MIS and DSS

The main goal of MIS is in allowing you to see (like in those sci-fi movies) the entities of the real world as they really are in all their properties, changing views, angles and focuses as you need to inspect some features closer and some from a bigger perspective. For example, when you walk through the College you actually do not see much beyond the walls, offices, and posters. Once you access the College MIS – you immediately see (supposedly) all involved entites and processes in their normal activities and deviations that have to be notices and corrected. Augmented reality (AR) allows you to combine physical vision with MIS orientation (this is where the research on MIS and AR will be appropriate!).

Decision Support Systems serve not as much as vision enhancers but as enhancers of your abilities of making decisions based on the vision. Human abilities to juggle numbers and keep various relationships among multiple parameters in mind are severely limited. Here come DSS. They allow you to use such tools as scenarios (when you change some assumptions and see what will happen to ALL parts you are interested in by providing formulas of the corresponding relationships), optimization (when the system quickly finds for you the best decision among many possible), and many others. Armed with such tools (especially now available in mobile formats) you become super beings (cyborgs, if you wish, as part human and part systems) far more advanced in your mental abilities than those who doesn’t use special supporting systems. I actually run a special course fully dedicated to DSS where students learn the decision theory (on how to always make best decisions in all situations) as well as how to arm yourselves with simple (and more advanced) DSS dramatically enhancing your decision making abilities and outcomes in all your activities. Recently one student emailed me that he got a job because of this knowledge.

You can use this power throughout all your life experiences no matter what you do and where you work. Although many industrial systems of this kind are very expensive, there are some simple tools (like spreadsheets in advanced forms of use) that already upgrade your abilities significantly. Some of them we are learning in this course. This is kung fu of modern life. The more work and understanding efforts of the material of this week you apply – the more you will get out of it. This is the way to compete with AI allowing the mankind to stay relevant.

A Small Case of E-commerce and E-Business Difference

About 15 years ago I was helping May Corporation to switch to e-Commerce (that was their request). It is a company that owned a bunch of big retail chains (Lord and Taylor, Filene's basement, etc.). They thought that it is just about putting a catalog on the web and allowing customers to shop there. I warned them that it is not what e-commerce is about. It is just a connection cable to the high-volume high-power processes that can either burn the company or make it shine like a light bulb.

In order not to be burned by the high-speed requests and the need to determine the whole supply, production, storage, distribution, and dynamic pricing chain (remember the textbook) the company has to respond to these online requests in fractions of a second (without meetings with all parties – as they used to have) - since customers will not wait at the shopping cart longer than a couple of seconds.  This means not just an e-commerce front catalog but changing the whole organization for e-business. Most of the business processes and decisions had to be done by various information systems and be automated (see Amazon as a very good example) to allow for the necessary speed and volume of decisions (topic of next half-week).

Also, such business will compete with their usual store business done in “brick and mortar” fashion (do the search on “brick and mortar organization”). This is why they needed first to get a totally different understanding of what they getting into and how this will change their highly controlled management pyramid (they were tightly controlling ALL the stores from their headquarters). Basically the whole organization had to be redesigned.  This could be done piece by piece with a very carefully designed steps of systems development in a way that all new parts will not make the already functioning automation break (live update).   

As a result, although developing of an online catalog with the shopping cart is a job for one week for an experienced developer, the whole process of putting the company largely under control of information and decision-support systems took years.

How to edit your posts

I saw that some students wanted to edit the posts but the 5 min of allowing corrections expire. My advice here is to just write an improvement to the original post and post it as a reply to the original post with the note on the top saying that this is a correct version. You can make corrections and improvments until the deadline. This will even look better - seen as an additional effort (some of you are already doing it).

Comments on E-Business and Enterprise 2.0

It is important to understand the differences between e-commerce and e-business, where e-commerce is basically a front end of e-business, which does most of the operations that a business should do (but in a more advanced way).

Personally, I am against the use of the term e-business which is rapidly loosing its meaning, that was originally important in order to state the new ways. Now it starts sounding like using “t-business” for the use of telephones in business operations... In my course Technology Enhanced Business (TEB), which I think is a more modern term (as well as on a number conference presentations), I am showing the technologies and methods that should be used in ALL businesses, in most of their processes and subsystems. Unfortunately, there are plenty of businesses that learned too much from business schools teaching old stuff and are trying to implement and maintain old methods. These should die out in modern economic situation.

