Systems Development and Project Management

1. Explain the triple constraint and its importance in project management.
Within a project there are three primary variables, these are cost, scope and time. They have an interdependent relationship and all projects are limited in some way by one of these variables. The framework for evaluating these competing demands is known as the triple constraint. If one of these factors changes, at least one of the other factors will also be affected. Project management involves making tradeoffs between the time, cost and scope of the project. Each of the factors play a significant part in the value of a project. The triple constraint needs much consideration when planning for a successful project.

2. Describe the two primary diagrams most frequently used in project planning

A PERT(Program Evaluation and Review Technique) chart is a graphical network model that depicts a projects tasks and the relationships between these tasks. It defines the dependency between project tasks before the tasks are scheduled. In the diagram boxes display various attributes for the project such as schedule and the arrows indicate the one task that is dependant on the start or completion of another task. The critical path is the path from the start to the finish of the project that passes through all the tasks that are critical to the completion of the project.

A Gantt chart is a simple bar chart that depicts tasks against a calendar. In a Gantt chart the tasks are listed vertically against the schedule which is horizontal. This particular diagram is ideal for representing the schedule of a project.

• Follow this clip for a simple explanation of a PERT chart and how to build one.

3. Identify the three primary areas a project manager must focus on managing to ensure success.

• People-this involves managing the people involved in completing the project and any conflicts that may arise during the duration of the project. Managing people is one of the more difficult factors in ensuring the smooth completion of the project. A project manger not only has to manage the stakeholders of the project, and the project but the development team as well.

• Communications-communication is the key to a successful project and it is often helpful if the project manager plans what and how to communicate as a formal part of the project management plan. A communication plan is where the manager distributes timely, accurate and meaningful information such as time, cost, quality and scope. Also involved with the communication is the need for the project manager to update stakeholders of the progress of the project and makes any requests of additional resources.


• Change-changes can come in the form of a crisis, market shift or technological development. A successful project manager will learn how to adapt to and even predict changes over the course of the project. Change within the duration of the project is inevitable and with the challenges and complexities that organisations face in today’s rapidly changing environment, effective change management is a critical core competency. Change management is a set of techniques that aid in the evolution, composition and policy management of the design and implementation of a system.


4. Outline 2 reasons why projects fail and two reasons why projects succeed
Failure


• Poor scope-this refers to the work that must be completed to deliver a product with the specified features and functions. A project scope statement includes constraints, assumptions and requirements. If the scope of the project is not adequately planned the final product won’t be achieved because either it won’t meet the requirements or the work will also affect the time and cost of the project. With a poor scope the designated work will take longer than initially estimated or even come in over budget.


• Lack of project management-this can lead to numerous issues such as unreasonable time, cost and scope, there is a need to seek a good balance on these competing demands throughout the project. Between 30-70% of projects fail because a project won’t be delivered upon schedule, come in over budget or don’t deliver the scope initially agreed upon. A good project manager must also manage the people involved, communication and the change over the course of the project. If a project manager cannot ensure that the people involved with the project are able to work together the project won’t align with the schedule and the work won’t be done to a satisfactory level.

• Follow this clip for an insight into some of the challnges for a project manager.
• Video Clip: 7 reasons why projects fail

 Success


• Good communication- a project will have the adequate support of all involved because they will be informed and understanding of the requirement for the project. If all involved are kept in adequate communicative bounds they will be able to contribute effectively whilst also feeling part of a team environment.


• Good decision making structure-this involves initially choosing the correct people, cost, time and scope of the project. It can also mean making decisions regarding whether or not to outsource the project, these are vital in the success of the project. Good decision making can also be a factor when changes occur during the projects duration and a manager must make crucial decisions to ensure success.

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Customer Relationship Management and Business Intelligence

1. What is your understanding of CRM?

CRM is managing all aspects of a customer’s relationship with an organization to ensure the loyalty of customers which will increase the success of the business. It allows an organization to gain insight into a customers buying and selling behaviors which can be used in marketing applications or to support the organization offer a high level of service.

CRM can also be understood as a business strategy and business process which is enhanced by technology. With the use of CRM an organization can gain specific insight into a customers purchasing behavior and then design a specific marketing campaign to suit the customer, in turn encouraging increased customer spending. Harrah’s Entertainment Inc is a provider of branded casino entertainment through operating subsidiaries employs loyalty cards to follow every move made by the customer over the 28 properties. The loyalty cards are used to enhance the customer experience to ensure they return, this could be done through offering gifts for birthdays which are recognized by the loyalty card.

