textbook notes

Operational Support Systems

-Used when making structured decisions. -transactional information: encompasses all the information contained within a single business process or unit of work, and its primary purpose is to support the performance of daily operational or structured decisions. -online transaction processing (OLTP): the capture of transaction and event information using technology to process info according to defined business rules, store info and update existing info to reflect the new info. -transaction processing system (TPS): basic business system that serves the operational level and assists in making structured decisions -inputs for a TPS are source documents, the original transaction record

Management Information Systems (MIS)

-a business function which moves information about people, products, and processes across the company to facilitate decision making and problem solving -incorporates systems thinking to help companies operate cross-functionally -although different functional areas handle different parts of the sale, thanks to MIS, to the customer the sale is one continuous process -MIS represents (but does not equal to) business success and innovation -MIS is most valuable when it leverages the talents of people who know how to use and manage it effectively

Neural Networks

-a category of AI that attempts to emulate the way the human brain works -analyze large quantities of information to establish patterns and characteristics when the logic or rules are unknown -features: learning and adjusting to new circumstances on their own, lending themselves to massive parallel processing, functioning without complete or well-structure info, coping with huge volumes of info with many dependent variables, and analyzing relationships in infor

Virtual Reality

-a computer-simulated environment that can be a simulation of the real world or an imaginary world -fast growing; efforts to build more natural, realistic, multi sensory human-computer interfaces -augmented reality: viewing of the physical world with computer-generated layers of info. added to it (i.e. google glass) -virtual workplace: a work environment that is not located in any one physical space -haptic interface: uses technology allowing humans to interact with a computer through bodily sensations and movements; usually combined with a virtual workplace

Competitive Advantage

-a feature of a product or service on which customers place a greater value than they do on similar offerings from competitors -provide the same product/service either at a lower price or with additional value that can fetch premium prices -usually temporary, because competitors seek ways to duplicate them: acquire the new technology, copy the business operations, and hire away key employees

Business Strategy

-a leadership plan that achieves a specific set of goals or objectives such as increasing sales, decreasing costs, entering new markets, or developing new products or services -business strategies that match core company competencies to opportunities result in competitive advantages

Internet

-a massive network that connects computers all over the world and allows them to communicate with one another -first called ARPANET

Disruptive Technology

-a new way of doing thats that initially does not meet the needs to existing customers -tend to open new markets and destroy old ones -typically enter low end of the marketplace and eventually evolve to displace high-end competitors and their technologies

Business Model

-a plan that details how a company creates, delivers, and generates revenues -ebusiness model: a plan that details how a company creates, delivers, and generates revenues on the internet -B2B, B2C, C2B, and C2C

Intelligent Agents

-a special purpose, knowledge-based info system that accomplishes specific tasks on behalf of its users -ex: a shopping bot software that searches retailer websites and provides a comparison on prices and availability -have the capability to handle all supply chain buying and selling; environmental scanning and competitive intelligence too

Business Process

-a standardized set of activities that accomplish a specific task, such as processing a customer's order -must be chosen after a firm identifies an industry it wants to enter and the generic strategy it will focus on

Web 1.0: the catalyst for e-business

-a term to refer to the WWW during its first few years of operation between 1991 and 2003 -during Web 1.0, entrepreneurs began creating the first forms of e-ebusiness -e-business opened up a new market place for any company willing to move its business operations online -ebusiness created a paradigm shift, transforming entire industries and changing enterprise wide business processes that fundamentally rewrote traditional business rules -both individuals and organizations embraced business to enhance productivity, maximize convenience, and improve communications

Systems Thinking

-a way of monitoring the entire system by viewing multiple inputs being processed or transformed to produce outputs while continuously gathering feedback on each part -provides an end-to-end view of how operations work together to create a product or service

Internet of Things (IoT)

-a world where interconnected, Internet-enabled devices or "things" can collect and share data without human intervention -a machine to machine (M2M), which allows devices to connect directly to other devices -researchers predict that more than 50 billion IoT devices will be communicating by 2020 -"if we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things- using data they gathered without any help from us- we would be able to track and count everything and greatly reduce waste, loss, and cost." -realizing the value of obtaining real-time data from connected things will allow you to make better-informed decisions, identify new opportunities, and analyze customer patterns to predict new behaviors

