MGSC 300 EXAM 2
Why do marketers use blogs and microblogs?
Corporate bloggers use it to tell stories about their brands and connect with customers, interactive dialogue... comment features, allowing readers to respond to blog posts, interacting with the blogger and other readers.
Explain the purpose of an enterprise system.
Enterprise systems integrate internal core business processes by their connection to central data repositories that enable them to synch and share the latest data and they link the enterprise with suppliers, business partners, and customers.
What are two challenges of legacy systems?
Legacy systems (older business systems that may be still in use) are difficult and expensive to maintain, update, and interface securely with leading-edge business apps.
Describe SCM.
Supply chain management (SCM) is the efficient management of the flows of material, data, and payments along the companies in the supply chain, from suppliers to consumers. SCM systems are configured to achieve the following business goals: To reduce uncertainty and variability in order to improve the accuracy of forecasting To increase control over the processes in order to achieve optimal inventory levels, cycle time, and customer service.
What are the four distinct methodologies used by recommender systems to create recommendations?
content filtering collaborative filtering knowledge-based systems demographic systems
What are the basic tools or applications that characterize Web 2.0?
describes a phase of World Wide Web evolution characterized by dynamic webpages XML and Java; social media; data from multiple sources, as in mashup applications; broadband connectivity; user communities, user-generate, user-controlled content
What is a blogging platform?
software application used to create, edit, and add features to a blog ex: WordPress and Blogger
What four factors increase the risk of fraud?
1. trust in employees without oversight to verify 2. informal processes of control 3. belief that internal controls and fraud prevention are too expensive 4. wide range of duties for each employee
Why does CRM matter?
CRM systems play the major role in customer experience (CX), and good CX helps to retain customers. However, not all customers are worth retaining. Customers can be unprofitable. Intelligently managing relationships with customers can increase revenues and net profits significantly. Similar to managing inventory and supplier relationships, effective CRM is data-driven, complex, and continuously changing. The growth of mobile sales channels and social networking makes recognizing customers across multiple touchpoints complex. In addition, many companies have customer data in multiple, disparate systems that are not integrated—until they implement CRM systems.
What is customer lifetime value (CLV)?
Customer lifetime value (CLV) is a formula for estimating the dollar value, or worth, of a long-term relationship with a customer.
Explain the four critical success factors for CRM.
Data (15%) CRM technology (20%) People (40%) Process change (25%)
Describe three types of enterprise systems.
ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning SCM: Supply Chain Management CRM: Customer Relationship Management
How can companies reduce the cost of recruiting qualified employees?
IT provides access to more recruits, collect info, search data, and select a pool of applicants based upon criteria... allows a company to evaluate more people with less human intervention.
Briefly describe the latest ERP features and add-ons.
Legacy systems (older business systems that may be still in use) are difficult and expensive to maintain, update, and interface securely with leading-edge business apps.
What are some ways you can use social media to solicit knowledge, information, and advice from experts on the Web?
Social media monitoring tools can be used to search the Web for blog posts, tweets and other social activity by industry experts and commentators that might prove to be sources of valuable information. It is often possible to engage these experts on social media by commenting on blog posts, interacting on social networks or services like Twitter.
What is a supply chain?
Supply chains involve the flow of materials, data, and money. The journey that a product travels, starting with raw material suppliers, to manufacturers or assemblers, then distributors and retail sales shelves, and ultimately to customers is its supply chain. Supply chain starts with the acquisition of raw materials or the procurement (purchase) of products and proceeds through manufacture, transport, and delivery—and the disposal or recycling of products.
Why is Web 2.0 referred to as the social Web?
The new technologies dramatically increase the ability of people to interact with businesses and each other, sharing and finding information, and forming relationships.
What are the most common types of mobile banking activities consumers perform?
account alerts, security alerts, and reminders; account balances, updates, and history; customer service via mobile; branch or ATM location information; bill-pay (e.g., utility bills), and delivery of online payments by secure agents and mobile phone client apps; funds transfers; transaction verification.
How do organizations evaluate the effectiveness of their search engine optimization strategies and tactics?
how many people visit their site, what specific pages they visit, how long they spend on the site, and what search engines are producing the most traffic Analyze keyword conversion rates or likelihood that using a particular keyword will result in conversions (when a website visitor converts to a buyer)
What is insider fraud? What are some other terms for insider fraud?
Insider fraud refers to a variety of criminal behaviors perpetrated by an organization's employees or contractors. Other terms for this crime are internal, employment, or occupational fraud.
Describe a typical consumer mashup.
Integration of map data (Google or Mapquest) with information like store names, locations, phone numbers, and consumer reviews from other websites.
How is Tumblr different from other types of blogging platforms?
