MIS Exam 2
What is the major difference between Google's AdWords and Google's AdSense?
-Adwords: advertise on Google search result pages (I pay Google) -Adsense is publishers displaying ads on websites (Google pays me)
WHAT ARE Amazon's three major competitive advantages? How do these advantages reinforce with each other? Does Amazon create a two-sided market and if yes, how does this contributes to its wider selection of products?
3 pillars of amazon: Large selection Customer experience "convenience" Lower prices Having a good customer experience>> stronger brand>> create scale (more products and customers) -Amazon is a two sided market - There is 3rd selling party- buyer/seller growth -Sellers can warehouse and ship products themselves or use Amazon's warehouses -Buyers aren;t interested in showing up until there's product diversity, but once there are enough buyers/buyer growth, retailers double down and increase their presence even more. -This is what contributes to Amazon's wide selection of products -More customers>>> more product> GROW
What is organic search? How does Google decide the rank of organic search results?
3. What is organic search? How does Google decide the rank of organic search results? Organic search- search engine results returned and ranked according to relevance Google decides the rank of organic search result using method PageRank (an algorithm); determined by relevance, in bound links (# of pages linking to the focal page) and ~ 200 other factors (not told to prevent gaming)
What is a database? Why do people use a database?
A database is a Single table or a collection of related tables The actual numbers People use databases because They eliminate data redundancy Firms often create specialized databases for recording transactions, as well as databases that aggregate data from multiple sources in order to support reporting and analysis Excel spreadsheets are flat files. They are not relational databases
Understand the meaning of Comparison operators, Boolean operators (AND,OR),BETWEEN
AND: Returns only when all conditions are true OR: Returns results when any condition included is true NOT: negates as expression that follows (consider records where the expression is violated) Order= NOT,AND, then OR Use parentheses to change default order of operators
Be able to describe the difference in Amazon's operating income between its retailing business and AWS and understand why you see such differences
AWS has higher operating income than Amazon retail AWS is extremely high growth/accelerating growth? Wide array of product offerings (IAAS?PAAS), not paying the costs of beefy logistic infrastructure AWS has majority of the cloud market share by far Cost of amazon one day delivery promise is very expensive AWS has recurring revenue models. COGS is very low Retail business is completely different. High competition, they have to deliver a lot of stuff. COGS is high AWS is highly flexible with pricing AI powers Alexa and Echo products
What factors enable Amazon to have a negative cash conversion cycle? What are offline rivals unable to match these efficiencies? What advantage does this give amazon over rivals?
Amazon has negative CCC because sell goods and collect $ weeks before has to pay suppliers Unable to match because: Quantity: Selling more goods gives better bargaining power with suppliers Size: Provides negotiating leverage to secure lower prices and longer payment terms Physical presence: Absence of brick and mortar stores brings down cost for real estate, energy, inventory and security Employee efficiency: greater as shift workers work at a constant rates throughout the day Advantage: pool for cash for expanding operations and make investment
Why are grocery stores attractive for Amazon? In what ways is Amazon entering the grocery business?
Amazon launched new store concepts to show how tech can advance in retail HUGE CASH COW- people want to buy groceries Entering the grocery business to have a store without cashiers and registers: this is done with image recognition, motion detection, weight sensor and other AI Machine learning fueled by cloud based server farms Whole foods and amazon go
Why do ad networks appeal to advertisers? Why do they appeal to content providers? What functions are assumed by the firm overseeing the ad network?
Appeal to... Advertisers: help them get business growth, awareness/marketing Content providers: take percentage of profits Functions: Firm makes money by selling/providing space
1. Understand how Equifax's data breach happened and why it happened.
Attackers were able to exploit a web application vulnerability called Apache struts A patch for the vulnerability was available weeks before attackers exploited the vulnerability on Equifax's site
What basic functions should an ERP system provide to an educational institution? What are the major problems in ERP implementation in education industry in general and what are the unique problems for the SDCD in particular?