If an organisation realise and understand the needs of individual customers they are better placed to achieve a competitive advantage. Some if the distinct benefits of CRM are that it provides better customer service, improved caller efficiency, greater effectiveness of cross selling, simplifies marketing processes and contributes to gaining increased customer revenue. Once an organisation compiles the CRM information it can be used to create marketing campaigns and sales promotions by indentifying patterns.

There are three phases in the in the use of CRM, reporting, analysing and predicting. Reporting helps to identify customer across application, analysis helps to sort the customers into categories and predicting helps an organisation to predictions based on past customer behaviour.

• Video clip on how to implement effectve CRM

• Follow this link to understand how software can assist CRM

 


2. Compare operational and analytical customer relationship management.

Operational customer relationship involves the support of transactional processing of everyday operations that deal directly with customer interaction. In comparison transactional relationship management is the support of the behind scenes operations and strategic analysis, this includes all the systems that don’t deal directly with the customer. The main difference between operation and analytical customer relationship management is the interaction with customers, operational CRM deals with customers whereas analytical doesn’t involve the interactions with customers.

3. Describe and differentiate the CRM technologies used by marketing departments and sales departments.
The CRM technology used by marketing departments supports the organization in gathering and analyzing customer information to enhance their marketing campaign. By tracking a customer’s sales history an organization can design a specific marketing campaign to appeal them specifically. There is three primary CRM technologies an organization can implement, list generator, campaign management and cross selling and up selling. List generators compile customer information from a variety of sources and sort it for different marketing campaigns. Campaign Management systems guide users through marketing campaigns performing tasks such as campaign definition, planning scheduling segmentation and success analysis, Cross selling which offers marketing departments all kinds of information about a customer and their products which is used to identify cross selling and up selling campaigns.

• Follow this link for a video clip explaining target markeing

The sales CRM involves the strategic use of the wealth information acquired by an organization. The Sales Force Automation is a system that automatically tracks all of the steps on the sales process and has a focus on increasing customer satisfaction, building customer relationships and improving product sales by tracking all sales information. The three primary CRM technologies a sales department can implement are sales management CRM systems, contact management CRM systems and opportunity management CRM systems. Sales management CRM systems automate each of the steps in the sales process helping individual sales representatives coordinate and organize all of their accounts. Contact management CRM system maintains customer information contact information identifies future customers for sales opportunities in the future. Opportunity management CRM systems target sales opportunities by finding new customers or companies for future sales.
4. How could a sales department use operational CRM technologies?

• This link conveys the importance of contact centres

There are two main reasons for a sales department to require the use of operation CRM technologies. Sales representatives where struggling with the overwhelming amount of customer account information they were required and maintain and track and companies where struggling with the issue that much of their vital customer and sales information remained in the heads of their sales representatives. Operational CRM can assist sales representatives in organizing their accounts with features such as calendars, alarms, customizable multimedia presentations and document generation. Also help to maintain customer records and identify prospective customers, with the operational CRM a sales representative can have all customer information when answering a call to ensure that a customer feels valued. Also a sales department can employ CRM to gain insight into new customer and companies for future sales, as well defining selling efforts and budgets.


Three CRM technologies a customer service department can implement to increase customer satisfaction are contact centre, web based self-service and call scripting. A contact centre is where service representatives attend to customer enquiries and problems, this can potentially achieve a high level of customer support which is critical in gaining and keeping customers. Web-based, self-service system allows customers to find answers to enquiries and problems through the web. This feature allows customers to receive the support they require in their own time, which is efficient and maintain a sense of customer satisfaction. The use of call scripting employs organizational databases to track similar enquiries and automatically generate the details for the service representative who then relays this information to the customer.

5. Describe business intelligence and its value to businesses
Business intelligence refers to applications and technologies that are used to gather, provide access to and analyse data and information to support decision making efforts. It has a significant value to a business with the large amount of decisions being made daily. To improve the quality of business decisions, managers can provide existing staff with BI systems and tools that can assist them in making better, more informed decisions. Business intelligence ensures that the information being gained by an organisation is successfully used to gain profits and make successful decisions.


Shell Services International’s BI solution gave the company information about revenues for fuel and non fuel business. They were able to improve margin and turnover from BI by discovering that 20% of their products where delivering 80% of their sales. They were also able to negotiate better deals with suppliers and improve master file management, this helped reduce working capital.

Some benefits associated with BI is that it offers a single point of access to information for all users, which allows users with authorisation permission access information from databases, or a number of other sources. BI can be sued in every step of the value chain; every department within an organisation is able to benefit from BI. It can provide up-to-the-minute information, it gives users the tools to quickly and easily find immediate answers to their questions.