Tumblr is often described as a microblogging service because it makes the posting of multimedia content easy for users, and update their blogs frequently. Tumblr blogs can include just as much text as a regular blog, although most who use the service emphasize photographs and video as the primary content, with emphasis on multimedia. Tumblr is popular among things like fashion, entertainment, and the arts
What advantages do sites like Dropbox and box.net have over e-mail as a way of sharing and collaborating on creating documents?
e-mail: can't keep different versions of the work organized. dropbox: hard drive, version history for documents, making it easy to see changes and undo them. box.net: emphasis on social tools and features, can edit files stored on box.net without downloading to hard drives, open source API, allowing third-party developers to write applications for box.net users that offer additional sharing and collaboration features
What is the purpose of an index in a search engine?
efficiently locate relevant pages containing keywords used in a search
Describe how digital content and services can lead to significantly lower costs.
eliminates many of the costs of physical products: selling one or many copies requires no additional storage, order fulfillment is entirely online (no warehouse shelves, no packing and shipping) and delivery logistics are minimal, and the largest business, personnel, can be minimal.
describe the three evolutionary stages of the Internet
first stage Web 1.0 (The Initial Web) - A Web of Pages. Pages or documents are "hyperlinked," making it easier to access connected info second stage Web 2.0 (The Social Web) - A Web of Applications. Applications are created that allow people to easily create, share, and organize information. third stage is Web 3.0 (The Semantic Web) - A Web of Data. Information within documents tagged with metadata, allowing users to access specific information across platforms, regardless of the original structure, turns the Web into one giant database.
How has Web 2.0 changed the behavior of Internet users?
increase the ability of people to interact with businesses and each other, sharing and finding information, and forming relationships
What is Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)?
language for the electronic communication of business data. each item, such as cash is tagged with information about various attributes like calendar year. RL tagged data can be read by any software like XBRL processor, easy to transfer, doesn't require XML. software is available to tag data, submit tagged data to various recipients, and receive and analyze tagged data from other sources XBRL helps companies: Generate cleaner data, including written explanations and supporting notes. Produce more accurate data with fewer errors that require follow-up by regulators. Transmit data faster to regulators and meet deadlines. Increase the number of cases and amount of information that staffers can handle.
List the types of mobile entertainment available to consumers.
music, movies, videos, games, adult entertainment, sports, and gambling apps
What are the two basic types of mobile payment transactions?
online purchase of goods and services in a traditional brick-and-mortar store
"clues" about quality of a website's content determine how a page should be ranked in search explain rationale for using reputation or popularity, relevancy, and user satisfaction as an indicator of a website's content quality.
popularity - assuming good content are most popular... people are more likely to link to high quality than poor quality, the number of backlinks relevant - Keywords, Page titles, Relevant phrases in text, Amount of text on page that appears relevant, Backlinks from relevant sites and Web directories, SERP click through rate (CTR), Onpage factor, Dwell time, bounce rate satisfaction - dwell time, site speed, reading level, hacked sites, malware, spam, website satisfaction surveys, barriers to content, ads, page-not-found, duplicate, copied content copied, spam
Why does channel conflict sometimes occur when companies sell their products through both traditional and online channels?
pricing of products and services allocation of resources (e.g., advertising budget) logistics services provided by the offline activities to the online activities (e.g., handling of returned items bought online).
How do webpage factors influence the effectiveness of PPC advertisements?
product ads that link to the main page not product info page landing page design effectiveness of the call to action quality of the shopping cart application PPC campaign won't be effective if the website isn't attractive to consumers
In addition to "bid price", what other factors influence the likelihood that an ad will appear on a search results page? Why don't search engines just rely on the advertisers bid when deciding what ads will appear on the search results page?
set parameters for where, when, and what time to help advertisers reach the consumers most likely to purchase their products quality score is determined by factors related to the user's experience ads that are considered to be more relevant and more likely to be clicked on will cost less and run in a top position relevant ads are good for all parties - search engine makes more from clicked ads, the advertiser experiences more customers visiting its site, and the customer is more likely to find what he or she is looking for
What is fraud risk management?
system of policies and procedures to prevent and detect illegal acts committed by managers, employees, customers, or business partners against the company's interests each corporation has its own specific procedures, fraud risk management involves assessing a company's exposure to fraud; implementing defenses to prevent and detect fraud; and defining procedures to investigate, prosecute, and recover losses from fraud. analysis of why/how it could occur is as important as detecting/stopping it. identify necessary corporate policies to deter insider fraud and fraud detection systems for when prevention fails
What is the purpose of auditing?
to protect and defend the accuracy and condition of the financial health of an organization, helps to meet compliance mandates, deter fraud, and facilitate capital budgeting and forecasting.
