INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT - WEBSITE STUDY

QUESTION :

• - Choose and study one website. 

1. Effectiveness IT metrics

• Usability
• Satisfaction
• Conversion rate

2. Efficiency IT metrics.

• Throughput 
• Transaction speed
• System availability
• Information accuracy
• Web traffic 
• Response time

- First of all, based on the question given, I have choose ZALORA as my website study. This is because i know that ZALORA is one of the popular website among the online shopper.

This is one of the ZALORA Logo for its website.
www.zalora.com - zalora websites.

ZALORA company background
Here i will tell you a little bit about ZALORA. ZALORA is actually a company that focused e-commerce site in Southeast Asia. It also start operating in early 2012. They also offering an extensive collection of over 500 top international and local brands and designer. They also offer a thirty - day free returns policy, speedy deliveries within 1-3 within working days, free delivery over a certain spend and multiple payment methods including cash-on-delivery.

Efficiency of IT Metric :
- It is used to measures the performance of the IT system itself including throughput, speed and availability. 
In this website i will study the efficiency of IT metrics base on 5 characteristic which are throughput, transaction speed, system availability, information accuracy, web traffic and response time.

1. Throughput 
- Throughput is the amount of information that can travel through a system at any point.

so, if the customer are visiting the website there are a lot of information that they can get in one time. the picture above shows the type of information that the customer can get when they use the website. this information can help the customer to know what is the term and condition that they have to follow if they are shopping with ZALORA website. For example,  the customer is purchasing one item from the website, if anything bad happened on the item they know how long they will have time in order for them to return back the item and get refund or change it with another item that have the same price as the previous item.

2. Transaction speed

- It is the amount of time a systems takes to perform.

Based on my study, the system just takes a second to perform every time i am clicking the website button. This show, how fast and efficient this website in order to ease and comfort their customer when they are trying to look around in the website .

They also offer fast shipping to the customers. meaning that every clicking on purchasing they can get it in 1 to 3 days within the working hours. the customer also called it "flash shipping".

Another example, if the customer want to visit another types of item such as from bags to shoes he or she just have to click on it and in the blink of an eye everything will come out. so the customer do not have to wait for a minutes or for an hour just to window shopping.

3. System Availability.

- It is defined as the numbers of hours a systems available for the users. Meaning that, how long the customers can visit the system.

For ZALORA, the system  availability for the customer to visit the site is 24 hours per week, but for the Customer Service they only on from 9.00 A.M until 6.30 P.M accordingly operates with the working hours. So the customer can take their time to choose their best design and brand as much as they want in order to get the satisfaction on the purchasing item.

4. Information Accuracy

 - The extent to which the system generates the correct results when executing the same transaction numerous time.

For ZALORA all the information that they provided to their customer is all accurate and can be trusted. this is because they want to create their competitive advantages that can influence the customers to remain with their website shopping company. It is also to create trust among customer.

5. Web traffic

- includes a host of benchmarks such as the number of page views. the number of unique visitors, and the average time spent viewing a web page.

this is the statistical analysis of ZALORA's page viewer from Alexa.

6. Response time

- The time it takes to respond to user interactions such as a mouse click.

In my observation ZALORA website has the efficient response rate. This is because it just need a click for me to open up the website and only a click i can explore the website.

Effectiveness of IT Metrics

- Effectiveness of IT Metrics is measures the impact IT has on business processes and activities including usability, customer satisfaction, conversion rates and financial.

1. Usability

-  The ease with which people perform transactions and/or find information. 

- A popular usability in the internet is the degrees of freedom, which measures the number of clicks required to find desired information. Meaning that, it is easy for people to perform transaction and getting information.

In ZALORA the customer can makes the transaction easily because they have provided the way on how to make a transaction, the term and condition that the customer must know in order to make a purchase on an item. besides, customer also can get the information about the items style, design, price and so on easily because everything is just at the fingertips. furthermore, ZALORA always updating new information in their website so that the customer can get a value information from the website.

2. Customer satisfaction

 - Measured by such benchmarks as satisfaction surveys, percentage of existing customer retained, and increases in revenue dollars per customer.