Basic functions ERP system should provide to an educational institution: Creation of a single database that is accessible to all, single purpose software Organized cost and sharing data across all departments Forces accountability and transparency Major Problems: Cost- heavily relies on consultants // software maintenance, infrastructure maintenance, training and ongoing costs (SCOPE Creep: timeline and how implementation goes up) Organizational change (effectiveness of system is limited by non-compliance) Wide scale development- risk of failure (50% chance of losing) Unique problems for SDCS: Overburdened and inadequate for IT (lack of funding) Underqualified personnel- relied so heavily on consultants so didn't have skilled workers Kept changing leadership
What are the major human resource (HR) functions incorporated in an ERP system?
Benefits, payroll, personnel, position control
What can hackers do with computer infected with Trojan horse? Understand how botnets or zombie networks are formed.
Botnets- hoarder of surreptitiously infiltrated computers, linked and controlled remotely (known as zombie networks) Ex. sending spam from thousands of difficult to shut down accounts, launching tough to track click fraud efforts
What is business intelligence system? Why has business intelligence become so popular nowadays?
Business intelligence: reporting, data exploration, ad hoc queries (queries as needed), sophisticated data modeling & analysis Lots of data and know people who can write SQL > so w/Bi can make complex query Makes the data useful
What is chaotic storage? What are the benefits provided by chaotic storage? Understand how Amazon uses IT to enable its chaotic storage management
CHoatic storage: Organic shelving system without permanent areas or sections. The product's characteristics and attributes are irrelevant. Benefits; Flexibility, accuracy, simplicity, optimization
What is cash conversion cycle?
Cash conversion cycle- period between distributing cash and collecting funds associated with a given operation (ex sales) Invoices Accounts Receivable → Cash→ Accounts payable → Inventory Retailers want it to be low because doesn't generate cash Invoice got ahead of bills is when they started making a profit Keep payments enough to pay bills Use cash that you get and spend on other things before supplies Negative when bills higher than invoices
What are the four major data mining techniques?
Classification: This analysis is used to retrieve important and relevant information about data, and metadata. This data mining method helps to classify data in different classes. Clustering: Clustering analysis is a data mining technique to identify data that are like each other. This process helps to understand the differences and similarities between the data. Regression: Regression analysis is the data mining method of identifying and analyzing the relationship between variables. It is used to identify the likelihood of a specific variable, given the presence of other variables. Association Rules: This data mining technique helps to find the association between two or more Items. It discovers a hidden pattern in the data set.
What are the major types click and search impression frauds associated with online search advertising?
Click fraud/impression fraud - Enriching: generating bogus clicks Depleting: drain rivals' online ad budgets Rank based impression fraud Get impressions without clicks → decrease performance rank / quality score of rival's ads Disbarring fraud Frame rival by generating bogus clicks to seem like rival and get rival banned from ad ntwk ((sabotaging urself so ur rival gets banned)) Social influence fraud link fraud (generating bogus clicks) Keyword stuffing Packing site with unrelated keywords to lure users that don't normally visit a website
What is computer virus? What is computer worm? What is Trojan horse? What are the differences among these three types of malware?
Computer virus: infect other software/files Computer worm: take advantage of security vulnerabilities to automatically spread Trojan horse: attempt to sneak in masquerading as something they're not
What is phishing?
Con executed using technology typically targeted at acquiring sensitive info or tricking someone into installing malware
What is content adjacency problem? Why does it occur? What can advertisers do to minimize the likelihood that a content adjacency problem will occur?
Content adjacency problem: ads appear next to text the advertiser would like to avoid Occurs because of contextual advertising where ads appear based on website's content What can advertisers do to minimize likelihood a content adjacency problem will occur: negative keywords (prevent ad from showing up when specific terms present like murder)
What factors determine the appeal of an ad network to advertisers and content providers? Which of these factors are potentially sources of competitive advantage?
Contextual advertising geotargeting/ IP address Cookies Competitive adv: Higher ad rank, quality score
What is "convention wisdom" of fashion industry with respect to design? What counterintuitive actions has Zara taken?