Describe the ways in which businesses can benefit from using social media monitoring tools?
track conversations taking place on social media sites, better understand what people were saying about their brands, products, and executives. identify industry experts, commentators, and opinion leaders who post regularly to social media sites and build relationships with them and encourage them to become brand advocates
Describe the page-ranking method most commonly associated with Google's success
trade secrets a search engine may use hundreds of different criteria to determine which pages appear at the top of a SERP Google: 200 "clues" to determine how it ranks pages Dover and Dafforn: factors can be grouped into two categories: relevance and popularity (or "authority").
What is the function of POM (production and operations management) in an organization?
transform inputs into value-added outputs inputs: human resources - workers, staff, and managers; facilities and processes -buildings and equipment; materials - IT, information outputs: goods and services a company produces.
Why are mashups considered part of social media?
user-generated social information, represent the power to separate content from form allowing Web developers and users greater control over how information is displayed and used on the Web.
How do metadata tags facilitate more accurate search results?
labeled with tags describing the nature of the info, where it's from, or how it's arranged... making the Web one large database that can be read and used by a wide variety of apps semantic web makes it possible to access information about real things without worrying about the details
What are some ways in which traditional brick-and-mortar retailers can use mobile technology to enhance a customer's in-store shopping experience?
offer coupons or other special deals when the customer "checks in" or "checks out" at a store, encourage the use of QR codes to help consumers find product information, track a customer's movement through a retail store
Describe some of the ways that people are using mobile devices to shop for products and services.
ordering product from online vendors, "checking in" to obtain coupons, discounts via text, in-store tracking/loyalty programs, using QR codes or mobile visual search for product info, comparing product and price in-store to those found online, managing travel arrangements for hotels and airlines, marketing apps like Foursquare or Shopkick, using augmented reality to help make choices based upon the shoppers' requirements.
four online marketing planning recommendations
1. Build marketing plan around customer not products 2. Monitor progress toward one-year vision and be agile to respond 3. Identify all key assumptions in the marketing plan. When wrong, identify new assumptions and adjust plan 4. Make data-driven, fact-based plans
What are the four primary steps to creating a PPC advertising campaign on search engines?
1. Set an overall budget for the campaign. 2. Create ads—most search engine ads are text only. 3. Select keywords associated with the campaign. 4. Set up billing account information.
Describe three different real-time search tools.
Google Trends — helps identify current and historical interest in the topic by reporting the volume of search activity over time, allows you to view the information for different time periods and geographic regions. Google Alerts — monitors new Web content, news stories, videos, and blog posts about some topic. users set up alerts by specifying a search term (e.g., a company name, product, or topic), how often to receive notices, and an e-mail address to send alerts. Bing has a similar feature called News Alerts. Twitter Search — leverage the crowd to find information as well as gauge sentiment on a wide range of topics and issues in real time, looks similar to other search engines, and includes an advanced search mode.
Describe ERP from a technology perspective.
Legacy architectures were not designed for flexibility. Integrating information systems is necessary so that data can flow seamlessly among departments and business partners. ERP solutions can have enough flexibility and versatility to manage different lines of business as well as changing business requirements. A full ERP offers a longer-term solution that is agile to respond to changing business needs.
Explain push-through marketing and pull-through marketing.
Pull-through marketing: based on the user's keyword searches Push-through pay-per-click (PPC) marketing: ads use data based on the user's location, behavior, interests, or demographic information. This capability creates opportunities for highly targeted advertising programs.
How is a recommendation engine different from a search engine?
Search engine: customers find products through an active search, assuming customers know what they want and how to describe it Recommendation engines: proactively identify products that have a high probability of being something a consumer wants based on purchase history, browsing history, product reviews, ratings etc.
Briefly differentiate between the sell-side marketplace and e-sourcing.
Sell-side marketplace model: organizations sell their products or services to other organizations from their own private website or from a third-party site. similar to B2C model in which the buyer is expected to come to the seller's site, view catalogs, and place an order. In the B2B sell-side marketplace, buyer is an organization. The two key mechanisms are forward auctions and online catalogs, which can be customized for each buyer. E-sourcing: many different procurement methods that make use of an electronic venue for identifying, evaluating, selecting, negotiating, and collaborating with suppliers. The primary methods are online auctions, RFQ (request for quote) processing, and private exchanges. E-sourcing also applies to many other secondary activities, which add to the cycle time and transaction costs when performed using traditional methods. Secondary activities include trading partner collaboration, contract negotiation, and supplier selection.
What are the basic functions of an enterprise social platform?
The basic functions are to enable employees to connect and collaborate with others, stay informed, build relationships, and share documents and data.
What are ethical issues related to HRM apps?
