Group Assignment: Due Date and Reminders

dear Students,

I am extending the due date for the Final Submission of Assignment Two from 16-March to 23-March. Hope this gives you more time to finalize your answers !


The marks for the first round of submissions have already been e-mailed to your group leaders. Please check with them if they have not yet forwarded the marks to you.

For the final version of your blog, please make sure you organize your answers to appear under the correct question number (Q1 answers are posted together, Q2 answers are posted together, etc.). Answers that are buried under the comments may be missed and may not be counted in the marks.

Blogs should be written in an informal style, as if you're having a conversation with someone in front of you. In case you are copying or quoting from a third-party source, please acknowledge your references.

You may answer fewer than 5 questions, but in order to get an outstanding grade, you will need to discuss all 5 questions.

Let me know if you have further questions or comments !

Group Assignment: Post # 5

Businesses and individuals must be aware of the information security and ethical issues that come together with their dependence and frequent use of information systems.

Not knowing or caring about these issues may bring about loss of confidential information and lasting damage to their business reputation. In this post, you will talk about the following:

1) Think of 2 to 3 ways in which businesses may violate privacy or ethical rights without realizing it.

2) How can the violations mentioned in the previous question be avoided or minimized ?

Group Assignment: Post # 4

Logistics companies such as FedEx and UPS no longer merely carry goods from one place to another. Some of them also provide supply chain planning and management services to their customers and help them manage their supply chain information.



Investigate the web site of FedEx OR UPS to see how these companies’ services may be used for supply chain management. Then, answer the following questions:

a) What supply chain processes can each of these companies support for their clients ?
b) How can customers use the Web sites of each company to help them with supply chain management ?

Group Assignment: Post # 3

1. Try any one of these decision support systems and describe two examples of decisions which they may help to support. For each decision, describe whether the decision would be made by operational, middle or senior management levels :





• Break-even Calculator


• Online Customer Lifetime Value Calculator (from Harvard Business School)


• Hong Kong Yellow Pages Online Map


• HSBC Mortgage Planner





2. Next, try out the different modules within the
   OpenBravo ERP demo. After you've familiarized yourself with these tools, identify which module can be used to handle each step within the Order-to-Cash business process below:





• Accept/Enter Order


• Order Acknowledgement


• Purchase Materials


• Receive Materials


• Production


• Packing


• Shipping


• Invoicing and Collection





3. Which departments need to coordinate from start to finish of the Order-to-Cash business process ? Describe how the ERP software makes their work easier. Also explain why ERP software can serve as the foundation or platform for decision support systems.

Session 6: Enterprise Resource Planning

Here are some reference links with videos or demos of ERP software:

SAP ERP Demos
OpenBravo ERP
Compiere ERP

Session 5: Decision-Support and Knowledge Management

On Week 5, we learned about the different levels and classes of decision-making within a company. There are structured decisions, unstructured decisions and semi-structured decisions to be made at each level of a business. Depending on the class and the level at which the decision is made, different information systems or technlogies may be used to assist the decision-maker.

The major decision-support systems we looked at include: management information systems, model-based decision-support systems and business intelligence (or data-based decision-support systems. MIS provides regularly scheduled hardcopy reports that can be used in structured decision-making, while model-driven or data-driven DSS supports unstructured and semi-structured decision making.

Sensitivity analysis or performing "what-if" analysis is a common technique for using model-driven DSS. Here are some examples of model-driven DSS that you may try out online:

Break-even Calculator

Online Customer Lifetime Value Calculator (from Harvard Business School)

As you try out the examples, ask yourself what types of decisions may be supported by asking "what-if" questions through these models. I've also posted a short movie of how a model-based DSS may be used on SOUL.

We also discussed the class answers for Tutorial 4: Business Intelligence with the Hong Kong Jockey Club as our case study company. Model answer will be posted on SOUL as well.

Group Assignment: Post # 2

This week we learned how B.I. tools (business intelligence) allow businesses to get more value and insight out of their databases.

1. Visit the OLAP Service Online Demo and design three different grid reports using at least three dimensions per report. Each report must have at least one measure which is being analyzed along the chosen dimensions.




• You may choose from any of the dimensions found along the left-hand side of the demo: Customer, Date, Employee, Delivery Date, Product, Reseller, Employee, etc.


• You may choose from any of the measures under Internet Sales, Reseller Sales or Sales Summary (found along the left-hand side of the demo).