Conventional wisdom- Product design process- takes months to make clothing line >> have catwalks, etc Contract manufacture- cheap labor in developing countries, contract manufacturers, ethic issue, slow delivery Zara said PLOT TWIST: Listen to customers and their need, so make alternations very quickly to fit demands, tech enabled operations // "fashion of the moment", young designers
What is a cookie? How are cookies user? What is geotargeting?
Cookie: a line of identifying text assigned and retrieved by a given web server and stored by browser How used: builds profile for you whenever you accept Geotargeting: targeting based on user's physical location for purpose of delivering tailored ads
What is denial of service (DOS) attack? Understand that it is very easy to launch DOS attack but difficult to stop, as it is hard to distinguish between authentic WEB conversations and DOS attacks
DDOS (distributed denial of service) shutting down sites by overwhelming them with seemingly legit requests sent simultaneously by thousands of machines Attacks typically by botnets
What is data mining? What is the key difference between reporting tools and data mining tools?
Data mining: using computers to identify patterns in and to build models from large datasets For data mining to work, need 2 things: org must have clean consistent data & the event in data should reflect current / future trends0
What is the difference between data warehouse and data mart?
Date warehouse: set of databases designed to support decision making in an organization Data mart: data(s) focused on addressing concerns of a specific problem Ex: increasing customer retention, increase product quality
What is the conventional supply chain structure in the fashion industry? What are the major benefits and drawbacks of such supply chain structure?
Each supply chain component can be a completely different company; contract manufacturers shipping retail; neiman marcus doesn't design their own clothes they use high profile ppl Benefit of Zara they can control the flow of it (zara) bc they own all the ppl and can personalize faster Zara is different; they design their own stuff % error is less - dont markdown clothes Drawback of zara Supply chain is geocentric Employee benefits Currency - economy if value change can lose money Benefit of supply chain structure: (Conventional) Don't have to worry about doing their own supply chain Cheap Drawbacks: (Conventional) Ethical issues Longer time % error failure greater Look at picture
How does Amazon use customer-related data to create greater customer experience? What is A/B test?
Employee calls customer so they can get frontline perspective again to meet customer demands/ to improve Product reviews, browsing (personalization of web pages, recommendations: purchasing history) A/B Test- A randomized group of experiment used to collect data and compare performance among two options studied (A and B) ex: with vs w/o recommendation // Webpage layout,size, color
Why did SDCD choose to implement a "human resource management" module as a starting point?
HR supports the others; implement first; they hired someone to help them with ERP ( they had a specilization with HR0 They have a large staff→ employees Was less risky Most human involvement Lots of employees, foundational: managing ppl and getting their paychecks
Before Android was launched, what were the key challenges to handset manufacturers and content/app providers? Has Android addressed these challenges?
Handset manufacturers have fierce competition on technical design, functionality Need to compete by offering compelling combo of hardware and software Android is flexible and allows heavy customization - Manufacturers and content providers have this flexibility now as well
Understand how an SQL database injection attack works
In the database, injection attack can cause DOS, fail Net result: wanting to create a hole into database so that you can pull out employee records Databases were never really that strong; SQL injection attack -> get to raw data base and inject malicious code *must make it through the database layer* for hackers Encrypt the database layer
1. What are the potential internal and external data sources for an organization?
Internal: data within the company: so employees,leadership, mission statement External: Customer, competitors
. What is the rationale for Zara to offer most products in limited run?
It's the fashion of the moment, buy it before it's gone // feeling of exclusive // reduce the risk of mistakes Most products have limited production to.... Cultivate a feeling of exclusivity Encourage customers to buy right away and at full price 85% sold at full price (industry- 50% markdown ratio) Encourage customers to visit more often (17 x per year but competitors only 3 per year) Reduce risk of mistakes (1% failed products- 10% average)
Understand the key drivers for online ad growth. How can advertisers provide you targeted ads?