Enterprise 2.0 has the same part as the description of an e-business would have PLUS an important aspect that goes beyond sharing and employee communications. The growing importance is seen in the ability of Enterprise 2.0 to convert consumers into "prosumers" as producers-consumers by allowing them to participate in the organizational operations; by somewhat (carefully, though) opening the closed walls of modern organizations to buyers, suppliers, and other EXTERNAL collaborators, stakeholders, and just consumers. This allows for faster and more tailored adaptation to the rapidly changing situations well as using extra resources that are not "on the payroll" or have to be managed by dedicated managers within special departments. This aspect might be also interesting for the W3P2 research.

W3P2 Tasks - Copy (some students asked me to repost them on the blog)

I am posting the tasks a bit early so that it will be easier for you to plan the time.
T3.5. Start with reading chapter 5 and its Summary with proper thinking and attention.
Do the self-assessment test at the end of the chapter preparing for the next Tuesday's quiz and for more adequate forum posts.
T3.6: Deadline: 7/30 @ 23:55. Up to 8 points. Do a Web-based research on one of two topics or any form of their mixes: Electronic Business and/or Enterprise 2.0. Choose any one interesting aspect and explore it. Size: min 400 words not counting min 3 used references. Use same criteria for the post as in Research posts last half-week (show the focus of the post and the conclusion of the research on that focus with bold text that was borrowed/modified to show your OWN research contribution). Do ALL the following task parts:
a) Publish your article in the W3 E-Business discussion.
b) Post the same article into your blog.
c) Write meaningful replies, extending or detailing the main post to at least two articles in the W3 E-Business forum.
Note: I will grade this post with 5 points for a normal research, 7 for advanced and 9 points for a very good research.
T3.7. Choice of Apps and Services for productivity and communications.
Deadline: 7/30 @ 23:55. Up to 7 points.
Since you worked with Zoho with the purpose of familiarizing yourself with forms of cloud computing and SaaS - do the research on various cloud computing applications and web apps phenomenon. Find 8 application software services (or Apps) useful and recommended by you for business use or personal productivity/communications enhancement (no games and mere fun applications please!). They should be used right off the Web without the need to download and install on your computer (like Zoho services). Show the link for each service. Advice: once it is done – copy from the forum the links of the most interesting for you apps for the future use (do not need to report this copying part).
Create a table in zoho database (zoho reports) where you describe these services/apps in the following format (see example):

App/service name	Link	Type	What is good
Gmail	gmail.com	communications	Free email, social sharing, phone calls, storage
…	…	…	…

Try not to repeat each other.
Create a post in the Apps and Services forum where you present each of your apps with more explanations of its essence and important features as a numbered list of applications with a public link to the table (where no login should be required – remember W2P2 tasks). The shown Apps/Web services could be for computers, smart phones, or tablets.

Week 3, Task 8 (T3.8) is gradable (up to 8 points with deadline 7/30 11:55pm
For this task you might want to see the video that you started before to the end

http://www.zoho.com/reports/detailed-overview/Video-Demo-Detailed-Overview.html

1. Log into zoho reports ( http://reports.zoho.com/ ) with your account.
2. In the tab on the bottom of the screen in "existing Databases" - click on Featured Samples and then on SUper Store Sales.
3. Once in Super Store Sales database - click on Copy this database on the top menu (might need to scroll to the right)
4. When you see the database copied to your account (you will see extra entities on your left-side nav bar) - poke around, explore it. Pay main attention to the tables (yellow without arrows), views (reddish), reports (blue), and charts (chart icon).
5. Make some structural changes in the sales table including:
a) add a new column and at least one row to the sales table;
b) add a custom formula column with a different from theirs calculation formula, which still should make some business sense along with the column name for it;
c) modify the type of any chart (and what it shows if you want to go for higher quality work) from the database, or create one of your own for higher work quality (although this is not required to consider the task done). Make sure that it works (you might want to watch the video (the link is in task T2.8 point (e)) to the end.
6. Describe the changes that you made in the exact sequence that you used - in the W3 DB discussion. Also, go to the element view (table, chart), click on Publish on the top menu bar and when the drop-down box opens choose the url (make sure it is public, as you did before) that you should copy and paste in the same discussion as an illustration of how your changes look like. Post such links in the same forum to all elements that you created (tables, charts).