Training activities that are part of HRM may involve ethical issues in recruiting and selecting employees and in evaluating performance. Likewise, TPS data processing and storage deal with private information about people, their performance, and so forth. Care should be taken to protect this information and the privacy of employees and customers. The federal law related to workplace substance abuse, the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1990 requires employers with federal government contracts or grants to ensure a drug-free workplace by documenting and certifying that they have taken a number of steps. Dealing with alcoholism and drugs at work entails legal risks because employees have sued for invasion of privacy, wrongful discharge, defamation, and illegal searches. Employment laws make securing HR information necessary for the protection of employees and the organization.
What is the primary difference between a web directory and a crawler based search engine?
Web directories are categorized listings of webpages created and maintained by humans. Because websites are only included after being reviewed by a person, it is less likely that search results will contain irrelevant websites. Crawler search engines rely on sophisticated computer programs called "spiders," "crawlers," or "bots" that surf the Internet, locating webpages, links, and other content that are then stored in the SE's page repository.
Explain why providing high quality, regularly updated content is the most important aspect of any SEO strategy.
websites become easier to find in search engines and build brand awareness, positive attitudes toward the brand, and brand loyalty.
Give three reasons why CRM fails.
1. Putting IT department in charge of the CRM project instead of the business users. The hands-on business users need to champion and lead the project initiative, with IT playing a supporting role. 2. Not getting CRM requirements right by not involving key business stakeholders from the outset. CRM implementations need buy-in from the users and other business stakeholders. Frequent communication is important. 3. Making mobile CRM strategy an afterthought. Consider mobility a priority in the CRM project from the outset. Putting an existing CRM on mobile devices is a bad plan. 4. Taking wrong approach to CRM training. Make sure the interface is intuitive and not too long, so users won't need hands-on training. When people sit in a classroom for an hour, they will only retain 5 minutes of what they hear. A learning program during lunch that focuses on one or two lessons is a much more effective adoption strategy. 5. Underestimating users' resistance to change. Users will not tolerate poorly designed systems. Frustrating users is a fast track to failure, or at a minimum, suboptimal results.
Why do companies migrate to enterprise systems?
6. Companies tend to migrate to an enterprise solution when they need to consolidate their disparate systems, such as when limitations caused by their existing legacy systems interfere with performance or the ability to compete. Here are major reasons why companies replace parts of their legacy systems or supplement them with enterprise systems. It is important to realize that many companies do not have the resources to replace all their legacy systems. High maintenance costs. Maintaining and upgrading legacy systems are some of the most difficult challenges facing CIOs (chief information officers) and IT departments. Business value deterioration. Technological change weakens the business value of legacy systems that have been implemented over many years and at huge cost. Inflexibility. Legacy architectures were not designed for flexibility. These huge systems cannot be easily redesigned to share data with newer systems, unlike modern architectures. Integration obstacles. Legacy systems execute business processes that are hardwired by rigid, predefined process flows. Their hardwiring makes integration with other systems such as CRM and Web-based applications difficult and sometimes impossible. Lack of staff. IT departments find it increasingly difficult to hire staff who are qualified to work on mainframes and applications written in languages no longer used by the latest technologies. Cloud. The cloud has lowered upfront costs. Cloud-based enterprise systems can be a good fit for companies facing upgrades to their legacy ERP and other enterprise systems.
Explain the three types of changes needed when an enterprise system is implemented.
8. Best practices for implementing an enterprise system involves changes in the management of processes, people, and existing systems. Three required changes are as follows: Re-design of business processes. Processes need to be simplified and re-designed so that they can be automated, either totally or partially. Tasks that are no longer necessary are removed from the processes. Changes in how people perform their jobs. Jobs and how they are performed will change to accommodate the new processes. Enterprise systems require retraining users whose productivity will drop initially as they adjust to a new way of doing their jobs. Integration of many types of information systems. Integrating information systems is necessary so that data can flow seamlessly among departments and business partners. Automated data flows are essential to productivity improvements.
How can CRM be justified?
A formal business plan must be in place before the CRM project begins—one that quantifies the expected costs, tangible financial benefits, and intangible strategic benefits, as well as the risks. The plan should include an assessment of the following: Tangible net benefits. The plan must include a clear and precise cost-benefit analysis that lists all of the planned project costs and tangible benefits. This portion of the plan also should contain a strategy for assessing key financial metrics, such as ROI, net present value (NPV), or other justification methods. Intangible benefits. The plan should detail the expected intangible benefits, and it should list the measured successes and shortfalls. Often, an improvement in customer satisfaction is the primary goal of the CRM solution, but in many cases this key value is not measured. Risk assessment. The risk assessment is a list of all of the potential pitfalls related to the people, processes, and technology that are involved in the CRM project. Having such a list helps to lessen the probability that problems will occur. And, if they do happen, a company may find that, by having listed and considered the problems in advance, the problems are more manageable than they would have been otherwise.