3. Conversion rates 

- The number of customers an organization 'touches' for the first time and persuades to purchase its products or services.

- This is a popular metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of banner, pop-up, and pop-under ads on the internet.

- Meaning that, once people open the websites there will be a lot of advertisement. So it is used to measure how many people who visited the website will click, read and buy the ads ( items sells in it )

In conclusion ZALORA is the most effectives and efficient website for the customer who likes to do online shopping.

CASE STUDY 1 : APPLE - MERGING TECHNOLOGY, BUSINESS AND ENTERTAINMENT

                                       

 

QUESTION 1

 

Explain how Apple achieved business success through the use of information, information technology and people.

As we know, information define as data converted into a meaningful and useful content. Based on this, Apple's founder actually had created products that are interesting and follow the trend nowadays. With the used of information, Apple analysis and make decision on making their product in order to increase in profits as well as satisfy their customer's need.In addition, Apple produced beneficial products toward its customer regardless their expensive price. For example, I-Pod is an mp3 device that have evaluate from time to time. I-Phone for instant, also have been upgraded and now had been released the I-Phone 7 in the market and it announcement actually had made the I-Phone's lover excited. I-Phone is a great invention that actually helps Apple beside I-Pad to compete with other companies such as Samsung and Lenovo. 

The role of information technology on how it help Apple to achieve business is by managing their information effectively. Based on the case study, we know that Apple had various products line that had it own specialty. For instant, I-Phone, I-Pad, and I-Pod. Under this product lines, it has it own functions based on their product's version; either oldest or latest. Apple's latest offering is iCloud which help to secure their products and also secure customer's privacy. This shows that Apple had upgraded their services and technology and can create a better future forward.

As for people, Apple's teamwork are among the trusted people and important in every department in order to create a promising organization. Apple had achieve a huge amount of profit which one of the reason is people inside the organizational itself. As we know, right people are being trusted to use technology in order to analyse data and I believe that this is what the organization who wanted to success in this case, Apple are practicing in each department.

 

QUESTION 2

Describe the types of information employees at an Apple store require and compare it to the types of information the executives at Apple’s corporate headquarters require. Are there any links between these two types of information?

Types of information employees at an Apple store required is daily, routine or day-to-day information which is also known as Transactional Information. The data that they required is more details, accurate and complex in order to help them in making analysis in every and across department. As for executives Apple's corporate headquarters, they required an information that are abstract in order to make a good decision making. This information is also known as Analytical Information. There is a links between the two types of information as it shared the same database for both employees and executives to refer and making conclusion towards the information that they received. 

chapter 15 : Outsourcing in the 21st Century

Learning outcomes :
15.1. describe the advantages and disadvantages of insourcing, outsourcing, and offshore outsourcing
15.2. describe why outsourcing is a critical business decision.

Outsourcing Projects

• Insourcing (in-house-development) - a common approach using professional expertise within an organization to develop and maintain the organization's information technology systems.
• Outsourcing - an arrangement by which one organization provides a service or services for another organization that chooses not to perform them in-house.
• For example, the company do not have experts that expertise in training the new workers, so the managers can outsource a consultant to help him to train the new workers.
• outsourcing is one of the business critical because organization has to make a decision whether they want to hire someone who expert in the certain field or just appoint someone within the organization and to think about another factors such as salary.

Reasons why companies outsource are :-

• Tap outside sources of expertise
• concentrate resources on core business
• reduce head count and related expenses
• eliminate the need to reinvest in technology
• reduce costs
• better manage the costs of internal processes.

Type of outsource are :-

• Onshore outsourcing - engaging another company within the same country for services.
• Nearshore outsourcing - contracting an outsourcing arrangement with a company in a nearby country.
• Offshore outsourcing - using organizations from developing countries to write code and develop systems.
• the reason using offshore outsourcing because it is cheap and can reduce costs.

Factors driving outsourcing growth include :-
- Core competencies

• many companies have recently begun to consider outsourcing as a means to fuel revenue growth rather than just a cost-cutting measure.

- Financial savings

• it is typically cheaper to hire workers in China and India than similar workers in the United States.
• because when organization outsource from the developing country they can cut down the costs.