Web 2.0 and CI

The best way of learning systems, and IS features in particular, includes the design of a small information system versus just learning buttons for the current version of Excel and Access. Normally, the development of an IS, even of a small size, is quite expensive and/or requires a lot of man/hour investments of highly skilled systems developers. Only organizations with sufficient capital were able to develop and use IS...

The evolution of software as a service (SaaS) or even Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) with various types of accompanying web services (and apps) created a possibility of new methods in IS development – assembly of systems out of existing services LEGO – style. This simplicity has led to a dramatic increase in end-user creativity and development capabilities. In this course I want you to learn the most simple but effective ways of such system development for personal and organizational use. Become a one-person army... The basic services we were using so far included free blog development and support services, Zoho spreadsheet and database services and, what is most important, services allowing sharing and collaboration. Already this set of tools, if learned a bit deeper than you've done so far, allows for some basic IS development.

The new, mostly free, and easy to use services that can be incorporated in any custom IS design/redesign led to a new phenomenon: social networks. But the most important effect goes beyond increased activity of emerging social structures. This new unleashed power is studied in Collective Intelligence (CI) dealing with creation of super intelligences out of rather simple processing performed by its parts. Examples include ant societies, various swarm intelligence examples, and... effective teams and organizations. This possibility of acquiring enhanced intelligence is the biggest asset and advantage an organization can dream about nowadays, which comes not as much from the mere infrastructure presence, but its proper architecture and processes in accordance with this new Web 2.0/CI developments.

Web 2.0 technologies released the power and creativity of regular IT users making them producers/consumers (prosumers). These Web 2.0 technologies paired with proper CI organization (where effective collaboration is the key) are the main and the most fascinating developments in modern IS.
Another important event, not to be missed, is rapid growth of cloud computing (see the textbook) that makes Web 2.0 services and accompanying networking even easier.

Blog List

Students can use http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExUrvw3KHg0
as a video instruction for Blog List setting.

Blog addresses of other students can be taken from my blog or from the Blog forum of the past.

Commentary on Course Organization

I want to say a few words about the online organization of this class and its goals (you might use some of this info in your Experiential Learning Report to be written at the end of the semester). The experiential learning in this class is based on learning and working in online environments (versus face-to-face). One of your tasks at the end of this semester will be in showing your understanding of this experience, what you’ve learned from it, what practical skills and orientation you obtained, as well as how it served your better understanding of the subject of the course.

The learning goal of placing students in such environment for this particular course is based on the fact that information systems (as the subject of the course) normally include heavy use of computers in communications, orientation, learning and decision making. In the IS major this introductory course is further enhanced with all those chapters that are in the book - as separate courses. From this point of view, being exposed to computer-mediated activities on your own (without the teacher standing behind your back) is important for the understanding of benefits, difficulties, and problems that have to be addressed during IS use and development. In this course you actively use an original IS, which includes Moodle, Internet, and your local systems, augmented by you, as producers/developers and consumers at the same time (so-called prosumers), with additional system components (like Blogger, Zoho, and others that we will use later), with shared files, user-created content, Q&A knowledge base, learning accounts in these systems, spreadsheets, databases and various means of sharing and publishing information across the set of networks (local and the Internet) – the topic of the next week.
Also, as you’ve noticed, the labs as well as exploration of the material require sufficient feedbacks on the work done, that just cannot be offered in an hour and a half of face-to-face lectures. You probably noticed that in this course you have almost an uninterrupted flow of feedbacks from me and other students (those who ask for help or require some guidance from my point of view – get it whenever necessary). This is impossible in face-to-face formats. I am actually spending much more time on this course than coming twice a week to school. My local network shows the course situation on several screens (along with my ongoing research in artificial intelligence). Your course connectivity is close to modern corporate "always on" status too. This allows for dynamic adjustments, additional explanations, and corrections (impossible in traditional environements). Such flexibility is becoming more and more important in the real world settings when change management is continuous and dynamic with similar continuous and dynamic availability of employees to accept changes, corrections and additional info for adjustments in individual work. And here understanding and experience of IT beyond traditional monthly reports is indispensable.

For organized students the possibility of time management and deciding when and how much time to spend at each particular learning episode is important especially combined with saving time on doing this without commuting efforts. Of course, such benefits are not for all. There are students that feel better in the class and cannot work/learn on their own. This is why the course format is announced in advance and only those who feel that online format is better for their situation are expected in these classes.

