BMGT301F Exam 2

When might data not yield sustainable advantage?

"advantages based on formulas, algorithms, and data that others can also acquired will be short-lived" -Complexity: Databases have complex hardware & software systems. The databases have software modules for displaying the data, accessing & modification, it requires experienced designers & significant persons to handle it. -Security: Organizations or companies should have their database systems which can securely store data, including sensitive employee & customer information. Cost: A huge data storage need to store data in large number of systems which leads to costlier systems. The database also requires a place or environment where the can be securely stored i.e. the data warehouse.

What is a blog? How are organizations leveraging blogs?

- a regularly updated website or web page that is an online journal or informational website displaying information in reverse chronological order -provides comment mechanisms where users can post feedback for authors and other readers -corporations can enjoy immediate and unfiltered distribution of their ideas, with no limits on page size, word count, or publication deadline -can gather immediate feedback

Be familiar with the hierarchy of data

- database (everything: course file, personal file, financial file, etc.) -file (student ID, course, grade) -Record (individual student in a specific class, and their grade) -Field (class) -Byte (section) -Bit

What is crowdsourcing? Give examples of crowdsourcing.

- where initially undefined groups of users band together to solve problems, create code, and develop services (type of peer production) -ex: Goldcorp --> asked people ways to be more efficient, threadless.com--> takes art from users and users vote on best design -Netflix held a competition among anyone that wanted to join to help them come up with an algorithm that would help predict the rating of content based on past customer ratings; Netflix offered some of their data but not enough for competitors to take advantage of it

What are the 3 types of data analytics?

-Descriptive -Predictive -Prescriptive

To have competitive advantage data must be:

-RARE -VALUABLE -IMPERFECTLY IMITABLE (CAN'T BE MIMICKED) -LACKING IN SUBSTITUTES -3 V's: volume, variety, velocity

Three V's describe how 80% of CORPORATE data is messy and unstructured so it requires a new breed of technology to analyze it

-VOLUME: large amounts of data -VARIETY: comes in many different forms (structured, unstructured, emails, audio, etc.) -VELOCITY: data streams in high speed, and is dealt with in a timely manner

What are the V3 of Big Data?

-Volume -Velocity -Variety

should a firm have a social media policy?

-Yes, because if they don't then those people who don't understand that they need to be respectful can do some serious damage to their employers and their careers -needs to be THREE things, SHORT, SIMPLE, and CLEAR -most emphasize three R's: REPRESENTATION RESPONSIBILITY RESPECT (reputation)

what role do technology and timing play in realizing advantages from the data asset?

-a firm must have the technology available in the right period of time in order to be able to capitalize on a potential advantage from data -usually if a firm is first with their technology and data they can achieve an advantage

What is twitter? How are firms effectively using twitter?

-a microblogging service that allows users to post 140 (now doubled) character messages via the web, sms, or a variety of third party desktop and smartphone applications -it attracts opinion and forces organizational transparency and accountability -allows firms to see what people are saying about their products/ services and adapt accordingly -firms can put out their own tweets to promote their products/services, prove transparency, self-promote (free advertising)

What's a wiki? Why is Wikipedia of increasing importance to firms?

-a website that can be modified by anyone from directly within a web browser, provided that a user is granted edit acess -wikipedia entries can impact nearly all large sized organizations like anyone big enough will have an entry and more often than not, their page is the first thing people see in the search engine.. it is a public record

How are organizations effectively leveraging social networks?

-add value and establish their dominance and viral marketing to build awareness and attract users -when more people like their page the more they will appear on others news feeds, thus garnering more user attention -some are implementing internal social network platforms that are secure and tailored to firm needs -setting up social networks for customer engagement and mining these sites for customer's ideas, innovation, and feedback

How are organizations leveraging wikis and what are the benefits of this technology

-because they can seek to harness the collective intelligence (wisdom of crowds) of online communities - the openness of wikis also acts as a mechanism for promoting organizational transparency and accountability

What is technological leapfrogging?