What is a value added reseller (VAR)?
A value-added reseller (VAR) is company that customizes or adds features to a vendor's software or equipment and resells the enhanced product.
According to Peter Drucker, what does marketing effectiveness depend on?
According to management guru Peter Drucker, "Those companies who know their customers, understand their needs, and communicate intelligently with them will always have a competitive advantage over those that don't" (Drucker, 1969). For most types of companies, marketing effectiveness depends on how well they know their customers; specifically, knowing what their customers want, how best to contact them, and what types of offers they are likely to respond to positively. According to the loyalty effect, a five percent reduction in customer attrition can improve profits by as much as 20 percent. Customer-centric business strategies strive to provide products and services that customers want to buy.
What is the difference between a blog and a microblog?
Blogs: websites where people regularly post content... you may not always realize you are reading a blog when accessing online content personal blogs- online diaries where people share their life thoughts sophisticated and professional blogs - like online newspapers Microblog: blog that consists of frequent, but very brief posts containing text, pictures, or videos. Twitter is most well-known
Discuss how CRM impacts customer acquisition and retention.
CRM technologies help marketing managers run effective campaigns, promotions, commercials, and advertisements to attract new customers, or to increase sales to existing customers, or to do both. Attracting and acquiring new customers are expensive activities, for example, it costs banks roughly $100 to acquire a new customer. Newly acquired customers are unprofitable until they have purchased enough products or services to exceed the cost to acquire and service them. Therefore, retaining customers that generate revenues in excess of the costs (e.g., customer service, returns, promotional items, and the like) is critical. The purpose of loyalty or frequent purchase programs offered by online retailers, coffee shops, airlines, supermarkets, credit card issuers, casinos, and other companies is to track customers for CRM purposes and build customer loyalty to improve financial performance. Loyalty programs rely on data warehouses and data analytics to recognize and reward customers who repeatedly use services or products.
Describe four metrics that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a PPC advertising campaign
Click through rates (CTRs) — Alone CTRs do not measure the financial performance of an ad campaign, but are useful for decisions that go into a campaign, such as keyword selection and ad copy. Keyword conversion — High CTRs aren't good if they don't lead to sales. Cost of the campaign is based on how many people click an ad, so you want keywords that lead to sales, not just site visits. Cost of customer acquisition (CoCA) — amount spent to attract a paying customer. Calculate CoCA for a PPC campaign: divide total budget of the campaign by total customers. Ex: spent $1,000 on campaign w/ 40 customers, CoCA would be $1,000/40 = $25 per customer. Return on advertising spend (ROAS) — overall financial effectiveness, revenue/cost. Ex: $1,000 spent, led to $6,000 in sales, ROAS would be $6,000/$1,000 = $6. For every dollar spent, $6 was earned.
What are the most common security risks associated with mobile banking?
Cloning Duplicating the electronic serial number (ESM) of one phone and using it in second phone, clone calls and other transactions billed to the original phone. Phishing - fraudulent communication like email to trick the receiver into giving critical information such as account numbers, passwords, or other identifying information. Smishing Similar to phishing, but communication comes in SMS message. Vishing Again, fraudulent communication comes in the form of a voice or voicemail Lost or stolen phone - used to conduct financial transactions without the owner's permission
What are the two basic goals of e-procurement? How can those goals be met?
Control costs: The first goal is to control corporate spending. Organizations want to spend intelligently to maximize the value of their spending. Simplify processes: The second goal is to streamline the procurement process to make it efficient. Inefficiencies in the procurement process introduce delays in ordering and receiving items and tax internal resources. The two goals can be met in three ways: 1. Streamline the e-procurement process within an organization's value chain, reduces the number of employees needed to process purchasing, reduces the procurement cycle time to order and receive items, and empowers an organization's staff with enough information about the products and services to enable them to make intelligent decisions when procuring items. 2. Align the org procurement process with other trading partners. Alignment can be achieved by automating the process from end-to-end including trading partner's systems, and simplifies the buying process. 3. Use appropriate e-procurement strategies and solutions. Organizations analyze spending patterns in an effort to improve spending decisions and outcomes.
What does the concept of digital native, digital immigrant, and digital dependent help us to understand about people's use of technology during shopping activities?
Digital natives are comfortable using technology to move easily between various retail channels to optimize their purchasing on price, convenience, and desire for instant gratification. Digital immigrants fundamentally view retail channels as separate and distinct. They are much less likely than natives to incorporate mobile technology into their shopping behavior. Digital dependents will place even greater demands on retailers, expecting to use technology to accomplish all facets of the shopping experience. They will expect in-store shopping to be fully integrated with the technology they have come to depend on.