Primary Value Activities

-acquire raw materials and manufacture, deliver, market, sell, and provide after sales services -ex: inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, service

Genetic Algorithms

-an artificial intelligence system that mimics the evolutionary, survival-of-the-fittest process to generate increasingly better solutions to a problem -it is essentially an optimizing system that finds the combinations of inputs that gives the best outputs -best suited to decision-making environments in which thousands of solutions are possible

Managerial Support Systems

-analytical information: encompasses all organizational info, and its primary purpose is to support the performance of managerial analysis or semistructured decisions -includes transactional info along with other info such as market and industry info -trends, sales, product stats, future growth projections -online analytical processing (OLAP): manipulation of information to create business intelligence in support of strategic decision making -Decision support system (DSSs): model information using OLAP, which provides assistance in evaluating and choosing among different courses of action. Ex: what-if analysis, sensitivity analysis, goal seeking analysis, optimization analysis

The Five Forces Model: evaluating industry attractiveness

-analyzes the competitive forces within the environment in which a company operates to assess the potential for profitability in an industry -purpose: to combat competitive forces by identifying opportunities, competitive advantages, and competitive intelligence; if the forces are strong, they increase competition (and vice versa) -helps managers set business strategy by identifying the competitive structure and economic environment of an industry 1. threat of substitute products or services: the power of customers to purchase alternatives 2. buyer power: the power of customers to drive down prices 3. threat of new entrants: the power of competitors to enter a market 4. supplier power: the power of suppliers to drive up prices of materials 5. rivalry among existing competitors: the power of competitors (other four lead to this)

Business-to-consumer (B2C)

-applies to any business that sells its products or services directly to consumers online -ex: carfax

Consumer-to-business (C2B)

-applies to any consumer who sells a product or service to a business on the internet -priceline.com- customers can set their own prices for items and wait for sellers to supply them

Business-to-Business (B2B)

-applies to businesses buying from and selling to each other over the internet -ex: medical billing service, software sales and licensing, and virtual assistant businesses -represent 80% of all online business and are more complex with greater security needs than other types

Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C)

-applies to customers offering goods and services to each other on the internet -ex: an auction where buyers and sellers solicit consecutive bids from each other and prices and determined dynamically (Craigslist, Ebay)

Strategic Business Processes- Reengineering

-are dynamic, non routine, long-term business processes such as financial planning, expansion strategies, and stakeholder interactions -business process reengineering (BPR): the analysis and redesign of workflow within and between enterprises; as the rate of change increases, companies looking for rapid change and dramatic improvement turn to this -an organization can reengineer its cross-departmental business processes or an individual department's business processes to help meet its CSFs and KPIs -focus on reengineering on core processes that are critical to performance instead of marginal processes that have little impact -requires a differently mindset than continuous business process improvement programs -starting from a clean slate allows business process designer stop disassociate themselves from today's prices and focus on a new process 1. set project scope 2. study competition 3. create new processes 4. implement solution -creating value for the customer is the leading reason for instituting BPR and MIS plays an important enabling role

Porter's Three Generic Strategies

-are generic business strategies that are neither organization nor industry specific and can be applied to any business, product, or service 1. broad cost leadership 2. broad differentiation 3. focused strategy

Operational Business Processes

-are static, routine, daily business processes such as stocking inventory, checking out customers, or daily opening and closing procedures -improving business processes is critical to staying competitive -business process improvement attempts to understand and measure the current process and make performance improvements -automation can enhance the value chain by reducing costs and increasing the speed of performance activities -business process improvement: document as is process, establish measures, follow process, measure performance, identify and implement improvements (repeat) -this method is good for gradual, incremental improvement

Web 3.0

-based on intelligent web applications using natural language processing, machine-based learning and reasoning, and intelligent applications -the next step in the evolution of the internet and web applications -offers a way for people to describe information so that computers can start to understand the relationships among concepts and topics -brings machines closer together by using information -these new relationships unite people, machines, and information so a business can be smarter, quicker, more agile, and more successful -goal: to tailor online shopping searches and requests specifically to users' preferences and needs -semantic web: a component of Web 3.0 that describes things in a way that computers can understand; it describes the relationships between things and the properties of things -integration of legacy devices (ex apple pay), intelligent applications, open ID, open technologies, and a worldwide database