-competing by offering a new technology that is so superior to existing offerings you leap over them in progress -the value of the new technology MUST overcome total resistance that older technologies might enjoy: exchange switching costs complementary benefits

Are advantages based on analytics and modeling potentially sustainable? Why or why not?

-if more data brings more accurate modeling, moving early to capture this rare asset can be the difference between a dominating firm and an also-ran - YES, these advantages are potentially sustainable IF the company can continually adapt and maintain data that gives competitive advantages -need to employ the DELTA model

How are firms negatively impacted by the use of twitter and other social media?

-if someone says they don't like a product or service on Twitter, people will catch on and not use the product or service

What are network effects?

-increases in the value of a product to each user, including existing users, as the total number of users rises -a phenomena whereby a product or service gains additional value as more people use it -the value derived from network effects comes from three sources: -EXCHANGE -STAYING POWER -COMPLEMENTARY BENEFITS

data mining

-more discovery driven -finds patterns, relationships in large databases and infers rules to predict future behavior

Why would a corporation, an executive, a news outlet, or a college student want to blog? What are the benefits? What are the concerns?

Blogs are useful for BOTH expressing and soliciting opinion corporations and executives can express their views and news without the assistance of an intermediary. the benefits are increased exposure of ideas and thoughts, and phenomenal ability to tap vast resources of information. however, blog comments can be a hothouse for spam and the disgruntled ham-handled corporate efforts ( such as poor response to public criticism or bogus "praise posts") have been ridiculed

How can a firm monitor its reputation online?

Creating a S.M.A.R.T. team the employees who don't understand the impact of social media on the firm can do serious damage to their employers and their careers -many experts suggest that a good social media policy needs to be three things "short, simple, clear" -develop a written policy. most guidelines emphasize the "three Rs": REPRESENTATION: Employees need clear and explicit guidelines on expectations for social media engagement RESPONSIBILITY: employees need to take responsibility for their online actions RESPECT: Sure customer service is a tough task and every rep has a story about an unreasonable client FOURTH R AT STAKE: REPUTATION -violators should know the consequences of breaking firm rules and policies should be backed by action DESPITE these concerns, trying to micromanage employee social media use is probably not the answer some firms have more complex social media management challenges. consider hotels and restaurants where outlets are owned by franchisees rather than the firm -McDonald's social media team provides additional guidance so that regional operations can create, for example, a twitter handle that handle a promotion in Cincinnati that might not run in other regions (ex: @mcdonalds_cincy) TRAINING is also a critical part of the SMART mandate training should also cover security and potential threats the social media team provides a catch point for institutional knowledge and industry best practice; and the team can update programs over times as new issues, guidelines, technologies, and legislation emerge

DELTA Model

D: DATA- that is unique, accessible and available to you E: ENTERPRISE- wide focus where data and analytics available to the whole firm L: LEADERS - at all levels that promote data analytics culture T: TARGETS- dealing with identifying business areas that benefit from this approach A: ANALYSTS- to execute this strategy

what kinds of efforts would provide "teeth" to self-regulation

DATA DRIVEN MANAGEMENT- an approach to business governance that values decisions that can be backed with verifiable data -reliant upon the quality of the data gathered and the effectiveness of its analysis and interpretation

What is Web 2.0?

Describes blogs, social networks, and internet-based services that emphasize collaboration and sharing -describe a variety go web sites and applications that allow anyone to create and share online information or material they have created -key to this technology is the ability for people to create, share, collaborate, and communicate -also known as "Participative" (participatory) and social web -Web 1.0 - original stage of the World Wide Web; static, and not interactive

Where the the THREE types of data analytics

Descriptive Predictive Prescriptive

exchange, switching costs, and complementary benefits continued

Exchange- A network become more valuable because its user can freely communicate with each other (ex. Data can be represented in the ones and zeros of a data stream) Switching costs- the cost a consumer incurs when moving from one product to another (actual money spent, investments in time, data loss) Complementary benefits- products or services that add additional value to the primary product or service that makes us a network ("How-to" books, software add ons like iOS updates, labor, installment, service desk like Apple Genius bar)

what kind of products and services are subject to the network effect?