• Follow this link for a further explanation of business intelligence

6. Explain the problem associated with business intelligence. Describe the solution to this business problem.

The problem associated with business intelligence is that many businesses have a wealth of data available to them, however this information is not being used to make effectively. This is known as data rich, information poor; companies have a mass of data however it is not being converted into useful information. With the vast amounts of data it takes a significant amount of time for managers to gain a clear picture from the fundamental information, such as inventory levels, orders in pipeline and client history. The challenge is to transform this data into useful information; this information can be leveraged to increase company profitability.


Business Intelligence is the solution to converting data into useful information. Business intelligence is the applications and technologies that are used to gather, provide access to and analyze data and information o support decision making. With business intelligence the wealth of data is being transformed into an understandable and meaningful context which can assist in making business decisions.
7. What are two possible outcomes a company could get from using data mining?

• This clip hows how data is converted into a meaningful visual context

A company can increase sales through market basket analysis, which employs the information from website and checkout scanner to detect customer buying behaviour and predict future behaviour. This information can be used for cross selling and up selling marketing campaigns specific to a customer to increase their purchase.


Increased success in a marketing strategy, this can be achieved with cluster analysis. Cluster analysis segments customers into mutually exclusive groups. One such grouping could be grouping into postcodes, understanding demographics, lifestyle behaviours and buying patterns of the most profitable segments on the population to achieve success in a targeted marketing campaign.

Operations Management and Supply Chain

1. Define the term operations management
Operations management is concerned with the good and services provided by the organisation and interested in the management of systems or processes to transform recourses into products or services. Operations management has the responsibility of ensuring that the business processes are efficient as possible to bring about the greatest profit.

2. Explain operations management’s role in business
In a business this may typically involve turning inputs into outputs. Ensuring that the business processes employed by the organisation are not only effective but also efficient. This may involve the use of business process modelling and further, business process improvement and re-engineering. Overall operations management is responsible for managing the core processes used to manufacture goods and produce services.


Within an organisation the scope of operations management includes many interrelated activities such as forecasting, capacity planning, scheduling, managing inventories, assuring quality, motivating employees, deciding where to locate facilities and much more.


Some of the decisions made by operations management within an organisation include:


• What resources will be needed and in what amounts?


• When will each resource be needed? When should the work be done? When should materials and other supplies be ordered?


• Where will the work be performed?


• How will the product or service be designed? How will the work be done? How will resources be allocated?


• Who will perform the work?

3. Describe the correlation between operations management and information technology
It plays a fundamental role in the effectiveness of operations management. IT is able to heavily influence the decisions made by operations management including productivity, costs, flexibility and quality and customer satisfaction. IT has significant benefits for the operational decisions because Operations Management has a large influence over the degree which the goals and objectives of the organisation are carried out.

Operational Management information systems are vital for managers in making decisions which involve various outcomes, there is a need to weigh up possibilities. These systems are critical if operations management intend to make well informed decisions. The decision support systems and executive information systems are employed by operations management when making these decisions.


4. Explain supply chain management and its role in a business
Supply chain management involves the management of information flows between stages of the supply chain to maximise the effectiveness. There are five steps involved with supply chain management;


1. Plan-plans for managing all resources that go towards meet customer demand for services.


2. Source-selecting reliable suppliers that will deliver goods and services required for making products.


3. Make –companies manufacture products or services


4. Deliver-often referred to as logistics, set of processes that plans for and controls the efficient and effective transportation and storage of supplies from supplier to customer.


5. Return-companies must create a network for receiving defective and excess products and support customers who have problems with their product or service.
Supply chain management plays a significant role in business and has a large advantage in offering a competitive advantage. If a business has an effective supply chain, they are able to offer high quality customer service and provide good products and services. By implementing good supply chain metrics an organisation can assess how the supply chain is operating over time period and make any necessary improvements. An effective supply chain will involve reduced operating costs, improved asset productivity and compressed cycle time.

• Follow this clip to see the effect of bad supply chain management

Dell computers are a good example of a successful supply chain management system which has led to a successful business. Dell incorporates a highly efficient built- to-order business model which enables it to deliver customised products to its users. Dell employs supply chain tools to provide global views of forecasted product demand and materials requirements as well as improved factory scheduling and inventory management.

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  Fords supply chain
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  Dell Suuply Chain

5. List and describe the five components of a typical supply chain

• Supplier-company producing the product or service, they form the initially step in the supply chain. This involves developing the product and service.

• Manufacturer-this involves the building or making of the product or service to be sold.


• Distributor-responsible for distributing the product from the warehouse to the retail outlet.


• Retailer-shop or business where the product or service is sold from.

• Customer-the person who purchases the final product or service.