- Rapid growth

• an organization is able to acquire best-practices process expertise.
• this facilitates the design, building, training, and deployment of business processes or functions.
• For example, the IT fields nowadays always facing changing due to the technologies growth. so rather than have own expertise it is better to outsource because it can save the company budget.

- Industry changes

• high levels of reorganization across industries have increased demand for outsourcing to better focus on core competencies.

- The internet

• the pervasive nature of the internet as an effective sales channel has allowed clients to become more comfortable with outsourcing.

- Globalization

• as markets open worldwide, competition heats up.
• company may engages outsourcing service providers to deliver international services.
• because of worldwide competition we have to outsource so that we will not leave behind others.

- Outsourcing benefits include :-

• increased quality and efficiency
• reduced operating expenses
• outsourcing non-core processes such as HR or Finance
• reduce exposure to risk. meaning that if the organization lack in expertise outsource consultant to help or giving advice to the organization
• access to advanced technologies ( outsource technology from outside or rent the technology because there is always a changes in technology)
• increased flexibility
• avoid costly outlay of capital funds.
• reduce time to market for products or services.

- Outsourcing challenges are :-
- Contract length

• most outsourcing contracts span several years and cause the issues discussed above :

1. difficulties in getting out of a contract
2. problems in foreseeing future needs
3. problems in reforming an internal IT department after the contract finished

- Competitive edge

• effective and innovative use of IT can be lost when using an outsourcing service providers.
• sometimes managers cannot recognise the expertise inside the organization because of that , there will be a competition between internal and external.

- Confidentiality

• confidential information might be breached by an outsourcing service provider, especially one that provide services to competitors.

- Scope definition

• scope creep is a common problem with outsourcing agreements.

chapter 14 : creating collaborative partnerships

Learning outcome:

14.1. Identify the different ways in which companies collaborate using technology.

14.2. compare the different categories of collaboration technologies.

14.3. define the fundamental concepts of a knowledge management system.

14.4. provide an examples of a content management system along with its business purpose.

14.5. evaluate the advantages of using a workflow management system.

14.6 explain how groupware can benefit a business.

Teams, Partnerships, and Alliance

l Organizations created and use teams, partnerships, and alliance to :

- undertakes new initiatives

- Address both minor and major problems.

- Capitalize on significant opportunities (grab chances)

l Organizations create teams, partnerships, and alliance both internally with employees and externally with other organization.

l Collaboration System is a set of tools that supports the work of teams or groups by facilitating the sharing and flow of information.

l Collaboration system usually use technology to collaborates with other department.

l This is to make work be more easier because everybody share the information with each other.

l Business 2.0 collaborative mind-set generates more information faster from a wider audience.

l Organization from alliances and partnerships with other organization based on their core competency (strength of an organization)

- Core competency - an organizations key strength, a business function that it does better than any of its competitors.

- Core competency strategy - organization choose to focus specifically on its core competency and forms partnerships with other organizations to handle non-strategic business processes

- Hire or collaborates another people who have expertise in certain field such as Human resource people or finance.

l Information technology can make a business partnerships easier to establish and manage.

- Information Partnerships - occurs when two or more organizations cooperate by integrating their IT systems, thereby providing customers with the best of what each can offer.

l The internet has dramatically increased the ease and availability for IT-enabled organizational alliances and partnerships.

Collaboration System

l Collaboration solves specific business tasks such as telecommuting, online meetings, deploying applications, and remote project and sales management.

l Collaboration system is an IT-based set of tools that supports the work teams by facilitating the sharing and flow of information.

l There are two categories of collaboration which are :-

- Unstructured Collaboration (information collaboration) - includes documents exchange, shared whiteboards, discussion forums and e-mail.

- For example, Samsung share it mobile phone design with others organization such as Lenovo.

- Structured Collaboration (Process Collaboration) - involves shared participation in business processes such as work flow in which knowledge is hard coded as rules.

- For example, sharing a process in making a product.

l Collaboration system include :-

1. Knowledge Management System 

2. Content Management System

3. Workflow Management System

4. Groupware systems.

Knowledge Management Systems

l Knowledge Management - Involves capturing, classifying, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing information assets in a way that provides context for effective decisions and actions.

l Knowledge Management Systems - supports the capturing and use of an organization’s “know-how” throughout the organization.

l KMS can distributes organization’s knowledge by interconnecting people and digitally gathering their expertise.