Facebook, google, eBay, twitter, Skype and youtube have build massive user bases by leveraging network effects as the user base (network) grew, the value of the service increased the features and services provided by these firms are more effective only when there are many users

Staying Power

Long-Term Viability; you don't want to buy a product or service from a company that might not be around in future years, because then you wasted your investment It is defined as the long-term viability of a product or service Therefore, people are happy and willing to buy MacBooks because we know that Apple isn't going away any time soon -the more expensive a purchase, the more people care about staying power.

Four Ms of engagement

MEGAPHONE to send out messages from the firm MAGNET to attract inbound communication MONITORING MEDIATION (paying attention to what's happening online and selectively engage conversations when appropriate)

Which firm do you suspect has stronger end-user network effects: Google's Online Search tool or Microsoft's Windows operating system? Why?

MICROSOFT'S WINDOWS operating system has STRONGER end-user network because it becomes standardized for the users and gains staying power and complementary benefits once a customer learns to use Microsoft's operating system, they are unlikely to leave and go learn a whole new operating system

which firm do you suspect has stronger end-user effects: google's online search tool or Microsoft window's operating system? why?

MICROSOFT's WINDOWS probably has stronger end-user network effects than google's online search tool because of exchange and complementary benefits as the windows network grows it becomes a standard, which in turn attracts even more users. in addition, as windows becomes a standard, complementary software products are developed to run under it the google search tool is , for the most part, interchangeable with other online search tools like Yahoo

Describe the two separate Netflix Offerings

Netflix operates via a DVD subscriptions and video streaming model. these started as a single subscription but are now viewed as two separate services although sometimes referred to as "rental," the model is really a good substitute for conventional use-based media rental.

How can a firm monitor its reputation online?

ONLINE REPUTATION MANAGEMENT (ORP?): will track a client's firm's name, brands, executives, names or other keywords, reporting online activity, and whether sentiment trends towards positive and negative

Who are the rivals to the Netflix streaming effort? Do any of these firms have advantages that Netflix lacks? What are these advantages?

Rivals to the Netflix streaming effort include: -Amazon seems determined to expand its streaming effort, integrating its own streaming efforts into televisions and consumer devices, baking Amazon instant video into its successful kindle fire products, and aggressively expanding its own content library -Apple's iTunes offers video purchases and "rentals" across PCs and Macs, as well as the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV products -microsoft offers an online rental and purchase service via xbox -google offers thousands of television shows and movies over youtube via both ad-supported and rental models, and it continues to refine Google TV as well as the Google Play online store -Comcast's Universal Studios is among the major film studios that has experimented with direct streaming to consumers over Facebook -presently, all of these firms seem to have a clearer and better-established path to the living room TV than does Netflix -In addition, many of these firms are deep-pocketed rivals that can subsidize experimentation through profits from their primary business, so even if efforts are slow to gain traction, a shake-out may take time.

what is data analytics?

Science of examining and deciphering raw data or data sets with the purpose of drawing conclusions.

How do organizations use social networks?

Social networks have become organizational productivity tools while LinkedIn can help network all of a firm's employees, and Facebook has introduced similar "Facebook at work" (workplace) service -many firms are choosing to implement their own, internal social network platforms that they hope are more secure and tailored to firm needs -these networks can be useful in maintaining contacts for future business leads, rehiring former employees or recruiting retired staff to serve as contractors (so -called boomerangs) when labor is tight -maintaining such networks will be critical in industries like IT and healthcare that are likely to be plagued by worker shortages for years to come social networking can also be important for organizations like IBM, where some 42% of employees regularly work from home or client locations

SMART

Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely

Is data a source of competitive advantage? Describe situations in which data might be and might not be a source for sustainable competitive advantage?