6. Define the relationship between information technology and the supply chain.

IT is responsible integrating the supply to achieve greater capabilities and profits. The primary role when it comes to supply chain management is creating the integration of processes and information within a firm such as marketing, finance, sales, manufacturing and distribution. It is also responsible for the integration between firms which brings about smooth flow of information and products between customers, suppliers and the transportation. IT integrates the decision making process, business operating processes and information sharing for business performance management. Thus the relationship that exists between IT and the supply chain is one in which IT improves the supply chain through integration. IT has made it possible bring the notion of an integrated supply chain to life.

Enterprise Architecture

What is information architecture and what is information infrastructure and how do they differ and how do they relate to each other?

Information architecture identifies where and how important information within an organisation is stored such as how customer records and secured and maintained. This includes the backup and recovery of information, disaster recovery plan and information security. Information infrastructure refers to the hardware, software and telecommunications equipments which provide the foundation to support the organisations goals. This infrastructure must be flexible, scalable, reliable, available and provide good performance. The difference between the two is that information architecture refers to the plan determining how the vital information is stored and maintained whereas information infrastructure is the concrete methods and hardware employed by an organisation to implement and store the information.

Describe how an organisation can implement solid information architecture

Any single system crash without adequate backup and recovery can cost an organisation more than the time and money lost in returning the system, much of the data cannot be recreated and thus an organisation must implement a successful backup and recovery plan. This a strategy for how the information it to be copied and stored in the event of system failure and the recovery refers to how the organisation will return the system to working order after failure. This needs to complement the business strategy because there is many different types of backup and recovery media which only differ in the time and money, these include CDs and DVDs, redundant storage servers and tapes or disks. Each organisation will have vastly different amounts of critical information and thus each organisation must implement a strategy which will address the needs of the business. One organisation who has implemented a solid backup and recovery plan is 7-eleven Taiwan who upload the backup and recovery information from the central location to other chain locations daily. They have implemented a new technology allowing quicker and more reliable backup and recovery of information which automatically resumes the download of information when the connection fails without having to start over which saves valuable time.

Another vital strategy which a company must implement in order to have solid information architecture is the disaster recovery plan which details how and organisation will recover information or IT system in the event of disaster such as fire, flood or harmful hacking. The organisation will need to determine whether they require a hot site which allows employees to restart work immediately at a fully equipped separate site or a cold site which is not equipped however still provides a working environment in the event of disaster. This plan must minimise the cost to the organisation in recovering from disaster as well the cost to the organisation as a result of loss of vital information and technology. One organisation Milspec Services Pty Ltd acquired a business continuity plan through a technology company known as GCOMM which addresses the need to recover the business activity in the event of disaster. The solution involved a virtual cluster of new and existing servers and storage hardware, and a data centre in a different location which contained replicated data. The information is updated via a WAN, which ensures a less than five minute recovery point and less than four hours to shift all input/output and processes to from the primary location to the secondary location in the event of disaster.

• click here for a short clip on disaster recovery plans on several businesses.

In terms of implementing solid information architecture the organisation must also address information security. The organisation must safeguard the vital data through managing user access such as passwords so that only those with the pass word can access the information and up to date antivirus software and patches to ensure that hackers spammers and other malcontents are not able to sabotage the information. One organisation which have updated their security plan to gain more solid information architecture is OMD a media buying and planning subsidiary of Omnicom Group Inc which adapted the installation of patches onto the servers. Initially the network administrator had to manually install patches on all the 100 serves throughout the organisation which took over a week, now OMD uses automated installation software for patches and upgrades so that all departments where not down all at once during a patch install.


List and describe the five requirement characteristics of infrastructure architecture.
- Flexibility-an organisation must be able to meet all the business changes including the requirements of the business at the present time as well as the business requirements in the future. One example might be the ability to hold various languages and currencies in the event that the company begins to perform business in other countries, it will have the flexibility to adapt to this demand otherwise it will need to redesign all its systems.

- Scalability-there is a number of factors which can create organisational growth such as market, industry and economy, scalability refers to the ability which an organisation can adapt to increased demands. If the organisation grows faster than anticipated it may experience performance degradation however an organisation may implement capacity planning to determine the future IT infrastructure requirements for new equipments an additional network capacity.


- Reliability-ensures that all systems are functioning correctly and providing accurate information, unreliable information places a risk on the organisation when making decisions based on information.


- Availability-addresses when the system can be accessed by users, an organisation requires a system which has high availability in that it is continuously operational for long periods of time. One challenge faced by an organisation is determining when to schedule downtime for a system to carry out maintenance if the system is expected to operate continuously.


- Performance-measures how quickly a system performs certain processes or transactions, inadequate performance capacity will have a significant effect on the business as customers require efficient services. Capacity planning can help determine future IT infrastructure requirements for new equipment and additional network capacity.

