Type:
Solution Manual
Information Technology for Management Advancing Resource: Sustainable, Profitable Business Growth Edition:
9th Edition
Author(s):
Efraim Turban Carol Pollard Gregory Wood
IT at Work 1.1 Watson Wins Jeopardy, Leaving Human Champions in Its Silicon Dust Questions 1. Explain how Watson figured out the most likely response to win the tournament. Watson parsed the question down into keywords and sentence fragments in order to find statistically related phrases. Watson was able to quickly execute thousands of language analysis algorithms simultaneously to compile potential answers and determine the level of confidence associated with each one. 2. View the IBM demo, “Turning insight into outcomes,” at http://ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/business_analytics/article/outperform_with_smarter_analytics. html. 3. Discuss how companies in various industries are using the insights from analytics to achieve significant outcomes in customer satisfaction and retention, operational efficiency, financial processes, and/or risk, fraud, and compliance management. Data analytics can help institutions develop practices for attracting new clients, creating new products and finding new opportunities. They can use data analytics to improve customer loyalty and retention by increasing customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction can be increased by understanding the customers better. A single view of the customer can be formed by integrating data from multiple customer databases containing customer profiles and histories. Through an enhanced understanding of their customers, companies can find out what is and is not important to their customers as well as provide them with a more personalized experience and respond to their unique needs. Customer service representatives are able to respond more appropriately to the needs of customers. Predictive analytics can be used to identify customer groups and their purchase behaviors. Marketing campaigns can be directed to those specific groups and opportunities for cross-selling products can be found. Marketing activities can be linked to results to see how well the campaigns are working. Managers are better able to put the right resources at the right place at the right time. Data analytics can also be used to flag data outliers and suspicious activities.
IT at Work 1.2 Federal Cloud Computing Strategy Questions 1. Why did the federal government shift to the cloud? The Federal government shifted to the cloud to reduce the cost of Federal Information Technology systems while improving its capabilities and stimulating the development of innovations in IT solutions.
2. What external pressures are motivating the shift to cloud computing? Society’s reliance on mobile devices and accessing data from anywhere at any time provides pressure. The ability to allow employees to work from home and collaborate on projects virtually is also important. The need to reduce energy consumption and to minimize our carbon footprint could also encourage the use of cloud computing. 3. What three types of benefits did they expect? The three benefits that were expected were improved:
• • •
Efficiency through better asset utilization, system consolidation, and application development productivity; Agility through responsiveness to technology needs available through software as a service accessibility, and; Innovation through entrepreneurial culture and application of emerging technologies.
4. In your opinion, was this shift to the cloud a smart decision for taxpayers? Explain. Yes, it was a smart decision for taxpayers. Taxpayer dollars are better utilized and with society’s movement toward mobile technologies, this change will increase the availability of data to mobile devices.
IT at Work 1.3 The Internet of Things Questions and online activity 1. Research Zipcar. How does this company’s business model differ from traditional car rental companies, such as Hertz or Avis? Zipcar is an alternative business model to the car rental practice that is more flexible and convenient for customers. It exploits the developments in technology to a greater extent in order to provide personal transport services. One becomes a member in Zipcar by paying an application fee and, to retain membership, an annual fee. Zipcar offers car-sharing opportunities for an hourly usage as well. Members can reserve Zipcars online by paying a reservation fee. In Zipcar, cars are parked in specific locations around members’ neighborhoods. Members have automated access to cars enabled by RFID transponders. After use, members return the cars to the same place they started. Each car keeps track of the usage. The fees the members pay takes care of the gas, parking, insurance and maintenance. When there is unauthorized use, there are system features to remotely disable car mobility using sensors. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipcar for recent updates on this topic. 2. Think of two physical things in your home or office that, if they were embedded with sensors and linked to a network, would improve the quality of your work or personal life. Describe these two scenarios.