More to Understand :)

Here I want to emphasize that not only IS are also systems with their general properties, but they also make systems out of non-systems (or poorly developed systems with insufficient feedbacks and concerted collaboration among its parts by connecting entities and processes together in a new mutually beneficial way. This is a new power of business growth: not by using more resources, but including more stuff in the orbit of their networks.

The reason why we use quite a few software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools in this course is that many of them are free, easy to use, and are very powerful mechanisms of connecting things, processes, and people over the Internet. They are the modern resources of organizational and individual power. Simple hardware, like smartphones and publically available software services can allow individuals to have full office support on the run (go mobile, like you can do with this course). Mafia understood the benefits of being connected long ago :)

W2 Databases

Although a database table might look like a spreadsheet, the capabilities of a database management system (software engine behind the databases) are quite different. For better understanding you might go to the Featured Samples (while on the Home page in your Zoho Reports site) to see that after the initial tables are created and filled with data, the rest of the database consists of various queries (that could be saved for future easy customer use), reports, charts, etc. All other database products, created from the data tables by using simple and effective tools, allow to SEE and ANALYZE a LOT of DATA form MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW, as compared to the relatively small amount in typical spreadsheets.

Well designed and developed (in terms of convenient analysis) databases - is what create added value to the initial data collection often stored in some input “flat” files. Data warehouses (or smaller data marts) are systems enhancing this analytical and decision support function of organizational (and even personal) data.

In my professional capacity, I was often asked by organizations that invested a lot of money into collection of valuable data – to help them make better use of this information (bang for the invested buck, if you want). This usually results into the development of an information system with a database at its core (this is why they call them “information systems” :)

Video Lecture on Zoho Spreadsheets

This video might be helpful for those who still cannot do the embedding and public link right.
Video lecture

Enter Zoho

As a part of the educational experience closely related to the week’s topics, you will get to work with spreadsheets (one of the most popular part of any office suits) and social network systems. The main trend now is in moving everything to the Web, which provides much higher connectivity and sensitivity for the components and processes of organizational systems. This is why our Web Development concentration program (same idea as Business Essentials, just fully online) might be a valuable option for a competitive graduate.
Zoho is, so far, the best online office suite offering Software as a Service (you might want to research the keyword SaaS). We will start with spreadsheet tools that not only allow to do what all spreadsheet software (s/w) allows, but also has extended options for sharing, collaboration, and publishing. Best of all, you need only a browser for work with it. Later we will use some other pieces of their suite.

How to get the most out of the same time spent for the course and maximize the quality/grade?

You online attendance is automatically registered. You are required to log in at least once a day to see if there is any need in your reaction or something new and important has been posted  (like help materials and messages regarding the quiz, etc.). The most important parts where you get a lot of explanations saving your thinking time and enhancing the quality of your work can be found in Q&A forums – read them all as I assume that you did it, see the posts of the leading students doing the early work to which I usually comment if there is a way of improving the post. Read the News forum (if there is anything new – since MOST important messages will be posted there). A good way of keeping track of ALL my posts and responses (except of the blog) is to follow the method shown in Q&AW1P1 “How do I keep track of the professor's comments and replies?” Checking the bottom-right pane of the Moodle page for new posts is an easy way to follow the blog changes from the same Moodle page.

Meaning of the gadget task T1.7

After you do T1.7 (adding a gadget to your blog) you should realize that leading blogs are not just diaries but special carriers of various types of media, software objects, and live services that could be placed on them. Such services might include games, live images, GPS-based regional information, current events/weather, and practically and app that you can have on your phone. They can be used for secure group collaboration (adding me as a co-author showed it) and many other features.  Later we will use these blog capabilities to build on its base a small networked information system to supplement the theoretical aspects from the textbook. They also have static pages allowing to build real web sites, as well as RSS broadcasting of their content (this is how posts from my blog automatically appear in the bottom-right gadget pane of the Moodle front page).

About T1.4 Value Chain

Just look at fig. 1.16. Every step in the CHAIN of processes (there is always a chain - at least like the one on the picture, but usually more complex) adds value to the previous step (otherwise why would you do it). The goal is to plan for the whole business operation as a series of steps, smaller processes, where each does something useful helping to get a better result. This makes process management easier and allows to eliminate the ones that really do not add any value but were included automatically.

