University:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Course:
15.992 | S-Lab: Laboratory for Sustainable Business
Academic year:

2023
Views:

81

Pages:

25
Author:

Madisyn Hansen

Chapter 5 Managing Information What Would You Do?    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? Moore’s Law Prediction that every 18 months, the cost of computing will drop by 50 percent as computer-processing power doubles. 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 Strategic Importance of Information  First-mover advantage  Sustaining a competitive advantage Using Information to Sustain a Competitive Advantage    Does the information create value? Is the information different across firms? Can another firm create or buy the technology? Characteristics of Useful Information     Accurate Complete Relevant Timely The Costs of Useful Information      Acquisition Processing Storage Retrieval Communication 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 Capturing Information  Manual   completing forms Electronic    bar code electronic scanner optical character recognition Advantages and Disadvantages of Different Kinds of Storage Devices        Paper Microfilm CDs DVDs Data storage tapes Hard drives RAID Processing Information  Processing information   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 Data Mining   Data warehouse Two types   supervised unsupervised     association or affinity patterns sequence patterns predictive patterns data clusters 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 Security Threats to Data and Data Networks      Denial of service Web server attacks Corporate network attacks Unauthorized access to PCs Viruses, worms, Trojan horses       Malicious scripts and applets E-mail snooping Keystroke monitoring Referrers Spam Cookies Accessing and Sharing Information     Communication Internal access and sharing External access and sharing Sharing knowledge and expertise Communication       E-mail Voice messaging Conferencing systems Document conferencing Application sharing Desktop videoconferencing Internal Access and Sharing  Executive Information System (EIS)  Intranets Executive Information System    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 Characteristics of Best-selling 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 Intranets    Private company networks Allow employees to easily access, share, and publish information using Internet software Very popular 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 External Access and Sharing Electronic Data Exchange Extranet Internet Sharing Knowledge and Expertise  Knowledge is the understanding one gains from information. Decision support systems (DSS)   use models to acquire and analyze information Expert systems  Replicate experts’ decisions What Really Happened?    Dell shares information with suppliers Dell is on the cutting edge of technology Dell uses information to determine actual sales