Answers could vary. But they all need to state the objective, the specific information gathered (sensed) and how that information is used in delivering the desired service. Such applications could involve remote operations of appliances, sensing status changes, and reminders for timespecific events. Turn on the oven remotely by sending a message to the home network; open the door for the pet when it makes a certain type of noise (the sensor is set to detect it). 3. What demands does the Internet of things place on IT budgets or data centers? In addition to the one-time costs of implementing such Internet of things, budget provisions should be made for maintaining those sensor-driven systems. In certain cases, the sensed data may have to be stored and archived for future use. Companies may have to consider outsourcing and cloud computing to optimize their costs in handling sensor-driven systems and in managing the volume of data they generate. 4. What are some privacy concerns? Several data points about customers are collected. The data could contain personally identifiable information (PII) as well. Hence, protection of such information, especially when used in conjunction with cloud computing, could be a major privacy concern. Only the minimum necessary personal data should be collected to reduce this risk in handling PII. Sometimes such data may be shared with other businesses and this may require transferring the data to other locations. Such extended use of customer information increases the risks concerning privacy. Judicious collection of customer information is used in Zipcar. For instance, even though it is easy to track where all of the customers travelled, such information is not collected in the system.
IT at Work 1.4 Radical Change in Opportunities to Gain a Competitive Advantage Questions and Online Activity 1. Explain the differences in the first and second halves of the Information Age, according to Gartner. The IT discipline is evolving. In the earlier half of the Information Age—before the release of the internet for public use and the developments in the mobile computing field—the focus was on business applications and their modified extensions to the personal domain through PCs. The technology providers experienced enormous growth during that period. However, newer social applications and extensive use of embedded systems, together with internet and mobile applications, provide the growth in IT during the latter half of the Information Age. On the business sector, further growth is taking place for harnessing the data collected through such social systems. Cloud computing is considered an option for handling and analyzing such Big Data. It is important to realize that the evolution in IT is a spectrum that is always changing. What the Gartner report provides is just a snapshot in the overall IT spectrum.
2. Register for a free account at gartner.com. Search for the latest webinar on hot IT trends, such as The Gartner Hype Cycle Special Report. Watch the webinar. In a report, identify the title and URL of the webinar, then describe three important trends and their impacts that were covered in the webinar. There are some 92 reports listed under four categories: Technology Applications, Information and IT Services, Industries, and Innovation Insights. Answers could vary regarding URL. For instance, what’s hot for 2012 is a topic hosted by Mr. Jackie Fenn found under the URL: http://my.gartner.com/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=202&mode=2&PageID=5553&re f=webinar-rss&resId=1825121 In this, there is a short video by Chris Howard on the confluence of four elements (forces): social, mobile, cloud and information.
IT at Work 1.5 Finding Qualified Talent Questions and Online Activities 1. Visit and review the Amazon Mechanical Turk Web site. Explain HITs. How do they provide an on-demand workforce? Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is a marketplace for helping companies with small tasks attract short term contract employees to fulfill those tasks. Amazon defines the Mechanical Turk as a “marketplace for work” where they “give businesses and developers access to an on-demand, scalable workforce.” Amazon Mechanical Turk’s HITs stand for Human Intelligence Tasks and are small tasks that need to be completed by a person. They can consist of small activities such as small Internet searches or classifications of URLs. Amazon provides an on-demand workforce by providing a framework that allows companies to post tasks as they become available and potential contract employees to search through those tasks. Businesses post a task, its description and details about the task such as the time requirements, the reward they are willing to pay for the task, and the quantity needed, and then individuals search through the tasks to see which ones they are qualified to perform and then submit a request to perform that task. Contract employees can work on the task on their own time. 2. Visit and review the InnoCentive Web site. Describe what they do and how. InnoCentive is an open innovation company that posts research and development “challenge problems” in a marketplace format for anyone to try to solve. Challenge problems come from a broad range of domains including: engineering, computer science, math, chemistry, life sciences, physical sciences and business. Cash prizes are awarded to the best solutions. Through this