Cooking example:

Chain element 1: get the ingredients (yes it helps cooking :)

Chain element 2: (imagine it is frying chicken with rice): fry the ingredients (value is in the processing making it more edible)

Chain element 3: sing a song to enhance cooking (might be eliminated if doesn't add much to cooking)

Chain element 4: add salt and pepper (enhances the taste - a keeper)

Chain element 5: taste (helps to make changes to steps 1 and/or 4)

Chain element 5: serve using nice dinnerware (easier to eat than sharing one frying pan - probably a keeper :)

Notice that element 4 is a feedback that can lead to two other elements. It means that often it is not a linear chain but rather a network. Often, if some concept is unclear - google it and read additional explanations...

More about the course

The first week we start with the use of Moodle. The work will be done on half-week basis with new tasks posted each half-week. All tasks will be graded and since you are on the curve – any bad job or task skipping effectively puts you behind the rest of the class with the only hope that later other students will decrease the quality or be late with tasks. The curve method also makes requests to other students for copying the homework or helping with quizzes unethical, since such students decrease the helper’s grade by illegally increasing their own (curve – effect). Later we will use additional technologies not only to improve your online experience but also to learn the way of working with web-based systems (as our learning environment).

Since this class looks strong and motivated, there might be very few chances to compensate for grade (point) losses in the past tasks. All points from all tasks will be summarized and put on the final curve. Another feature of this class is in a variety of point-making activities that might compensate for unexpected losses on the online quizzes. They are more difficult than classroom tests because you will have limited time and will need to know the material well in order to come with a quick answer. The book in front of you will be of no help. The quizzes will be offered at the end of each week on the material of that week. Therefore thorough reading of the book, understanding the text, doing thoughtful required research and discussions are the best ways to prepare for quizzes while earning important points.

More about systems

Congratulations with the successful start of the course (since you are reading this post :) ! I noticed that most of you are in various biz majors (mainly marketing) as well as other non-IT ones. Therefore you might learn a few useful things here.

This course is designed to enhance/offer an understanding in systems theory and information systems and technologies in particular. The first week is may be the most important since you are getting here the fundamentals of the "so-called" systems vision. Regardless of the variety of entities and processes surrounding you in your personal or organizational lives, a stunning discovery has been made by Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy - the founder of the General System Theory (GST) - that they all are systems. More than that, there can be created a science that can cover all types of systems as having common properties, features, and traits. Therefore, learning and understanding anything as a system allows to apply such most generally applicable knowledge to all situations. Since then the theory has been evolving and now many organizations require from their leading employees "systems thinking" as ability to apply GST to any situation of any kind that they encounter.

After you get familiar with the main systems concepts we move to the applications of this theory to a specific type of systems – information systems (IS) and information technologies (IT). You will often find a term ICT (information and communication technologies) instead of IT. And finally, we will move to the role of IS/ICT in business and organizational systems. The Information Systems major in the Business School (has a minor too) offers students a professional grasp of the most general and widely useful knowledge, which nowadays is being used in all organizations/jobs – IS/ICT. With deeper knowledge and skills in this area students learn of how to dramatically enhance individual abilities by using various methods, skills, and tools that are offered in the major in order to enhance personal ability of consistently making best decisions under all circumstances, of how to put artificial intelligence to your personal and organizational service, of how to design systems that are the most important competitive resource for individuals and organizations, and how to develop electronic businesses and start-ups. This course offers you a glimpse (although important) into the IS/ICT world.

As one of the extensions of the IS activities we offer a completely online Web Development Certificate Program (just like Business Essentials) increasing your knowledge and skills in developing modern Web-based systems, sites, and organizations. This course might be a good foundation for this program.

There is a lot more to the systems theory than we can fit into this course. Such areas a Complex Systems Theory, Dynamic Systems Theory, Chaos, fractal systems, and Theory of Catastrophes are some of the more specific areas that being actively used in economics, finance, business, marketing analysis, medical and biological studies.

Week 1. Task 2 Commentary.

In order to get the max amount of points for this task pay attention to the part of the task requiring to use as many systems concepts (and terms) in describing your system as possible. The goal is in showing your "systems" vision of some entity. The ability to analyze anything in life as a system (in systems terms) immediately allows you to apply a well developed machinery of systems analysis (one of the disciplines in IS major) and its extensions valid for absolutely any system (entity, process, or event to that matter). Therefore read the book first and use it when writing this task.

Blog Purpose

In this blog I will write reflections on your performance, on grading methods, explain possible task difficulties, provide additional help if needed, etc. Also will be a part of a small information system that you all will co-design, which will use blogs as one of its components. Check this blog periodically.