Describe the factors that influence consumer shopping behavior today.
Empowered Price Sensitivity - consumers can look up information about alternative products and prices from a variety of local and online retailers using a mobile device Nonlinear Search and Influence Patterns - varied and unpredictable, consumers today are influenced by a range of new communications channels Channel Hopping - options for purchasing products have increased... traditional retailers, online, and via mobile devices and apps. Dell reportedly sells millions of dollars of refurbished computer equipment. The manner in which consumers use each channel varies. Some consumers will use a brick-and-mortar store to gather information about a product, but purchase it online and vise versa. Some plan to purchase at a store, but if they don't find it, they will buy it from their mobile device while in the store. Digital Immigrants, Natives, and Dependents - Digital natives are the first gen to have grown up surrounded by digital devices and internet, comfortable using tech to optimize purchasing on price, convenience, and instant gratification. Digital immigrants are increasingly comfortable with tech, view retail channels as separate and distinct, less likely than natives to incorporate mobile technology into their shopping behavior. Digital dependents are young people who are growing up in a world of broadband connections, constant connectivity, and related technology and become uncomfortable if they do not have access to it. Need for Convenience - consumers will be looking for products and shopping channels that reduce the impact on their time and financial resources, while satisfying their demand for immediate gratification and desirable goods and services.
What are three ways ERP can be deployed?
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is the software infrastructure that integrates an enterprise's internal applications, supports its external business processes, and links to its external business partners. ERP systems are commercial software packages that integrate business processes, including supply chains, manufacturing, financial, human resources, budgeting, sales, and customer service. ERPs have migrated from early client-server architectures to a Web-based architecture. ERPs were devised to help managers run a business, whether a manufacturing, distribution, retail, or service organization. Ideally, each business function would access a centralized database instead of data silos. Departments stay informed about what is ongoing in other departments that impact its operations or performance.
What are the benefits of moving HRISs to intranets or the cloud?
HR professionals can focus on legal and compliance responsibilities, employee development, talent management, hiring, and succession planning.
What is a recommendation engine called that combines different methodologies to create recommendations? What are three ways these systems combine methodologies?
Hybrid recommendation engines develop recommendations based on some combination of the methodologies described (content-based filtering, collaboration filtering, knowledge-based, and demographic systems). Weighted hybrid: different recommenders are assigned a weight and combined numerically to determine a final set of recommendations. Relative weights are determined by system tests to identify the levels that produce the best recommendations. Mixed hybrid: different recommenders are presented alongside of each other Cascade hybrid: assigned a rank or priority, if a tie occurs (with two products assigned the same recommendation value), results from the lower-ranked systems are used to break ties from the higher-ranked systems. Compound hybrid: combines results from two recommender systems from the same technique category (e.g., two collaborative filters), but uses different algorithms or calculation procedures.
Explain the challenges of enterprise system implementation.
Implementing an enterprise system is complex, time-consuming, and typically requires the help of a consulting firm, vendor, or value-added reseller (VAR). Integrating legacy systems with cloud-based applications is complex, as described in Tech Note 10-1. Much of the complexity is due to getting new apps or system modules to interface with existing or legacy systems that are several generations older. Enterprise systems require data transfers—often to mainframes. Designing enterprise-level systems involves a variety of components that had been implemented on mainframes, midrange computers, networks, or cloud environments. In most large enterprises, mainframes are the workhorse systems that run the majority of business transactions. In contrast, customer interfaces through customer service; ERP, CRM, and SCM apps; websites; and B2B interactions are usually on distributed systems or in the cloud. Many times seemingly well-planned projects fail and require extensive reworking because integration issues had not been properly planned. Some enterprises choose to avoid the challenges of integration by creating a new system that replaces the full functionality of the old one. This option is the most costly, difficult, and risky. An advantage is that this option offers a longer-term solution that is agile to respond to changing business needs. Despite that potential payoff, complete replacement requires a large, up-front investment for development, poses difficulties in duplicating behavior of the legacy system, and increases the risk of complete software project failure.
Besides e-commerce websites that sell products, what are some other ways that recommendation engines are being used on the Web today?
Netflix does recommendations of movies for customers similar to movies they already have watched. Pandora creates recommendations or playlists based on song attributes.
Why are retailers likely to view technology as both a blessing and a curse?
New tech promises to give retailers a competitive edge, but are unproven. Budgets for technology are limited, and making the wrong decision can lead to financial consequences, operational failures, and lost customers. Retailers cannot afford to be too conservative, or can lose out to competitors with technologies that enhance the shopping experience, reduce costs, integrate sales channels, and improve record keeping, data collection, and analysis of key performance indicators (KPIs).