Describe the business value in deploying service oriented architecture
Service orientated architecture is a concept which involves integrating business as linked repeatable tasks to ensure that the IT systems can adapt with the rapidly changing business demands. SOA involves reusing the existing IT investments to provide flexibility and strengthens the already existing It infrastructure. Rather than starting fromt he beginning to build business processes the business uses existing applications to run current processes. With increased need for scalability and flexibility in business SOA allows an organisation to address the new requirements and to plug in new services or upgrade the existing services in a granular fashion. An example of a business that has successfully incorporated SOA is Ezy DVD. They represent the value in deploying SOA with the need to integrate the order processing when they started running business online, they hire DVDs through both the web and retail shops and with SOA a single application now handles the initial order processing both sales channels so that order processing is now efficient and effective.


What is an event?
An event detects any threats and opportunities in the organisation and alerts those who are equipped to act on this information. This uses IT systems to monitor a business process for events that are important. Such threats and opportunities include low stock in a warehouse or a large charge on a consumer’s credit card. A credit monitoring system automatically alerts a credit supervisor and shuts down an account when a $7000 charge is processes on a $6000 credit card.




What is a service?
Is simply a business task, what a company does on a regular basis, these business processes broken up into repeatable tasks or components. There is both high and low level services such as saving and printing documents or performing a credit check, customer information and process payment. A service is valuable because it describes a business process that is used not only by programmers who want the code in another application but also for business people who want to use it across multiple products such as car loans or mortgages. The company Telstra Australia builds its land, mobile and broadband services starting at the highest level services to the lowest level services to ensure that not services are built and go unused.






What emerging technologies can companies use to increase performance and utilise their infrastructure more effectively?
Virtualisation is one emerging technology companies can use, it is a framework for dividing resources of a computer into multiple environments. With system virtualisation the rescources of one single computer can be presented as a collection of separate computers, they appear to both the user and the outside world as separate computers with their own network identity, user authorisation and authentication capabilities, operating system version and configuration, applications and data. It is one technology particularly able to utilise infrastructure more effectively with the ability of running software on one physical unit that emulates multiple pieces of hardware. The logical functions of computing, network and storage are separated into their physical functions which can then be manually of automatically allocated to meet the changing needs of the business. With virtualisation one virtualised server costs four virtual servers and therefore the company are able to cut the costs of their infrastructure as well as offering rapid application deployment, dynamic load balancing and streamlined disaster recovery. With an exponential increase in the internet business are required to update their methods off business to reach a wider market and keep up with the current market who require efficient and effective services. There has also been adaption from manual work to automated services virtualisation offers a cut in the power and money required to run the required multitude of servers and the need to have personnel to manage the increase in servers and thus it is one of the emerging technologies to increase performance and utilise hardware efficiently.

• Follow this link for more information on virtualisation

Grid computing operates by applying the resources of many computers to a single goal at one time. The computing, network and storage resources in separate places are aggregated to provide improved performance, higher quality of service, better utilisation and easier access to data. Organisations can optimise computing and data resources, pool them for large capacity workloads, share them across networks and allow collaboration. In terms of increased performance and better utilisation of hardware, it allows improved productivity and collaboration of virtual organisations, allowing widely dispersed departments and business to create virtual organisations to share data and resources, providing instantaneous access to massive computing and data resources. Grid computing works by leveraging existing capital investments, which in turn help to ensure optimal utilisation and costs of computing capabilities. Google the successful global search engine is based on one of the largest grid computing systems in the world. It runs on thousands of servers by estimate to be around 450 000 in thousands of clusters in dozens of data centres around the world. By having its data centres distributed geographically around the world it offers improved performance to its world wide audience.

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  Follow this link for a video clip which further explains grid computing the and the benefits.

Networks, Telecommunications

1. Explain the business benefits of using wireless technology.


Wireless technology allows the user to access a live internet connection via satellite or radio transmitter. In conjunction with the growth in mobile technology and the benefits of accessing information and the ability to work in unlimited places and times, wireless technology allows access to information at unlimited places an times. Wireless technology allows people to stay connected with wealth of information via the web at all times. This can be used in business to perform activities such as sending and receiving emails as well as accessing data. This plays a role in increasing customer service and creating more efficient business processes by cutting down the time taken to respond without the need to return to an office. Wireless technology such as Bluetooth creates efficiency in file sharing amongst users, as well as eliminating complicated cords or wires. One specific application is the ability to make phone calls without the need to hold the phone.