Key drivers Increased user time online Increased measurement and accountability Targeting Advertisers prodive us with targeted ads: Geotargeting based on location Contextual advertising cookiesssss/targeting
2. Why would a firm use loyalty programs (like HEB)? What is the incentive for the firm?
Loyalty card- give information in exchange for financial inventive>> meaning firm desire to learn about you and satisfy customers Switching cost> rewards and points
What are the major advantages and challenges associated with Android being an open-source operating system?
Major advantages: Software development kit free for download for Android (usually expensive) so it offered ability to write and test simple mobile apps More customization ~~ linux : open software system Challenges: They don't make much revenue but have more downloads than apple Hard to keep updated bc so many different various softwares Brand fragmentation ((bc so customizable, carriers could change it up but Google wanted ppl to use it to see Google's uniqueness))
Based on SDCD case, what are the major benefits from ERP investment? Among these benefits what are the intangible benefits from the ERP Invesment? Understand the importance of incorporating intangible benefits (including product increase and soft benefits) into investment on return analysis
Major benefits of ERP: (Hard cost savings) Cost saving from staff reduction- decrease overtime in HR Salary Savings Print shop related costs Reduction in processing errors Intangible benefits (With productivity improvements, with soft benefits) Efficiency improvements Improved employee morale Improved recruiting Improved management access to data
How does google decide the rank of sponsored ads? What factors influence ads' quality score?
Maximum CPC (cost per click) an advertiser is willing to pay Advertisement's quality score (a broad measure of ad performance: Factors that influence ad quality score: Click through rate (CTR): number of user who click in ad divided by # of times as was delivered Relevance of an ad's text to user query Overall history of click performance for keywords linked to the ad Automated assessment of user experience on landing page
How are ads sold via Google search superior to conventional advertising media such as TV, radio, billboard, print, and yellow pages? Consider factors like the available inventory of space to run ads, the cost to run ads, the cost to acquire new advertisers, and the appeal among advertisers.
More people are on the internet >> targeting based on cookies (personalized) More space/ convenient Cheaper Cost to acquire new advertisers: Appeal among advertisers: More convenient Targeting/ personalizing ads
What are some of the sources data aggregators tap to collect information?
My answer: Government security Patterns of activity analytics Cyberthreat discovery Tax fraud discovery Crime prediction Healthcare Personalized treatment Fraud detection Efficiacy of care Adverse event clustering Disease prediction Energy/resource Location discovery- oil Field production analysis Contingency analysis Climate modeling Financial services Market sensing- predicting the stock market news/trading analytics Insider threat AML/compliance Telecom/Media Influencer discovery Churn analytics Behavior analytics Life sciences Drug discovery Drug repurposing Clinical trial mining
What is NPV?
Net Present Value= Cash inflows from investments - Cost of investments NPV is the value of future cash flows expressed in terms of dollars today ( A dollar today is worth more than a dollar a year from now due to opportunity cost. NPV takes this into account)
What are the major participants in the mobile industry?
Network Operators (Carriers) - AT&T , Verizon Handset manufactures and OS providers- Samsung, Xiaomi Content and Application providers- Facebook, Google, Netflix
Can a firm buy a top ad ranking? Why or why not?
Not really. Google takes quality into consideration as well, so if you bid more for an ad but get outperformed/out quality scored, you'll appear lower in rankings than someone who paid less but has better performance Quality score matter most in ranking
How do online systems track customer behavior? Why do we say online systems would give organizations more insights than traditional transaction processing systems?
Online system track customer by benefits by having customer creating account to know preference so they can add more analysis to the type of people who are buying it
2. What kind of capital commitment is necessary to go into the search engineer business? How does this impact competitive dynamics in the industry?
Pay per click, big willingness to pay for ads Bid more, gets expensive More you bid the better spot but also quality score
In terms of the measurement of online advertising, what is PPC? What is PPA? What is PPM? Understand the difference between the three measures.
Pay-per-click (PPC) - advertisers do not pay unless someone clicks Pay per action - Somebody took an action inside a website Pay per impressions - cost per thousand impressions, more for awareness
4. Understanding different motivations for hackers to break into corporate computer systems
Personal use Data harvesters sell to cash out fraudsters (cash out fraudsters use for illegal financial gain) Steal personal/financial data
What are the roles played by IT for its product design, in terms of both the idea gathering process and the idea implementation process?