Explicit and tacit knowledge

l Intellectual and knowledge-based assets fall into two categories which are :-

1. Explicit knowledge - consist of anything that can be documented, archived and codified often with the help of IT.

2. Tacit Knowledge - Knowledge contained in people’s head.

-  People experience and knowledge are very hard to get, to imitate or to duplicate.

- It is also the real competitive advantages meaning that, it is something that cannot be imitate, very personal and it is also considered as a personal assets of a person.

l The following are two best practices for transferring or re-creating tacit knowledge.

1. Shadowing - less experience staff observed more experienced staff to learn how their more experienced counterparts approach their work.

2. Joint problem solving - a novice and expert work together on a project.

- The expert itself will teach the novice how to finish a task by working with them as a team.

l Reasons or the benefits why organizations launch knowledge management program are:-

a. To increase profits or revenue

b. Retain key talent and expertise

c. Improves customer retention and/or satisfaction.

d. Defend market share against new entrants

e. Penetrate new market segments

f. Reduce costs.

Knowledge Management (KM) Technologies

l Knowledge Repository (databases)

l Expertise tools

l E-learning applications

l Discussion and chat technologies (held a forum through technology)

l Search and data mining tools.

KM and social networking

l Finding out how information flows through an organization

- Social networking - a process of mapping a group’s contacts (whether personal or professional) to identify who knows whom and who works with whom.

- For example, do a background searching on someone.

- SNA provide a clear picture of how employees and division work together and can help identify key experts.

- For example, can use SNA to find business partners to make a collaboration with them.

Content Management 

l Content management system (CMS) provides tools to manage the creation, storage, editing, and publication of information in s collaborative environment.

l CMS marketplace include :-

- Document Management System (DMS)

- Digital Assets Management System (DAM)

- Web Content Management System (WCM)

Document Management System (DMS)

l Supports the electronic capturing, storage, distribution, archival, and accessing of documents.

l The info will be sharing in a shape of documents.

Digital Assets Management Systems (DAM)

l Similar to DMS, generally works with binary rather than text files, such as multimedia files types.

Web Content Management System (WCM)

l Adds an additional layer to document and digital assets management that enables publishing content both to intranets and to public web sites.

l It is more tending to website in keeping document.

l Organization partners can easily edit the info.

Working Wikis

l Wikis - web-based tools that make it easy for users to add, remove and change online content which can be easily organized and reorganized as required.

l Wikis users can generally alter the original content of any article.

l Business wikis are the collaborative web pages that allow users to edit documents, share ideas, or monitor the status of a project.

l Example , Wikipedia.com place all the information in one pages.

Workflow Management System 

l Work activities can be performed in series or in parallel that involves people and automated computer systems.

l Work flow - defines all the steps or business rules, from beginning to end, required for a business process.

l Work flow management system - facilitates the automation and management of business processes and controls the movement of work through the business processes.

l For example, control the work flow when collaborate the job with partner.

l Messaging-based workflow systems - send work assignment through an e-mail systems.

l Database-based workflow system - stores documents in a central location and automatically asks the team members to access the document when it is their turn to edit the document.

Groupware system

l Groupware technologies.

l Groupware - software that supports team interaction and dynamics including calendaring, scheduling, and video conferencing.

l Groupware system advantages are :-

I. Facilitating communication (faster, easier, clearer, more persuasive)

II. Enabling telecommuting

III. Reducing travel costs

IV. Sharing expertise

V. Saving time and costs in coordinating group work.

Video conferencing 

l Video conference - a set of interactive telecommunication technologies that allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmission simultaneously.

Web Conferencing

l Web conferencing - blend audio, video, and documents-sharing technologies to create virtual meeting rooms where people ‘gather’ at a password-protected web sites.

Instant messaging

l E-mail is the dominant form of collaboration application, but real-time collaboration tools like instant messaging are creating a new communication dynamic.

l Instant messaging - type of communications service that enables someone to create a kind of private chat room with another individual to communicate in real-time over the internet.