2. Describe the business benefits associated with VoIP

Voice over IP (VOIP) uses TCP/IP technology to transmit calls over internet technology. Significant savings can be made with VoIP because it uses existing network and internet infrastructure to route calls more efficiently and effectively than a traditional phone service. The telecommunications industry is experiencing great benefits from combining VoIP with emerging standards that allow for easier development, interoperability among systems and application integration. Along with open standards combination VoIP, has produced more choices, lower prices and new applications.

Skype has been one of the most popular VoIP options for consumers; this is largely due to the low costs associated with its use because it allows free calls between Skype and minimal costs to other landlines. Recently two features have been added which contribute to its benefits for business; Windows Installer/MSI package which make it easy to roll out the application to multiple machines and the Skype for business control panel that allows administrators to manage all of a company’s Skype accounts from a centralised interface. Some of the Skype feature which are also attractive for business use are the ability to forward calls and filter unwanted calls and conference calling which allows up to ten users. One other useful feature is the file transfer that makes it easier to collaborate with colleagues over the phone, users are able to send reports, pictures and other files.

Rip Curl, one of the largest surf and snow brands worldwide use Skype’s free instant messaging and video calls to track communications with international colleagues. The head of Rip Curls’ IT directed all employees to sue Skype as their preferred method of communication. With more than 1200 staff members and retail presence in more than 60 countries , the company faces communication challenges in keeping aligned with international trends, VoIP through he use of Skype is one efficient and effective method of communication to overcome the challenges created by distance.


Some of the VoIP features include:


• Business application integrations


• Calender integration


• Call waiting


• Caller ID


• Click-of-a-mouse simplicity, employees are able to transfer calls right on their computer


• Conference call and file sharing


• Comprehensive information about each caller


• Dial by name capability


• Easy navigation


• Four or five digit dialling to anyone


• Mobility-can be used anywhere


• Three way calling.

• Follow this link for a description of VoIP and the benefits

3. Compare LANs and WANs

A Local Area Network (LAN) connects computers in close proximity to each other such as in an office building for file sharing, games, printers and other applications whereas A wide Area Network (WAN) connects computers which are further geographically separated by either state or country even. A Wide Area Network is also able to connect other Local Area Networks or other LAN’s may also connect to the internet or other WAN’s.



4. Describe RFID and how it can be used to help make a supply chain more effective.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) use active or passive tags in the form of smart chips which fulfil the purpose of tracking. These chips or smart labels combined with an antenna can store unique identifiers and relay information to electronic readers. When this tag is placed on any product it automatically reports its location to the RFID reader which can be found on shop shelves, checkout counters, loading bay doors and shopping carts.

With an RFID tag the inventory is taken automatically and continuously which provides more thorough and accurate information. The supply chain is the organisation of the activities or processes involved with getting the product from the supplier to the customer. The RFID keeps track of this process, to improve the planning and execution with the ability to account for the product along with the way. With the accurate and constantly updated information businesses are able to assess and make informed decisions to improve the supply chain and gradually make it more efficient. The RFID also extends to transmitting information about the product, including the price, serial number and when and where it was made.

• Follow this link for a clip on the benefits of RFID in the future.
• This Link is a clip which shows one of the applications of RFID

5. Identify the advantages and disadvantage of deploying mobile technology.

Mobile technology is the ability for technology to travel with the user; users are able to download software, email messages and web pages on their laptop or other mobile device. In terms of business companies are employing this mobile technology to increase productivity, speed delivery to market and reducing operating costs.


The mobile devices are continually advancing to offer additional functionality and the accompanying mobile networks are advancing rapidly in speed and throughput abilities. This mobile technology is beneficial in gaining a competitive advantage, it allows retailers to enhance worker productivity, operational efficiencies and brings about widespread increase in customer service availability. In terms of products mobile technology has the ability to keep track materials and shipments from supplier to customer in both the sales floor and warehouse. Mobile technology has adapted the data collection process which is now automated, this has the advantage of improving the analysis process, with results being made available to continually improve the customer service. One example where mobile technology has a significant and positive influence is where it has been applied by the Finnish government employed the mobile network to warn citizens of disasters, they also suggest hikers carrying mobile phones, even without cellular coverage an rescue aircraft is able to detect the signal attempting to reach a base station.


The Personal Digital Assistant is one application of mobile technology. It is a small hand held computer capable of entirely digital communications transmission. The PDA can display, compose, send and receive email messages.


Being such a new concept mobile technology has many given benefits although, one disadvantage is the need for an organisation to assess the limitations of the technology and apply it to their business strategy. This might include understanding the reliance upon mobile devices for information security as unsecure and recognising the need to apply appropriate backup of data.