The data a firm can leverage is a true strategic asset and source of competitive advantage WHEN it's RARE, VALUABLE, IMPERFECTLY IMITABLE, and LACKING IN SUBSTITUTES However, advantages based on data that others can acquire easily will be SHORT-LIVED

What are the V3 in Big Data

VOLUME: size of data VARIETY: refers to the different sources providing the data including tabular data, documents, emails, videos, images, audios, blogs, charts, tweets, etc. VELOCITY: this deals with how fast the data is being produced and how fast the data must be processed to meet demand --> availability for ACESS and DELIVERY **all leads to COMPLEXITY** COMPLEXITY: this means the different standards, rules, and even storage formats can exist with each asset type

Is data a source of competitive advantage?

YES, data can be a source of competitive advantage when the data is big enough to create an advantage -ex: Netflix's data ab customer preferences creates an advantage over competition because they have information compiled the no other competitor can get

Are you concerned about data security?

YES, data security is very important as hackers and other viruses can attack computers and take sensitive information and use it against you/ to your disadvantage -it is important that data is secure so competitors cannot use your information for their own gain; competitive advantage

Why would a girl use a loyalty card? What is the incentive for the firm / for customers to opt in and use loyalty cards? What kind of strategic assets can these systems create?

a firm uses a loyalty card in order -to increase the likelihood of a customer choosing their company, -to encourage customers to spend more money, -to enable a more personal connection to their customers, -to attract new customers, - and to enhance the overall value provided by the firm. the firms gets increased sales while customers get rewarded for spending their money at the firm.

Why would a firm use a loyalty card? What is the incentive for the firm? What is the incentive for consumers to opt-in and use loyalty cards? What kinds of strategic assets can these systems create?

a loyalty card is a system that provides rewards and usage incentives. By using the card, in effect, the customer is giving up information about themselves in exchange for some kind of financial incentive. The incentive for the firm is that it can collect personalized information about customer purchases and improve targeting. The incentive for consumer to opt-in and use loyalty cars are financial incentives such as points or discounts In addition to enhancing data collection loyalty cards can represent a significant switching cost

Database

a single table or collection of related tables

Differentiation

actually differentiating the market offering to create superior customer value, whether it is doing something new and different, or the same but better

Are advantages based on analytics and modeling potentially sustainable? Why or why not?

advantages based on analytics and modeling ARE sustainable if they result in DIFFERENTIATION as opposed to just operational efficiency advantages based on capabilities that others can acquire will be short-lived

What are social networks?

an online community that allows users to establish a personal profile and communicate with others -ex:facebook, twitter, etc.

Predictive data analytics

analytics that helps you forecast future performance

Descriptive data analytics

analytics that helps you understand how things are going on

prescriptive data analytics

analytics that suggest a prescribed step or action

What is technological leap-frogging and why is it so difficult to accomplish?

any product that intends to compete with the dominant network must exceed the value of the technical features of the leading player, plus the value of the incumbent's exchange, switching cost, and complementary product benefit also, the incumbent must not be able to easily copy any of the new entrant's innovations technological leap-frogging is competition on the basis of offering a superior generation of technology it is difficult to accomplish because technology can be so easily duplicated

Complementary benefits

are those products or services that add additional value to the network these products might include "how-to" books, software, and feature add-ons, even labor -PLATFORMS: products and services that encourage others to offer complementary goods are sometimes called platforms -many firms do this by providing APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow third parties to integrate with their products and services -allowing other firms to contribute to your platform can be a brilliant strategy because those firms will spend their time and money to enhance your offerings - when developers of complementary products invest time writing software - and users install, learn, and customize these products - switching costs are created that enhance the staying power of a given network

data dictionary

automated or manual file storing definitions of data elements and their characteristics

exchange

ex:facebook is invaluable if there is only one person that has an account however, as more people create accounts, there is more opportunity to connect, message, and interact with people online, and this is an EXCHANGE

how might firms leverage this data to better serve you and to improve their performance?