2. Post the following content on your blog regarding the grid reports you've designed:




• A screen capture of a section of the report which shows the included dimensions and measure(s);


• An explanation of the insights contained in the report and how these insights can be used by the company to understand their performance or make better decisions;




3. Describe the benefits of allowing users to query a data warehouse in the form of an OLAP cube through their Web browser.

Session 4 - Business Intelligence

This week we learned that businesses can try to extract more use out of the data that they have collected in their databases over the years. The technology which allows them to do this belong under the category or umbrella called "B.I.".

Unlike query and reporting tools in regular databases, BI tools can help users find previously unknown patterns and trends in their data, or it can help them perform ad-hoc queries and comparisons on large amounts of current and historical data. BI is not meant for daily operational use but it is meant for decision-support and analytical use.

Here's a link to a demo of an OLAP cube. Try to query the cube along multiple dimensions to see how easy it is to gain insights from a data warehouse.

NVU Lab Exercise Videos

I have posted some short videos of the steps in the NVU Web Page Development lab exercises on our SOUL course web site (login required). Hope you find them helpful.

Let me know if there are other steps you want me to record on video.

I'd also like to wish everyone a Happy, Healthy, Safe and Prosperous Lunar New Year ! Kung Hei Fat Choi !



Source of photo: www.mtholyoke.edu/org/chinese/main.htm

best wishes,
- Jenny

Session 3 - Databases

This week we learned how data is organized in a relational database. We looked at actual tables in a database, and we learned how to create a query and a report using MS ACCESS.

Videos showing how to build the query and report in MS ACCESS have been uploaded to our course web site on SOUL. Look for the videos under the "General Documents" folder. You need Windows Media Player to view the videos. Let me know if you can't view the videos as I can provide you with another (free) player.

For the lab exercise, we continued building the Products page. A table is used to layout the product catalog, and hyperlinks are used to allow the user to jump quickly to specific sections on the same page (e.g. by defining anchors named top, shoes, balls, apparel).

A lightbox effect can also used to show an enlarged version of the product photo within an expanded box in the browser window.

Here's the output of the Monday group.

Here's the output of the Tuesday group.

Group Assignment: Post # 1

This week we looked at several Internet Marketing methods. Together with your groupmates, find a specific example of how a company is using each method below:

• Blog
• Interactive advertisement
• Search engine
  
• Online partnerships or affiliate marketing
  
• RSS feeds
• Social networking
• Gadgets
  

By the way, the examples you find do not all have to come from the same company.

In your group blog, list all the examples you find, together with links to each example. Also provide a description of the effectiveness of each example.

Session 2 - Internet Marketing

We discussed the differences between Internet Marketing (online) and traditional marketing (offline). We also discussed the need to integrate Internet and traditional marketing efforts.

Here are some Internet Marketing methods shown in class:

• Search Engine Marketing
• Ikeafans - blog from Ikea Customer
• Canon - blogs from Canon customers
  
• Direct2Dell - corporate blog
• IGoogle - a customized portal page where you can subscribe to RSS feeds and add widgets
• RSS Feeds from Yahoo - users can subscribe to these feeds to receive latest headlines and updates in their customized portal page, RSS reader or e-mail
• Affiliate Marketing example from Amazon Associates
• Social networking - business pages from Facebook
• Audio and Video Podcasts from RTHK
• NBA online video channel on YouTube
  
• Mashups - map plus photos from Flickrvision
• Mashups - map plus classified ads from HousingMaps

Session Two - Web Development Lab Exercise

You may download the lab exercise files here. Unzip the file to the same folder on your hard disk. The home page is called "index.html". Open this page in your web browser to view the model answer.

Here are the links for downloading the NVU web authoring package (it's FREE):

• Main NVU site
• NVU (Chinese version)

These are the web pages finished during the Monday class.

Session 1 - E-Business: How Businesses Use Information Systems

We finished the class lecture and tutorial exercise. Students were also asked to form groups of three to four students per group.

Here are the combined class answers for Tutorial One.

Some demos shown in class:

• ERP Software demo from OpenBravo
• Interview with Octopus Cards CEO Eric Tai
• Knowledge Management Using Microsoft Sharepoint

Welcome to our Class Blog !

Hello everybody, welcome to our class blog !

Hope that we can interact and learn from one another in this small corner of cyberspace...