As with any use of data corporations much ensure the protection of mobile information assets, with the application of mobile technology also comes the need to provide security for this new wealth of information. It may prove more difficult for an organisation to monitor access and authorisation with mobile devices being used away for the work premises, thus an organisation must implement strategies to deal with the increased security risk.


One mobile technology which has specific limitations or disadvantages at present is the Radio Frequency Identification which brings about privacy issues. These include the identification of a customers location if they are carrying a product tagged with RFID and it can also identify where the product was purchased, the time and date and how frequently the customer enters the particular store.

• This is a link to a clip on mobile technology and its applications in society. 

Databses and Data Warehouses

List, describe, and provide an example of each of the five characteristics of high quality information.



• Accuracy-relates the information and whether it is correct, for example is the name spelt correctly or has the date been recorded correctly.


• Completeness- whether all the required information is there or is there values missing. When recording the address of a customer is all necessary elements included such as the number, street, suburb and postcode.


• Consistency-is the information in agreement in all areas such as the total field of the information equal to all the individual fields.


• Uniqueness-is each transaction, entity and event represented only once in the information. Has any single customer been entered into the database more than once?


• Timeliness the information up-to-date with the needs of the business. How often is the information updated such as hourly, weekly, monthly in terms of addressing the requirements of the business.

Define the relationship between a database and a database management system.


• A database maintains information about various types of objects, events, people and places; it has a schema which is a structural description of the types of information held within the database. A database management system is a computer program designed to manage and query a database. It is a program through which users are able to interact with the database. The user sends request to the database management system which in turn performs the manipulation of the database to gain the required information. The relationship is one of which the database management system acts to obtain or seek out information within the database through queries.

• follow this link for information on Database Management Systems and how a database improves the quality of information

 Describe the advantages an organisation can gain by using a database.


There is many advantages to a good database such as flexibility, increased scalability and performance, reduced information redundancy, increased information integrity and increased information security.


A database allows the flexibility of allowing any user to access the information in whichever way suits there required needs. Consider the example that one user might require the customer records in alphabetical format in which case the surname should appear first where as another user might require the same records working with a catalogue mailing system in which case they require the first name to come first. A database allows flexibility in how the information is stored and viewed. A good database is also able to handle changes quickly and easily just as any business needs to handle changes in the same way and thus a database is able to support an organisation in this regard.


Scalability refers to the ability to cope with increased demand, an organisation must be able to support hundreds of thousands of online users including employees, partners, customers and suppliers. Databases are able to scale to exceptional levels to support all users and programs to perform information processing and searching tasks.


A database is able to reduce information redundancy which is the duplication of information, this occurs because organisations constantly store the same information in multiple locations. The problem with redundant information occurs when it is recorded inconsistently, thus leaving it difficult to determine which values are correct and most accurate. One goal of a database is to eliminate incorrect information by recording information in only one place in the database; this saves space, makes performing information updates easier and improves the quality of the information.


The integrity of the information refers to the quality, in a database integrity constraints ensure the quality of information is high. The database management system ensures that users are unable to violate the two constraints, relational integrity constraints and business-critical integrity constraints. Relational integrity constraints are the rules that enforce basic and fundamental information based constraints such as placing an order for a nonexistent customer. Business-critcal constraints enforce business rules that are required in order for the database to improve the success of the business, these require knowledge and insight. The integrity constraints are responsible for better quality information which in turn produces better quality decisions.


Any organisation must protect its information which is an asset; a database offers many security features such as passwords, access levels and access controls. Therefore a data base not only stores the information but can be responsible for the security of the information.

Define the fundamental concepts of the relational database model.


The fundamental concepts of the relational database model are the entities, entity classes, attributes, keys and relationships. An entity is the person, place, thing transaction or event that the database describes or of the information stored. The attributes, the columns or fields are characteristics of the entity class which if describing a customer may include Customer ID, Customer Name and Phone. The two keys the primary key and the foreign key are used to establish the relationships with the database. The primary key is field that identifies an entity in a table and a foreign key is the primary key in one table that also appears as the attribute in another table. The foreign keys act to provide a relationship between both the tables.

• Follow this link for a further explanation of a relational database

Describe the benefits of a data-driven website.

A data driven website is one which is kept constantly updated to the requirements of the customers by an integrated database. With any website there may be a large quantity of information which a majority proves useless for a particular user, on a data-driven website the user is able to apply a query to return on the information specific to their interests.

A data-driven website can be updated frequently with little difficulty, no developer or HTML programming are required. The website can grow and change faster than a typical static website, small changes such as the layout, displays and functionality of the site are easier, A well designed data driven website will have ‘error trapping’ to ensure that the information in entered in the correct format and filled out correctly, which can be a difficult taks with large amounts of content. Most static websites require a programmer which means that a business does not have direct access to the site which delays any changes and can cause misunderstandings.