What are the major differences between social networking services and older online communities?
Older online communities - public bulletin boards where all members could read messages that others posted. Websites were static, online billboards, for the businesses that created them. E-mail was the primary mechanism for social interaction. A Social Networking Service (SNS) is an online platform or website that allows subscribers to interact and form communities or networks based on real-life relationships, shared interests, activities and so on. In addition to consuming content, we add comments or reviews and signal our appreciation for the content by clicking a "Like" or "11" button.
What is the fundamental difference between organic listings and PPC listings on a search engine?
Paid advertisements receive preferential page placement, but search engines label paid ad listings on SERPs with shading, and placing the ads in a different place on the page.
Describe IT support for HR planning and control.
Personnel planning and development: The HR department forecasts requirements for people and skills. In some geographical areas and for overseas assignments, it may be difficult to find particular types of employees. In such cases, the HR department plans how to locate sufficient human resources or develop them from within. Sophisticated HR departments build a career development plan for each employee. IT can support the planning, monitoring, and control of these activities by using workflow applications. Benefits administration: In some industries, labor negotiation is an important aspect of HR planning and it may be facilitated by IT. For most companies, administering employee benefits is also a significant part of the human resources function. Managing the benefits system can be a complex task, due to its many components and the tendency of organizations to allow employees to choose and trade off benefits. In large companies, using computers for self-benefits selection can save a tremendous amount of labor and time for HR staff. Providing flexibility in selecting benefits is viewed as a competitive advantage in large organizations. It can be successfully implemented when supported by computers. Some companies have automated benefits enrollments. Employees can self-register for specific benefits using the corporate portal or voice technology. Employees can self-select desired benefits from a menu. Performance evaluations: Evaluations are usually recorded on paper or electronic forms. Using such information manually is a tedious and error-prone job. Once digitized, evaluations can be used to support many decisions, ranging from rewards to transfers to layoffs. Employee relationship management: In their effort to better manage employees, companies are developing human capital management, facilitated by the Web, to streamline the HR process. These Web applications are more commonly referred to as employee relationship management. For example, self-services such as tracking personal information and online training are very popular in ERM. Improved relationships with employees result in better retention and higher productivity. Privacy: Employment laws make securing HR information necessary for the protection of employees and the organization. IT can secure access to information based on job function.
Why would a business want to create a private SNS? What are some of the challenges associated with doing this?
Private SNSs allow a greater degree of control over the network. Companies can easily monitor activity on their own SNS platforms and track conversations taking place about their brands and products. Managing a private SNS requires considerably more time, attention, and resources than maintaining a presence on a general SNS. Organizations need to understand up-front that they are making a substantial commitment with this strategy.
What is an RSS reader?
RSS technology allows users to subscribe to multiple sources (e.g., blogs, news headlines, video) and have the content displayed in a single application. Users can personalize how they want information from their news sources organized and displayed.
List five different practical ways that semantic technology is enhancing the search experience of users.
Related searches/queries: suggests alternative queries that may produce information related to original. Ex: "Did you mean..." if it detects a misspelling. Reference results: suggests reference material related to the query, such as a dictionary definition, wiki, maps, reviews, or stock quotes Semantically annotated results: returned pages contain search terms, but also related words that didn't appeared originally, used in future by clicking them Full-text similarity search: submit text to find similar content Search on semantic/syntactic annotations: indicate the "syntactic role the term plays — the part-of-speech or its semantic meaning like company name, location, or event. ex: a keyword on "center" too many results... so using a syntax: <organization> center </organization> so only returns documents where the word "center" was part of an organization's name. google - filetype:pdf Concept search: return results with related concepts. ex: if the original query was "Tarantino films," documents would be returned that contain the word "movies" even if not the word "films." Ontology-based search: Ontologies define the relationships between data, concept of "triples": subject, predicate, and object. Allow the search engine to answer questions such as "What vegetables are green?" and return results about "broccoli," "spinach," "peas," "asparagus," "Brussels sprouts," etc. Semantic Web search: content tagged with metadata as previously described in this section, more accurate than keyword matching. Faceted search: predefined categories called facets. ex: a search on "colleges" might result in options to "refine this search by. . ." location, size, degrees etc. Focus on a specific domain, such as Wikipedia or Semidico, a search tool for biomedical literature. Clustered search: similar to a faceted search, but without predefined categories Natural language search: extract words from questions such as "How many countries are there in Europe?" and create a semantic representation
How can working teams use social media as an alternative to face-to-face meetings?
Services like Skype and ooVoo now make it possible to conduct video calls among small groups, making it easier to hold meetings.
Describe causes or factors that contribute to ERP failure.