Business 2.0 tools for collaborating

-blogs: lets writers communicate and readers respond on a regular basis through a simple yet customizable interface that does not require any programming. In business, blogs are no different from marketing channels such as video, print, audio, or presentations. Real simple syndication (RSS) is a web format used to publish frequently updated works. -Wikis: a type of collaborative web page that allows users to add, remove, and change contact which can be easily organized and reorganized as required. The more users and content managers on a wiki, the greater the network effect -mashup: a website or web application that uses content from more than one source to create a completely new product or service

Competitive & Cost Strategies

-broad market and low cost: cost leadership. Ex: Walmart -broad market and high cost: differentiation: Ex: Nieman Marcus -narrow market: focused strategy; low cost: Payless Shoes; high cost: Tiffany & Co.

Collaboration inside the firm

-business 2.0's collaborative mind-set generates more information faster form a wider audience -the most common form of collective intelligence found inside the organization is knowledge management, which involves capturing, classifying, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing information assets in a way that provides context for effective decisions and actions -a knowledge management system (KMS) supports the capture, organization, and dissemination of knowledge throughout an organization

Core Processes

-business processes, such as manufacturing goods, selling products, and providing service, that make up the primary activities in a value chain

Expanding Global Reach

-buyers need information richness to make informed purchases and sellers need information reach to market and differentiate themselves from competition -availability of business directly reduces transaction costs -faster delivery helps strengthen customer relationships, improve customer satisfaction and sales

Expert Systems

-computerized advisory programs that imitate the reasoning processes of experts in solving difficult problems -typically include a knowledge base containing various accumulated experience and a set of rules for applying the knowledge base to each particular solution -most common form of AI in the business arena -ex: play chess, assist in medical diagnosis

Core Metrics

-critical success factors (CSFs): the crucial steps companies perform to achieve their goals and objectives and implement their strategies. Elements crucial for a business strategy's success. -key performance indicators (KPIs): the quantifiable metrics a company uses to evaluate progress toward critical success factors (more specific). Measure the progress of CSFs with quantifiable measurements. Can focus on external and internal measurements. External: market share; internal: return on investment (ROI)

Collaboration outside the organization

-crowdsourcing is the most common form of collective intelligence found outside the organization. Collective intelligence is greater than the sum of its parts. -with business 2.0, the ability to tap into its power efficiently is emerging

Core drivers of the information age

-data: raw facts that describe the characteristics of an event or object. Ex: order date, amount sold, customer number, quantity ordered -information: data converted into a meaningful and useful context. Ex: best-selling product, best customer, worst-selling product, worst customer -business intelligence: information collected from multiple sources that analyzes patterns, trends, and relationships for strategy decision making. Ex: lowest sales per week compared with the economic interest rates, best-selling product by month compared to sports season and city team wins and losses. Uses predictive analytics, which extracts information from data and uses it to predict future trends and identify behavioral patterns. -knowledge: the skills, experience, and expertise, coupled with information and intelligence, that creates a person's intellectual resources. Ex: choosing not to fire a sales representative who is underperforming, knowing that person is experiencing family problems; listing products that are about to expire first on the menu or creating them as a daily special to move the product. Today's workers are commonly referred to as knowledge workers and the use BI along with personal experience to make decisions based on both information and intuition, a valuable resource for any company.

Pinterest Case

-disruptive technology -Web 2.0 -e-business model is C2C -challenges: violation of copyright

Reducing Costs

-ebusinesses eliminated the self-space dilemma and were able to offer infinite products- products that only niche buyers like to purchase -"long tail" - the tail of a typical sales curve. Niche market business strategies capture the long tail -the introduction of ebusiness brought disintermediation, which occurs when a business sells directly to the customer online and cuts out the intermediary; shortens the order process and adds value with reduced costs or a more responsive and efficient service -sometimes reintermediation is necessary to serve certain markets in volume -operational benefits: business processes that require less time and human effort or can be eliminated -ebusiness can attract new customers with innovative marketing and retain present customers with improved support and service -low start up costs

