New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT)
Computer and Information Science Department (CIS)
CIS677:
Information System Principles
Professor: Michael
Bieber
Please treat the video taped lectures as you would any in-classroom lectures. Take notes! Taking notes will force you to pay deeper attention to the discussion and important materials. Plus it will give you information to study from and perhaps incorporate into your midterm and article reviews.
The lecture notes that we are providing are not substitutes for you taking notes, rather a time saver that provides you an outline of the lecture. We leave a lot of gaps, which leaves you room to write your own notes on top of it.
*** See the link to the Society for Design and Process Science from our class Web Site: (http://www.sdpsnet.org/)
Michael F. Smith examples:
Jon Turner examples:
Note that both of these examples took place long before the World Wide Web was created...
* who &endash; what &endash; how &endash; where &endash; when
&endash; why
* This is an informal, strawman model that Prof. Bieber
devised
Example: Baxter Healthcare
* Illustration: Alter's Work-Centered Analysis (WCA)
{Note: during this part of the discussion, the technicians
insisted on showing the Value Chain handout instead of the
WCA.}
Bob S. asks (21:26):
Would you consider that a system is a strategic system one if it doesn't make money for the company - even though it satisfies the customers? It could have the best interface. You could have a GUI [graphical user interface] for an airline system. You could actually see your seat. You can change your seat dynamically. But people do not purchase it, so it does not make any money for the company. Would you still say that it is a strategic system?
* Porter’s Competitive Forces Model
* Tactics Framework for achieving those strategies
* Focus: how you differentiate yourself from your competitors
*** Together these form Zwass' Strategic Cube: (handout: Zwass Figure 3.13)
Where to look for opportunities for improving processes/lowering costs, etc.?
* Porter’s Value Chain Model (handout)
* Alter's Extended Value Chain (handout)
attaching your company’s value chain to that of your
supplier and your customer
Note: Michael F. Smith mentioned "Faster - better - cheaper", and later mentions that companies must be more agile/flexible to react to our hypercompetitive business environment. This corresponds to Mowshowitz' definition of a "virtual organization", which we study at another time this semester.
* proactive, industry leader (competitive advantage) vs. industry follower (strategic necessity)
* in good times (proactive, as insurance) or bad times (oops, we’re in trouble)
Mark C. asks, following up from the leader vs. follower discussion (38:53):
Isn't another problem of the leader, typically, his focus on market share - he basically does everything based on competing against his competitors trying to grab market share. Whereas if you looked at some other theories, like from a Harvard Business School Press mass customization, they emphasize "opportunity share." So if you work backwards from looking at opportunities, they may or may not be realized by information technology, working backwards would lead to a strategic system. [To sum this up:] What do you think about an opportunity-share vs. a market-share orientation?
Mark C. continues, discussing opportunity share (40:47):
You may realize that you are in a market that does not exist today or (will not) 5 years from now. And like Mr. Smith said, Amazon.com created basically an opportunity or industry.
Bob S. asks (42:03):
Like, for example, if somebody tries to enter a business, such as the airline business, or aircraft manufacturing like Boeing. Boeing opened a few years ago its Web site - so what? Who is going to jump into and sell aircraft over the Web? Barriers are so deep that they are safe into the next century. Countries cannot afford to enter into that market. It depends XXX Going back to Amazon.com, they still do not make any money, even though they have the highest share of the market. So it's a trade-off. [But the jury is still out; it's a new industry.]
Bob S. asks regarding the WWHWWW framework (44:26):
We looked at all those "W"s and one "H." Which one do you think is the hardest to do?
Frameworks have a couple purposes. Jon Turner pointed out that they often are helpful in describing (including figuring out) a situation that occurred in the past.
They are also useful in looking for possible opportunities or problems.
A framework gives you a simplified way to view a situation - a set of categories that you can start to define your situation in terms of. Trying to recast your situation in terms of these categories can help you understand it in this viewpoint. (For example, looking at Amazon.com in terms of Porters Competitive Forces model forces you to think about their situation in terms of suppliers, customers, barriers to entry, niche markets and internal cost structures.) It often helps you see what is missing, especially when you cannot fill in a particular category.
Two Books:
Michael Bieber asks (53:14):
Just briefly, what is the relationship between IS and business processes?
Michael Bieber asks (54:01):
Can business processes be used strategically? Can business processes make an information system strategic. Or can reordering the processes be part of a strategic strategy?
Scott M. notes, regarding that IBM reengineered a process where it previously took 32 steps to file a travel reimbursement (55:29):
They followed up that study with a study that indicated that it takes 6 months to ship an empty box.
- How can IS support BPI? What is needed (integration, etc.)?
- How does an organization manage its business processes? What is IS’s role in monitoring, managing and assessing business processes?
- Does the business process what makes an IS strategic?
- When was it that IS was begun to be viewed strategically? Was this really possible before widespread use of telecommunications networks?
This page: http://www.cis.njit.edu/~bieber/CIS677/lecture-notes/lecture6.html