firms provide rewards and usage incentives, typically in exchange for a method that provides a more detailed tracking and recording of customer activity. in addition to enhancing data collection, loyalty cards can represent a significant switching cost

what role do technology and timing play in realizing advantages from the data set?

if more data brings more accurate modeling, moving early to capture this rare data asset can be the difference between a "dominating" firm and an "also-ran" advantages based on capabilities and data that other can acquire will be short-lived technology that cannot be easily replicated or imitated will be key in distinguishing operationally effective technology from those efforts that can yield true strategic positioning

self-regulation is often proposed as an alternative to

legislative efforts

also-ran

one who is defeated in a race, election, or other competition; loser

What is Peer production and social media?

peer production and social media fall under the Web 2.0 umbrella

self-regulation is often proposed as an alternative to legislative efforts what kind of efforts would provide "teeth" to self-regulation? Are there steps firms could do to make you believe in their ability to self-regulate? Why or why not?

self-regulation: the process whereby an organization is asked, or volunteers, to monitor its own adherence to legal, ethical, or safety standards, rather than have an outside, independent agency such as a governmental entity monitor and enforce those standards. self-regulation allows a firm to maintain control over the standards to which they are held by successfully self-policing themselves. self-policing attempts may well fail, due to inherent conflicts of interest and not all businesses will voluntarily meet best practice standards. one way to provide "teeth" to self-regulation is set up an industry-wide external policing organization since this organization is established, and controlled by, member firms, its independence can be questioned. an example of this type of self-regulation is the American Bar Association. -one possible way to make self-regulation "credible" is to delegate enforcement (sanctions and fines) to an INDEPENDENT AUTHORITY (TRUSTE)

social media

social media efforts refer to technologies that support the creation of user-generated content, as well as content editing, commenting, curation, and sharing. -social media efforts include blogs, wikis, social networks, Twitter, and photo and video sharing sites.

Database Management Systems (DBMS)

software for creating, maintaining, and manipulating data - known as DATABASE software -data warehouse -data marts -data mining

Data Definition Language DDL

specifies structure of database content, used to create tables and define characteristics of fields -standard for commands through which data structures are defined - a computer language that is used for creating and modifying the structures of the database objects, such as schemas, tables, views, indexes, etc.

operational efficiency

the ability to provide goods and services to customers with minimum waste and maximum utilization of resources

The App Economy

the apple iPhone developer program provides developers access to the App Store where they can distribute their free or commercial applications to millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers many jobs are created to support apple products the iPhone market could be considered a two-sided market because the huge number of iPhones sold attracts application developers this coupled with Apple's willingness to assist developers, results in huge numbers of applications available through the AppStore. This serves to encourage even more purchases of the iPhone

What is the long tail? How "long" is the Netflix tail compared to traditional video stores?

the phenomenon whereby firms can make money by offering a near-limitless selection of less popular products is known as "the long tail" A traditional video store would stock a selection of roughly 3000 DVD titles on its shelves Netflix, however, offered its customers over 125,000 unique DVD rentals

Do you feel that you can trust content in wikis? Do you feel this content is more or less reliable that content in print encyclopedias? Than the content in newspaper articles? Why?

the trust you place in wiki should depend on the content you are looking for , the use to which the content will be put, and how well the wiki is maintained. Wikis are great sources of opinions but may be LESS valuable for FACT-based research If you need verifiable facts, you will often have to go to the original authoritative source authoritative sources such as encyclopedias are expected to have a rigorous method for verifying their content published media such as newspapers are expected to provide verifiable sources and facts for the information they publish