Ebusiness Tools for Connecting and Communicating

-email: its chief business advantage is the ability to inform and communicate with many people simultaneously, immediately, and with ease -instant messaging: service that enables instant or real-time communication between people -podcasting: can increase market reach and build customer loyalty; used as a marketing communication channel -videoconferencing: can increase productivity; can improve communication and relationships, reduces travel expenses -web conferencing: blends videoconferencing with document sharing and allows the user to deliver a presentation over the web to a group of dispersed participants -content management systems: help companies manage the creation, storage, editing, and publication of their website content

SWOT Analysis

-evaluates an organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to identify significant influences that work for or against business strategies -strengths and weaknesses are inside an organization (internal) -opportunities and threats are outside the organization (external) cannot be anticipated or controlled -potential internal strengths (helpful): core competencies, market leaders, cost advantages, excellent management -potential internal weaknesses (harmful): lack of strategic direction, obsolete technologies, lack of managerial tales, outdated product line -potential external opportunities (helpful): expanded product line, increase in demand, new markets, new regulations -potential external threats (harmful): new entrants, substitute markets, shrinking markets, costly regulatory requirements

Explicit vs. Tacit Knowledge

-explicit knowledge: consist of anything that can be documented, archived, and codified, often with the help of MIS -Tacit knowledge: the knowledge contained in people's heads; challenge is figuring out how to recognize, generate, share, and manage knowledge that resides in peoples heads

Support Value Activities

-firm infrastructure, human resource management, technology development, and procurement -can survey customers about the extent to which they believe each activity adds value to the product or service

Challenges of Ebusiness

-identifying limited market segments -managing consumer trust -ensuring consumer protection -adhering to taxation rules

Digital Darwinism

-implies that organizations that cannot adapt to the new demands placed on them for surviving in the information age are doomed to extinction

Feedback

-information that returns to its original transmitter (input, transform, or output), and modifies the transmitter's actions -helps the system maintain stability

Business-Facing Processes

-invisible to the external customer but essential to the effective management of the business; includes goal setting, day-to-day planning, giving performance feedback, and allocating resources -ex: strategic planning, tactical planning, budget forecasting, training, purchasing raw materials

Dynamic Process

-is continuously changing and provides business solutions to ever-changing business operations -managing layoffs, changing order levels based on currency rates, canceling business travel due to extreme weather

Rivalry among existing competitors

-is high when competition is fierce in a market and low when competitors are more complacent -product differentiation: occurs when a company develops unique differences in its products or services with the intent to influence demand -can use product differentiation to reduce rivalry

Threat of new entrants

-is high when it is easy for new competitors to enter a market and low when there are significant entry barriers to joining a market -entry barrier: is a feature of a product or service that customers have come to expect, and entering competitors must offer the same for survival

Threat of Substitute Products or Services

-is high when there are many alternatives to a product or service and low when there are few alternatives from which to choose -polaroid had this competitive advantage for many years until it forgot to observe competitive intelligence- digital pictures on video cameras and cell phones -can reduce the threat of substitutes by offering additional value through wider product distribution, or offer various add-on services

Criteria to identify reengineering opportunities

-is the process broken? -is it feasible that reengineering this process will succeed? -does it have a high impact on the agency's strategic direction? -does it significantly affect customer satisfaction? -is it antiquated? -does it fall far below best-in-class? -is it crucial for productivity improvement? -will savings from automation be clearly visible? -is the return on investment from implementation high and preferably immediate?

Opening New Markets

-mass customization -personalization -ebusiness is perfect for increasing niche-product sales

Effectiveness MIS Metrics

-measure the impact MIS has on business processes and activities, including customer satisfaction and customer conversion rates -focuses on on how well a firm is achieving its goals and objectives -usability, customer satisfaction, conversion rates, financial

Efficiency MIS Metrics

-measure the performance of MIS itself, such as throughput, transaction speed, and system availability -focuses on the extent to which a firm is using its resources in an optimal way -throughput, transaction speed, system availability, information accuracy, response time

First-mover Advantage

-occurs when a company can significantly increase its market share by being first with a new competitive advantage -companies benefit when it is the first to market with a competitive advantage

Content sharing through open sourcing

-open source: any software whose source code is made available free for any third party to review and modify -business 2.0 is capitalizing on open source software

Revenue-Generating Strategies

-pay-per-click: generates revenue each time a user clicks a link to a retailer's website -pay-per-call: generates revenue each time a user clicks a link that takes the user directly to an online agent waiting for a call -pay-per-conversation: generates revenue each time a website visitor is converted to a customer -advertising fees -license fees -subscription fees -transaction fees -value-added services fees