Point of sale system- transaction processing system that captures customer purchase information Sketches coded into computer aided- CAD system Fabric cut and dyed by robots Half of the cloth is left undyed PDAS (persoanl digital assistant) used by employees to see what fashion customers prefer RFID (radio frequency identification) small chip based tags that wirelessly emit a unique code for each item Lets them know where the products are
Know the order of SELECT, FROM, WHERE in SQL statement
SELECT comes first, followed by FROM. These clauses are mandatory WHERE is third, but it and everything afterwards is optional
What is primary key? What is the difference between simple primary key and composite primary key? When given a table and certain assumptions, understand how to identify primary key
Primary key is an attribute or set of attributes that uniquely identifies each row of the relation in question Simple- single attribute Composite- multiple attribute
What could be the potential contributing factors for Amazon's low/negative net income between 2006 and 2015? Why do we see a significant increase in its net income in last few years?
Prior to beefing out its own logistics/shipping operations, Amazon had to rely on shipping services from third parties (UPS/FedEx/USPS). This is expensive, and as Amazon wasn't as big then as it is now, financing this ate a large chunk of Amazon's profits -Recently however, Amazon has started building out its own shipping infrastructure that poses a threat to both UPS and FedEx (Prime Air, Prime Vans, related infrastructure). -By being able to ship a solid portion of goods itself saves Amazon A LOT of money, which is a potential contributing factor to its recent increase in net income in the past few years -Net income is negative in the years prior to this rapid expansion (primarily 2012 - late 2015) due to heavy investment in this infrastructure Big Amazon acquisitions = Whole Foods, Ring, Kiva Systems (logistics robots), Annapurna Labs (made AWS cost effective)
How does Google's search engine work? When you perform a search via Google, do you actually search over the Web?
Query → Web servers → index servers → doc server → Google user No, Google is just a platform Use spiders to generate key words and place in database// looked at links
Relational database basics: WHat is relational database? Understand the meaning of the following terms in relational database context: records, attributes, fields. What are the requirements for a table in relation database
Relation database: Tables are related based on common keys Attributes (columns→ same thing as fields (category)) in tables must have unique names (prefereably relevant to stored content) Every attribute value fall into known domian or legal values→ SSN contains value from 0000000 to 999999 Age should be number Every record (row) must be unique (cant have two rows with exactly same values for all their fields)
7. What risks are inherent in the conventional practices in the fashion industry? Is Zara susceptible to these risks? Is Zara susceptible to different risks? IF so what are these?
Risk of conventional practice- cheap labor, ethnic violations Zara rely on young designers Zara is all based in spain: so if natural disaster- no operations Financial: euro has more value than dollar so might be more competitive compared to competitors Showrooming: finding cheaper products online than what is in store
How do amazon warehouse staff know where to find items? How does technology help make the process more efficient?
Robot//Tech makes it efficient because more efficient at moving inventory and store 50% more product Use of database (where product is and how much they have) and software (tells picker optimal route)
WHat are the major upfront and ongoing costs of implementing HR modules?
See picture
How is scale important to Amazon? What advantages does scale offer Amazon over its smaller rivals?
Since scale is big >>> bargaining power and two sided network
Why has Android been so successful?
Software development kits are free → encourages people to develop and run apps Wide range of variety Easy customization Designed to access Internet // web based apps
What is DMBS? What are the major DBMS products?
Software for creating, maintaining and manipulating data (also known as database software); Access MS Personal DBMS SQL Server MS enterprise DBMS DB2 from IBM Oracle used with most ERps MYSQL free and open source
In what other ways do Amazon's information systems reduce errors? Why is error reduction so critical to firm performance?
Software tells packing associates: Optimal size of the cardboard box for given order and uses weight to tell if anything is missing or incorrect. Also have database that tracks and monitors every product so know when empty. Software informs the picker the optimal route. Unique barcode identifies everything: every incoming product is assigned a specific barcode that matches the shelf space in which it will be stored
WHat is SQL?