Describe the roles and purposes of data warehouses and data marts in an organization

A data warehouse is a collection of databases that supports business activities and decision making. The data warehouse fulfills the role of bringing all the information of the databases into a central location to allow employees to make decisions and undertake business analysis. The data warehouse brings together the same information in aggregated form to simplify the activities.

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  Follow this link for further explanation of a data warehouse

A data mart brings together the information in a subset to focus on a particular unit within the business. With a given unit the data mart provides the specific information such as that related to finance. This provides a more efficient process of decision making and analysis within a given area, without the need to sort out the unnecessary information in the database.

• Follow this link for a further explanation of a data mart.

BS 106-Weekly Question 4

Ethics and Information Security

1. Explain the ethical issues surrounding information technology.

• There are five main issues surrounding the use of information technology:

 Intellectual Property-rights which attempt to protect any form of creative or intellectual effort.

 Copyright –exclusive rights of a creator to do certain acts or omit to do certain acts with property such as a song, video game or toher types of documents. These rights can be licensed, transferred or assigned to another.

 Fair use doctrine-certain situations in which it is legal to use copyright material.

 Pirated Software-using, distributing and duplicating of copyright software without given permission.

 Counterfeit Software- creating software to pose as or represent other software and sold under false terms to be the software.

2. Describe the relationship between an ‘email privacy policy’ and an ‘Internet use policy’.

• Both the internet and the email privacy policy set out adequate guidelines to how both of these applications should be used. The ‘email privacy policy’ is a guideline to how employees are required to use their given email and the appropriate use for the internet in both work and private, non employment related activities. It will address the activities which can be viewed and the type information stored and viewed by the employers. The ‘internet use policy is a guide for the approporate use of the internet which will address the available sites and the attitude taken by the organization towards the purpose of internet. The ‘email privacy policy’ can be covered in the ‘internet use policy’ as one area of internet use.

3. Summarize the five steps to creating an information security plan.

• The five steps involved with creation an Information Security Plan are:

1. Develop Information Security Policies-an organization must nominate or hire someone who is responsible for writing a security plan to suit the organization and bringing this into force. These policies may include simple enforceable tasks such as passwords for employees to log into their work space and regularly updating passwords to ensure they remain unknown.

2. Communicate the information policies-ensure that all employees understand the guidelines and enforce strict adherence to the policy to ensure that it is followed through.

3. Identify critical information assets and risks-eliminate possible risks by safeguarding any information which can be sourced by outside networks, and incorporate the use of passwords and IDs and anti-virus software.

4. Test and re-evaluate risks-to ensure that the policy is performing to a high standard continually assess the use of security, run background checks and perform audits.

5. Obtain stakeholder support-to ensure the policies are enforced gain the support of the origination executives.

4. What do the terms; authentication and authorization mean, how do they differ, provide some examples of each term.

• Authentication-involves confirming a person’s identity and following this authorisation involves determining which areas of information they have access to. In terms of authorisation organisations can employ methods such as passwords or ID, smartcards or tokens and fingerprints and voice signature. The authorisation may restrict the time limit or the area in which an employee has access.

5. What are the five main types of Security Risks, suggest one method to prevent the severity of risk?

1. Human Error-this can be overcome through policies to ensure that employees are aware of what is acceptable and enforced with consequences. These policies such as an Information Security Plan, Information, Privacy Policy, Internet Use policy or Email privacy policy which also ensures that employees are educated and understand possible security risks.

2. Technical Failure-if an organization is prepared in the event of technical failure this will reduce the extent of the security risk. Such methods as obtaining a backup of information and introducing fault tolerance ensures that the recovery of the technical failure is quick and ensures as little as possible damage to the organization.

3. Natural Disaster-if a natural disaster occurs an organization can reduce the severity through a hot or cold site in which employees are able to continue work and restore data assuming that the initial site is damaged. A hot site is a separate facility equipped so that the business can resume almost instanteously whereas a cold site does not contain the computer equipment but will provide a site to work.
Data Security: From Paranoia to Necessity

4. Deliberate Acts-an organization should incorporate appropriate anti-virus programs, anti-spam software, anti-spyware and phishing filters which detect and respond deliberate acts which will pose a security risk.
A deliberate attack on Computers

5. Management Failure-ensure that management is trained in understanding the security risks and methods to prevent these, an organization must have high standards in protecting their information which must include the management. If employees to understand security risk management they must also be instructed by management who follow the correct procedures. The Chief Security Officer should ensure that management have an understanding and keep in constant contact to update any potential security risks.
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