Sustaining Technology

-produces an improved product customers are eater to buy, such as a faster car or larger hard drive -tend to provide us with better faster and cheaper products in established markets -incumbent companies most often lead sustaining technology market but never lead in markets opened by disruptive technologies

Strategic Support Systems

-requires both business intelligence and knowledge to support uncertainty and complexity associated with business strategies -Executive information system (EIS): a specialized DSS that supports senior-level executives and unstructured, long-term, nonroutine decisions requiring judgment, evaluation, and insight -digital dashboard analytical capabilities: consolidation, drill-down, slice-and-dice, pivot

Customer-Facing Processes

-result in a product or service received by an organization's external customer. Fulfilling orders, communicating with customers, and sending out bills and marketing info -ex: order processing, customer service, sales process, customer billing, order shipping

Managerial Business Processes- Streamlining

-semidynamic, semiroutine, monthly business processes such as resource allocation, sales strategy, or manufacturing process improvements -streamlining removes bottlenecks and eliminates redundancy; the goal of streamlining is not only to automate but also to improve by monitoring, controlling, and changing the business process -automating a business process that has bottlenecks/redundancies will magnify these problems if not first corrected

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

-simulates human thinking and behavior, such as the ability to reason and learn -ultimate goal is to build a system that can mimic human intelligence -executive information systems are starting to take advantage of artificial intelligence to facilitate unstructured strategic decision making -intelligent systems are various commercial applications of artificial intelligence: sensors, software, and devices that emulate and enhance human capabilities, learn or understand from experience, make sense of ambiguous or contradictory info, and use reasoning to solve problems and make decisions effectively -AI systems increase speed and consistency of decision making, solve problems with incomplete info, and resolve complicated issues that cannot be solved by conventional computing -5 types of AI: 1. expert systems 2. neural networks 3. genetic algorithms 4. intelligent agents 5. virtual reality

Networking communities with business 2.0

-social media, social network/social networking, -the ability to create and maintain a profile that serves as an online identity within the environment and to create connections between other people within the network -social networking analysis (SNA) maps group contacts identifying who knows each other and who works together; it can provide a vision of how employees work together -business 2.0 simplifies access to information and improves the ability to share it -social graphs represent the interconnection of relationships in a social network -social tagging, hashtag, folksonomy, website bookmarks, and social bookmarking

Supplier Power

-supply chain: consists of all parties involved, directly or indirectly, in obtaining raw materials or a product -supplier power: the suppliers' ability to influence the prices they charge for supplies -# of suppliers, size of suppliers, uniqueness of services, and availability of substitute products -if supplier power high, the supplier can influence the industry by charging higher prices, limiting quality or services, and shifting costs to industry participants -when supplier power is high, prices for product will go up and the buyer loses revenue -using MIS to find alternative products is one way of decreasing supplier power

Challenges of Business 2.0

-technology dependence -information vandalism -violations of copyright and plagiarism

Buyer Power

-the ability of buyers to affect the price they must pay for an item -# of customers, sensitivity to price, size of orders, differences between competitors, and availability of substitutes -if high, customers can force a company and competitors to compete on price, which usually drives prices down -switching costs: costs that make customers reluctant to switch to another product can reduce buyer power -loyalty programs: reward customers based on their spending, can also reduce buyer power

Business Process Modeling (mapping)

-the activity of creating a detailed flowchart or process map of a work process that shows its inputs, tasks, and activities in a structured sequence -business process model: a graphic description of a process, showing the sequence of process tasks, which is developed for a specific purpose and from a selected viewpoint -purpose: expose process detail gradually and in a controlled manner, encourage conciseness and accuracy in describing the process model, focus attention on the process model interfaces, proved a powerful process analysis and consistent design vocabulary -begins with as-is process models: represent the current state of the operation -the next step is to build a to-be process model, which show the results of applying change improvement opportunities to the current process model -both of these are important for in business process reengineering projects because the diagrams are very powerful in visualizing activities, processes and data flow -investigating business processes can help find bottlenecks, remove redundant tasks, and recognize smooth-running processes -business processes should drive MIS choices