Structured Query Language: to retrieve information - run a query on the database
What is the difference between Zaras supply chain and the conventional supply chain in the fashion industry? What are the major benefits for Zara's supply chain structure?
Supplier→ Manufacturer→ distributor→ retailer→ customer Zara controls distributor and retailer Raw materials such as dyes and fabric is produced in house or outsourced to contract manufacturere VERTICALLY INTEGRATED Very fast supply chain- altered to what customer wants (allowed to be done w tech) Math and data driven analysis to determine how many of which items in which sizes should be delivered to which stores during twice weekly shipments
What is classification? Understand how to make predictions when given a classification tree.
This analysis is used to retrieve important and relevant information about data, and metadata. This data mining method helps to classify data in different classes Decision trees→ who gets a loan/ qualifies
hat is association detection? What are the key metrics to look at when you decide the best association rule?
This data mining technique helps to find the association between two or more Items. It discovers a hidden pattern in the data set Key metrics: Click through rate - correlates between the different ads ppl click on Finding frequent patterns, associations, correlations ex) market basket analysis determine what things go together while shopping binary representation Percent of buyers who buy one products who also buy another product Antecedent → Consequent (what's the probability that it gets bought) The support of a product indicates its impact in terms of the overall size Confidence at what rate consequences will be found given that antecedent has occurred Lift ratio ??? → probability of the product getting bought If the other things don't exist??? Inventory management → if one in combo gets low it will impact the other product Regression: one to one variable the older you get the more you make; more practice hrs better you are Association: more than 2 variables; ex) 2 producing a 3rd variable (more dependencies)
Understand how users in an organization may create security threats
USe wifi instead of VPN for network transmissions Go to unknown website and download malware
How does amazon use technology to improve its operations efficiency and customer experience?
Use of robots allow chaotic storage Customer experience: Amazon Go, a store that allows customers to go by scanning an app
Where are the potential vulnerabilities?
User & administrator threats Bad apples (rogue employees who install malware, steal secrets) Social engineering (conning people into revealing information) Phishing (tech cons to trick people) Spoofing (email transmissions and packets that have been altered, forging identity) Technology threats Zero day exploits (new attacks that haven't been clearly identified and haven't been incorporated into security screening systems) Passwords Malware- seeks to compromise a computer system without permission Methods of infection: virus, worm, trojan Brute force attacks - attack that exhaust all possible password combos to break into an account
What are the key challenges faced by network operators in the mobile industry?
Want to control handset manufacturers : Android easier bc of customization Apple more difficult Carriers/ Network operators have to spend a lot of money and invest to expand their network*** Ex: AT&T spend $13 billion to support network of iphone
Why did Google develop Android? Why does Google give Android away for free?
We do a lot of searching on Google; if wasn't on mobile phone ,,, become less relevant They wanted path to the market Google created another platform for ppl to do their Internet activity on Bc wanted to compete with apple camera,, android was a platform that allowed google to compete in camera Why Google gives Android away for free: Couldn't compete with Apple if put a price on Android Can put Google apps ,,, generate revenue from apps & ads Wanted to move to a more web based platform Google is a web based platform that wanted to expand to the mobile industry so attire android It would become less relevant Have a path to the market
Put yourself in the role of an advertiser for a product or service that you're interested in. Is the Internet an attractive channel for you? How might you use the Internet to reach customers you are most interested in? Where might you run ads?
Yes Pay Google (AdWords) On websites, on Google's search page, through contextual advertising Geotargeting, Google maps
What are the roles played by IT for Zara's manufacturing and logistics?
▪ Fabric is cut and dyed by robots in 23 highly-automated factories ▪ Half of the cloth undyed - Be able to respond to midseason fashion shifts Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) : Small chip based tags that wirelessly emot a unique identifying code for the individual item: Math and data driven analysis to determine how many of which items in which sizes should be delivered to which stores during twice-weekly shipments