

A1.4 Value Chain

This is the business breakdown of my new campus venture to buy and sell used Music CDs to other students here at Ramapo College. Since it is a service and the goods are purchased and sold the only raw materials that come into play are to repair or enhance the core product (music CD), which in this case is just replacement jewel cases. The Inbound logistics consists of first locating a used CD, receiving it by meeting on campus in person, and than transporting it to warehouse. This is where an inbound tracking system will be utilized in the form of a spreadsheet/database. The new CD(s) will be added to this database as new, unsold inventory.

Warehousing and storage of the CDs will be done in a sectioned off closet in my apartment. Fortunately music CDs do not take up much space, so the designated closet can fit several hundred CDs at once comfortably. It is at this point where production would come into play, but since the goods are being purchased there is nothing to product. There are however repairs / enhancements that can be done, such as replacing worn jewel cases. Here will also be a quality control component to verify that the first 10 seconds of the first 5 songs play on my generic CD player without skipping. This repair and quality control process will be tracked in the logistics database mentioned earlier by updating each piece of inventory accordingly.

The distribution portion of this business consists of transporting and hand delivering of the inventory. Marketing and sales will consist of having a website up with current inventory showing all of the CDs currently for sale. A prospective buyer than can contact me directly and setup a time and place on campus to meet to make the transaction. I will than pull the CD from inventory, complete the transaction, and than update the database to record the transaction details and that the CD is no longer available for sale. This will instantly remove it from the website. Additional advertising will be in the form of flyers posted up around campus, which is simple and does not require a promotional planning system.

Customer service and feedback consists of issues being reported directly to me by email or phone. All CDs sold are guaranteed to work or your money back for 24hrs. This allows customers ample time to test and return and damaged goods (which should mostly by caught by quality control before the item makes it into inventory). Feedback will also be collected by phone and email.  

Analyzing Value of IS

Redmine (http://www.redmine.org/) is a project management web application. It falls into the software category of a computer-based information system.

Input - Redmine inputs consist of 2 main sets of data, tasks and people (human resources). Initially a new project is created and all of the potential people allocated to the project are added into the system, than tasks can be added as needed. Tasks are input into the system along with several corresponding properties such as description, priority, due date, and estimated completion time. Another important input is the time someone spends on a given task.  

Process - The core process of the Redmine system is to take the tasks that were input and assign them to people working on the project. Tasks can be quickly and easily moved from one assignee to another.

Output – Redmine outputs useful information in a variety of ways, including what human resources were spent on which tasks, via graphs and spreadsheets, and what tasks have been completed overall for a given time period. This is particularly useful for management to see how far along a project is and how much resources it took to get there which can be used to keep things on track.

Feedback –  The most critical form of feedback given from Redmine is overall progress on a project and how it correlates to deadlines. When things start to fall behind Redmine catches it and makes it very clear that there is a problem, enabling project managers to fix the situation before it gets worse and deadlines are not met.