Students may give the inverse of success factors; i.e., failure to have strong program management, executive support, and buy-in, sufficient change management and training, realistic expectations, focus on business processes. The success of an ERP depends on organizational and technological factors that occur prior to, during, and after its implementation. Knowing what to do and what not to do are important. ERP implementations are complex—and risky. Planning, deploying, or fine-tuning these complex business software systems for your company is such a large undertaking that such projects fail more than 50 to 70 percent of the time. You need to conduct your own research rather than depend upon vendor data for the full story of enterprise system implementations. Many times seemingly well-planned projects fail and require extensive reworking because integration issues had not been properly planned. ERPs are expensive and such an investment needs to be justified. This includes the total cost of ownership, not simply the cost of the ERP or monthly SaaS fee. Processes need to be redesigned so that they can be automated, either totally or partially. Tasks that are no longer necessary are removed from the processes. Jobs and how they are performed will change to accommodate the new processes. Enterprise systems require retraining users whose productivity will drop initially as they adjust to a new way of doing their jobs. Applications must be tightly aligned with well-defined and well-designed business processes - a standard which few enterprises are able to achieve.
List four functions carried out by companies in a supply chain.
The supply chain is like a pipeline composed of multiple suppliers, distributors, manufacturers, retailers, and logistics providers that: purchase (procurement) raw materials or products transform materials (i.e., manufacture, service) into intermediate or finished products transport and deliver finished products to retailers or customers, and dispose or recycle product.
What are the top innovative digital technologies impacting SCM?
The top two strategic priorities of executives are supply chain analytics and multichannel fulfillment.
What makes Twitter a more attractive communication channel than traditional media for many individuals and organizations?
With traditional media, content is tightly controlled in the form of an ad interruption. With social media, users are frequently attracted to content that is interesting to them and can decide if, when, and how they want to interact with such content.
What is the role of exchanges in B2B?
buyers and sellers conduct business transactions, public or private Vertical exchange: one industry along the entire supply chain Horizontal exchanges: many industries that use the same products or services
List and briefly describe three ERP implementation success factors.
The text shows the results of a survey to identify what ERP experts had found to be most important to successful ERP projects. These ERP experts were given the following six options and asked to select only one of them as "most important": Strong program management: 6 percent Executive support and buy-in: 19 percent Organizational change management and training: 13 percent Realistic expectations: 8 percent Focus on business processes: 5 percent Interaction of all five factors: 49 percent Nearly half of the experts indicated that the failure of any one of the five factors significantly increases the risk of ERP failure. The text also lists the following recommendations to explain why ERP success depends on several key factors being met: Use a strong project management approach and secure commitment of resources. An ERP project depends on how it is managed. Responsibility for the management of the ERP implementation project cannot be transferred to vendors or consulting fi rms. Because of the business disruption and cost involved, ERP projects require the full-time attention and support of high-profile champions on the key functions for a long period of time, from 6 to 12 months on average. It is also known that ERP projects cannot be managed by people who can be spared. They must be managed by people who are indispensable personnel. Without powerful champions and an adequate budget, expect the ERP to fail. Focus on business processes and requirements. Too often, companies get caught up in technical capabilities or platforms on which the ERP runs. But compared to business processes, none of this really matters. What matters is how managers want business operations to run and what the key business requirements are. Once management and IT have defined them, they can intelligently choose the software, modules, and vendor that fits their unique business needs. Focus on achieving a measurable ROI. Developing a business case to get approval from upper management or the board of directors is essential, but not sufficient. Establish key performance measures, set baselines and targets for those measures, and then track performance after going live. The performance results are proof of how well the ERP meets the expectations that had been listed in the business case. Obtain strong and continuing commitment from senior executives. Any project without support from top management will fail. No matter how well run a project is, there will be problems such as conflicting business needs or business disruptions that can only be resolved by someone with the power and authority to cut through the politics and personal agendas. Take sufficient time to plan and prepare up-front. An ERP vendor's motive is to close the deal as fast as possible. The company needs to make sure it correctly defines its needs and what it can afford to achieve in order to intelligently evaluate and select the best vendor. Do not be rushed into a decision. Too often, companies jump right into a project without validating the vendor's understanding of business requirements or their project plan. The principle of "measure twice, cut once" applies to vendor selection. The more time the company spends ensuring these things are done right at the start, the lower the risk of failure and the less time spent fixing problems later. Filing a lawsuit against a vendor (see Table 10.4) is not a fi x. Lawsuits are both expensive and risky, and contribute nothing to the company's performance. Provide thorough training and change management. Another key principle to understand is that when you design an ERP, you redesign the organization. ERP systems involve dramatic change for workers. ERPs lose value if people do not understand how to use them effectively. Investing in training, change management, and job design are crucial to the outcome of any large-scale IT project.
