Ch. 10 - Developing Business Systems

Last night, we learned about the Systems Development Cycle (SDLC). The SDLC is the most common approach to Systems Analysis and Design (SA & D) and has five phases.

• Phase I. Systems Investigation Stage: must answer two questions - (1) is this system desirable? (2) is it feasible to develop? Feasibility also has five different categories: operational, economic, technical, human factors and legal/political. If the system fulfills each category and both questions, it is possible to move on to:
• Phase II. Systems Analysis: an in-depth study of end user information needs and preferences that produces functional requirements that are used as the basis for the design of a new information system. This phase has three parts: organizational analysis, logical analysis and functional requirements analysis & determination.
• Phase III. Systems Design: modify the logical model until it represents a blueprint for what the new system will do. There are three major deliverables: user interface design, data design, and process design.
• Prototyping is the rapid development and testing of working models used in design phase.

We are going to learn about the last two phases next week. I did not find this section difficult to understand, although I think it will be easier to connect the dots once we finish learning about all of the phases.

Ch. 9 - Artificial Intelligence Technologies

We finished up Chapter 9 by learning about Artificial Intelligence, a field of science and technology that strives to develop computers and robots that can simulate the ability to think, hear, walk, talk and feel - to produce devices that exhibit behaviors that most people would call "intelligent." We learned about Turing's test and that it is estimated that by the year 2020-2030, computers will be able to pass Turing's test. The situation is as follows: a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with one human and one machine, each of which tries to appear human. All participants are placed in isolated locations. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test.

We also learned about cognitive science, a branch of AI, which focuses on researching how the human brain works and how humans think, learn, solve problems and make decisions. Another branch of AI is robots, which are mobile machines that possess computer intelligence but are computer controlled, with humanlike physical capabilties.

We watched a really interesting video about the capabilities of virtual reality, and how it is possible to create a three-dimensional world by relying on multisensory input and output devices. Technology today is really amazing but it's also scary to think about how fast we are advancing. I can only hope that technology doesn't turn against us in the next few decades.

Ch. 9 - Decision Support in Business

Tonight we learned about two main information systems - MIS (Management Information Systems) and DDS (Decision Support Systems). We learned about three different decision structures - Structured, Unstructured and Semistructured.

Decision Support Systems provide interactive information support to managers during the decision making process. Four types of analytical modeling using DSS include: (1) What-if Analysis, (2) Sensitivity Analysis, (3) Goal-Seeking, and (4) Optimization.

Alternatively, Management Information Systems produce information products that support many of the day-to-day decision-making needs of managers. Alternatives to MIS include: Periodic Scheduled Reports, Exception Reports, Demand Reports & Responses, and Push Reporting.

We also learned a little bit about dashboards, which was really familiar to me. As the Business Manager for The Panther Newspaper here at Chapman, I need to have access to our department budget. Chapman Financial Services uses a program called "Dashboard" (not a very original name) to allow users to track our revenue, expenses, deposits and withdrawals. I can also use the program to track our staff payroll. This program is extremely useful and I really appreciate the ability to have real-time access to our budget.

Exam #3 - Ch. 6 & 7

Tonight was our third exam. I spent more time studying for this one and I definitely found the subjects a lot easier to comprehend than our last exam. Chapter 6 about telecommunications networks was pretty technical and it took more time to understand, but Chapter 7 on Enterprise business systems and functional business systems was actually pretty interesting to learn about and it was more like common sense stuff..but maybe that's because I've already taken marketing, finance and accounting classes so a lot of the things we learned in that chapter was like review. Especially the information about CRM, SCM, Marketing, Accounting Info Systems and Financial Management Info Systems.

The actual exam itself was fine. One or two of the T/F and multiple choice questions were tricky, but the short answers were straightforward. Overall, I think it went okay and I hope I did well :)

Ch. 8 - E-Commerce Applications & Issues

Tonight, we learned about e-commerce trends and success factors, disintermediation and types of e-commerce marketplaces. Disintermediation means to get rid of the intermediaries, or to cut out the middle men. For example, say you buy a dress shirt from Macy's for $50. You can buy the exact same shirt directly from the manufacturer (online or otherwise), from the same brand, for a much cheaper price. Why? Because by purchasing directly from the manufacturer, you can cut several costs out of the supply chain including the costs charged by the distributor, warehouse, truck shipments and retailers (utilities, employee salaries). Disintermediation emphasizes direct sales over the Internet.

We also learned about five different types of e-commerce marketplaces:

• One to Many: sell-side marketplaces (one major supplier)
• Many to One: buy-side marketplaces (many suppliers)
• Some to Many: distribution marketplaces (unite major suppliers to attract more buyers)
• Many to Some: procurement marketplaces (unite major buyers to attract more suppliers)
• Many to Many: auction marketplaces (many buyers and sellers)

Ch. 8 - Electronic Commerce Fundamentals

On Tuesday, we learned about e-commerce, internet addressing and IP addresses. E-commerce includes the online processes of developing, marketing, selling, accepting payments, delivering and servicing. The heart of e-commerce is B2B (business to business) e-commerce. The nine process categories of e-commerce are:

• Access control and security
• Profiling and personalizing
• Search management
• Content
• Catalog management
• Workflow management
• Event notification
• Collaboration and trading
• Electronic payment process

We also learned about IPv4 versus IPv6. Currently, we are using IPv4, but it was kind of scary to learn that the number of available IP addresses using this system is expected to run out by the end of 2010 or beginning of 2011. IPv4 is limited to 4.3 billion different addresses. It's so hard to believe that we have almost reached this limit. It really makes you think about how far technology has come and how widespread the Internet is. IPv6 will have better security and will be able to host about 1 billion different IP addresses PER PERSON on Earth! I wonder how long it will take tor us to outgrow this system, hopefully not for awhile.

Ch. 7 - Functional Bus. Systems

On Thursday night, we learned about five functional business systems: (1) marketing, (2) manufacturing info systems, (3) human resource management, (4) accounting info systems, and (5) financial management systems.

While we were learning about manufacturing info systems, we also learned about CAM (computer-aided manufacturing). We watched a few videos of robots putting together parts to make a chair. Prof. Tuggle mentioned that these were examples of "stupid robots" because they could only work if the parts were laid out in the right place for the robot to grab and attach to the chair. They do not have a sense of what they're grabbing or what it's for, they just do what they are programmed to do. So this is the reason for a lot of human injury in the robotics manufacturing process - if a person is in the wrong place at the wrong time, the robot may end up grabbing the person and injuring him. I decided to look up the number of robot accidents that have occured in the last few years, and I found this information:

"Robot accidents specifically are not tracked by the reporting agencies; rather, they are lumped in with other industrial accidents. As a result, no specific statistics are available. The good news is that there are not many robot accidents--accidents where the injury is caused by direct involvement with the robot. The bad news is that any accident is often serious. I am only aware of one fatality in the last five years, although there were several incidents in the same period."

The other four topics were pretty much review to me, because I've taken a Marketing, Accounting Info Systems and Financial Management class in the last year. I am interested in learning more about HRM though, because I always thought that might be a career I might enjoy doing?