Improving Effectiveness

-the best way to measure ebusiness success to to use effectiveness MIS metrics, such as revenue generated by web traffic, number of new customers acquired by web traffic, and reductions in customer service calls resulting from web traffic -interactivity measures advertising effectiveness by counting visitor interactions with the target ad -through clickstream data, companies can observe the exact pattern of a consumer's navigation through a site

Web 2.0 (Business 2.0)

-the next generation of internet use- a more mature, distinctive communications platform characterized by new qualities such as collaboration, sharing, and free -encourages user participation and the formation of communities that contribute to the content -technical skills are no longer required to use and publish information to the WWW, eliminating entry barriers for online business -content sharing through open sourcing, user-contributed content, collaboration inside the organization, collaboration outside the organization

Competitive Intelligence

-the process of gathering information about the competitive environment, including competitors' plans, activities, and products, to improve a company's ability to succeed -understanding and learning as much as possible as soon as possible about what is occurring outside the company to remain competitive -there are four common tools to analyze competitive intelligence and develop competitive advantages: 1. SWOT analysis: evaluates a project position 2. the five forces model: evaluates industry attractiveness 3. the three generic strategies: chooses business focus 4. value chain analysis: executes business strategy

User contributed content

-user-contributed content (user-generated content): is created and updated by many users for many users. Flickr, Wikipedia, and Youtube move control of online media from the hands of leaders to the hands of users -companies are embracing user-generated content to help with everything from marketing to product development and quality assurance -one of the most popular forms of user generated content is a reputation system, in which buyers post feedback on sellers

Static Process

-uses a systematic approach in an attempt to improve business effectiveness and efficiency continuously -managers constantly try to optimize static process -running payroll, calculating taxes, creating financial statements

Value Chain Analysis

-views a firm as a series of business processes, each of which adds value to the product or service -identifies competitive advantages and value added by business strategy -useful for determining how to create the greatest possible value for customers -goal: to identify proceses in which the firm can add value for the customer and create a competitive advantage for itself, with a cost advantage or product differentiation -groups activities into primary or secondary activities -competitive advantage decision: target high value-adding activities to enhance value further, target low value-adding activities to increase their value, perform some combination of the two -MIS adds value to both primary and support value activities

Using MIS to Improve Business Processes

-workflow: includes the tasks, activities, and responsibilities required to execute each step in a business process -undertanding workflow, customers' expectations, and competitive environment are necessary ingredients to evaluate and design alternative business process to maintain competitive advantage -alternative business processes should be effective and efficient, adaptable and flexible -Three conditions indicate the time is right to initiate a business process change: 1. there has been a pronounced shift in the market the process was designed to serve 2. the company is markedly below industry benchmarks on its core processes 3. to regain competitive advantage, the company must leapfrog competition on key dimensions

Decision-Making Essentials

1. Operational level (structured decisions): employees develop, control, and maintain core business activities required to run the day-to-day operations. These decisions arise when established processes offer potential solutions. Affect short term business strategies. ex: order inventory, weekly production schedules. 2. Managerial level (semistructured decisions): employees are continuously evaluating company operations to hone the firm's abilities to identify, adapt to, and leverage change. Short- and medium-range plans, schedules, and budgets along with policies, procedures, and business objectives for the firm. These decisions occur in situations in which a few established processes help to evaluate potential solutions, but not enough to lead to a definite recommended decision 3. Strategic level (unstructured decisions): managers develop overall business strategies, goals, and objectives as part of the company's strategic plan. These decisions occur in situations in which no procedures or rules exist to hide decision makers toward the correct choice

Managerial Decision-Making Challenges

1. managers need to analyze large amounts of information 2. managers must make decisions quickly 3. managers must apply sophisticated analysis techniques, such as Porter's strategies or forecasting, to make strategic decisions

Stakeholders

1. partners/suppliers 2. shareholders/investors 3. community 4. employees 5. customers 6. government

Decision Making Process

1. problem identification: define the problem as clearly and precisely as possible 2. data collection: gather problem-related data, including who, what, where, when, why, and how 3. solution generation: detail every solution possible, including ideas that seem farfetched 4. solution test: evaluate solutions in terms of feasibility, sustainability, and acceptability 5. solution selection: select the solution that best solves the problem and meets the needs of the business 6. solution implementation: if the solution solves the problem, then the decisions made were correct