Download Chapter 5

Management
Second Canadian Edition
Chuck Williams
Alex Z. Kondra
Conor Vibert
Slides Prepared by:
Kerry Rempel, Okanagan College
©2008 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited
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Chapter 5
Managing Information
©2008 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited
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What Would You Do?
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London has the worst
traffic in Europe
How can London use
information technology to
solve its traffic problem?
How can London handle
the amount of data
collected from so much
traffic?
©2008 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
computer-processing power
doubles.
Adapted from Exhibit 5.1
©2008 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
©2008 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited
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Strategic Importance of
Information
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First-mover advantage
Sustaining a competitive advantage
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Using Information for First
Mover Advantage
Information Technology can:
 Substantially lower costs
 Differentiate a product or service from
competitors.
Adapted from Exhibit 5.2
©2008 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
©2008 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited
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Characteristics of
Useful Information
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Accurate
Complete
Relevant
Timely
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The Costs of
Useful Information
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Acquisition
Processing
Storage
Retrieval
Communication
©2008 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited
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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
©2008 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited
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Capturing Information
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Manual
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completing forms
Electronic
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bar code
electronic scanner
optical character recognition
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Advantages and Disadvantages
of Different Kinds of Data
Storage Devices
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Paper
Microfilm
CDs
DVDs
Data storage tapes
Hard drives
RAID
Adapted from Exhibit 5.3
©2008 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited
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Processing Information
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Processing information
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transforming raw data into meaningful
information that can be used in decision
making
Data mining
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process of discovering unknown patterns
and relationships in large amounts of data
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Data Mining
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Data warehouse
Two types
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supervised
unsupervised
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association or affinity patterns
sequence patterns
predictive patterns
data clusters
©2008 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited
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Protecting Information
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Protecting information
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Process of insuring that data are reliably
and consistently retrievable for authorized
users only
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firewalls
virus
data encryption
virtual private networks
©2008 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited
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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
Adapted from Exhibit 5.4
©2008 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited
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Malicious scripts and
applets
E-mail snooping
Keystroke
monitoring
Referrers
Spam
Cookies
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Accessing and
Sharing Information
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Communication
Internal access and sharing
External access and sharing
Sharing knowledge and expertise
©2008 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited
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Communication
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E-mail
Voice messaging
Conferencing systems
Document conferencing
Application sharing
Desktop videoconferencing
©2008 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited
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Internal Access
and Sharing
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Executive Information System (EIS)
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
©2008 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited
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Characteristics of Best-selling
Executive Information Systems
Ease of use

few commands, important views saved, 3-D
charts, geographic dimensions
Analysis of information
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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
©2008 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
©2008 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited
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Why 80% of Companies
Now Use Intranets
Intranets:
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are inexpensive
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increase efficiencies and reduce costs
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are intuitive and easy to use
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work across all computer systems and
platforms
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can be built on top of existing networks
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work with programs to convert electronic
documents to HTML
Adapted from Exhibit 5.6
©2008 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited
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External Access and Sharing
Electronic Data Exchange
Extranet
©2008 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited
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
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Replicate experts’ decisions
©2008 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited
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What Really Happened?
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London broke the project into smaller
pieces which could be handled
efficiently and independently on their
own.
London utilized information technology
to allow people to pay online, via cell
phone text message or kiosks.
Congestion dropped by 30%
©2008 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Limited
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