Metcalfe's Law

the value of a network is equal to the square of the number of users connected to it -another way of saying network's value increases with number of people in the network - it got this name because Bob Metcalfe (inventor of the ethernet network standard) wrote a column in InfoWorld Magazine stating that the value of a network equals its number of users squared -Network externalities

data manipulation language

used to add, change, delete, retrieve data from database -structured query language (SQL) -microsoft access uses tools for generation SQL -many DBMS have report generation capabilities for creating polished reports

peer production

when users collaboratively work to create content, products, and services leveraged by collaborating users, isn't only used to create social media; it can be used to create services, too, and these are considered to be part of Web 2.0 -techniques such as crowdsourcing, where initially undefined groups of users band together to solve problems, create code, and develop services, are also a type of peer production -some peer-produced services like Skype users' computers instead of central IT resource to forward phone calls and videos -this ability saves the substantial cost of servers, storage, and bandwidth -peer production is also leveraged to create much of the open source software that supports many of the Web 2.0 efforts many of these services often leverage the SO WISDOM of crowds, the idea that a large, diverse group often has more collective insight than a single or small group of trained professionals Web 2.0 efforts enable firms to build brand on the cheap with little conventional advertising and each owes their hyper growth and high valuation to their ability to harness the network effect

strategies for competing in markets with network effects

-move early (Yahoo! auctions in Japan) -subsidize products adoption (PayPal) -leverage viral promotion (Skype, WhatsApp, über, Airbnb, blue apron) -expand by redefining the market to bring in new categories of users (Nintendo Wii) or through convergence (iPhone) -form alliances and partnerships (NYCE vs. Citibank, Didi/Ola?GravTaxi?Lyft global ride-sharing alliance vs. uber) -establish distribution channels (Java with Netscape; Microsoft bundling Media Player with Windows, Apple embedding Apple Music in all Macs and iOs devices) -seed the market with complements (Blu-ray, Nintendo, thredUp) -Encourage the development of complementary goods - this can include offering resources, subsidies, reduced fees, market research, development kits, and training (Oculus and Amazon Echo developer funds, Apple Swift Playgrounds) -Maintain backward compatibility (Apple's Mac OS X Rosetta translation software for PowerPC to Intel, Samsung Pay using existing mag-stripe standards) -for rivals, be compatible with larger networks (Apple's move to Intel; Samsung Pay's compatibility with mag stripe credit card standards) -for incumbents, constantly innovate to create a moving target and block rival efforts to access your network (Apple's efforts to block access to its own systems) -for large firms with well-known followers, make pre announcements (Microsoft, Apple)

What are peer production and social media? Give examples of each.

-peer production examples: Wikipedia, Flickr -social media examples: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter

what are relational databases?

-represent data as two-dimensional tables called relations or files - each table contains data on entity and attributes -ex: can allow a manager to see which customers bought a specific product after a certain date; also a financial services manager in the same company can use this information to obtain reports on accounts that need to be paid - connects two or more data sets into a condensed version

What kind of products or services are subject to network effects?

-social media -eBay -NASDAQ

data warehouse

-stores current and historical data from many core operation transaction systems -consolidates and standardizes information for use across enterprise, but date cannot be altered -data warehouse system will provide query, analysis, and reporting tools

data marts

-subset of data warehouse -summarized or highly focused portion of a firms' data for use by specific population of users -typically focuses on single subject or line of business

Network effects are often associated with technology, but tech isn't a prerequisite for the existence of network effects

-telephone lines/ telephones: more people that have phones, the more useful they are -VISA

What is meant by the Apple Economy?

-the economy and market created from the invention of the iPod and other Apple technologies -app economy: $6.3 TRILLION by 2021 -more than just revenue from App Store; also accounts for monetization like in-app ads and mobile commerce -over 90 brands selling 280 models of iPod speaker systems -34 automanufacturers' cars are iPod capable

What is BIG DATA

-the growth in the volume of data in organizations -understanding how to adapt strategies to seek and model patterns contained in big data is becoming a critical IT and business skill -growing trend toward trying to find patterns in "unstructured" data

How can a firm leverage social media?

4 M's of engagement -Megaphone to send out messages from the firm -Magnet to attract inbound communication -Monitoring -Mediation (paying attention to what's happening online and selectively engage conversations when appropriate)