DOING BUSINESS IN DIGITAL TIMES

CHAPTER 1

DOING BUSINESS IN DIGITAL TIMES

IT at Work

1.1 Zipcar and Other Connected Products

• Research Zipcar. How does this company’s business model differ from traditional car

rental companies, such as Hertz or Avis?Zipcar is an alternative business model to the car rental practice that is more flexible and convenient for customers. It exploits the developments in technology in order to provide personal transport services. One becomes a member in Zipcar by paying an application fee and, to retain membership, an annual fee. Zipcar offers car-sharing opportunities billable by the hour or the day. Members can reserve Zipcars online by paying a reservation fee. Zipcar was acquired by Avis in 2013.

With Zipcar, cars are parked in specific locations around members’ neighborhoods.Members have automated access to cars enabled by RFID transponders. After use, members return the cars to the same place they started. The fees the members pay takes care of the gas, parking, insurance, and maintenance. When there is unauthorized use, there are system features to remotely disable car mobility using sensors. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipcar for recent updates on this topic.

• Think of two physical things in your home or office that, if they were embedded with

sensors and linked to a network, would improve the quality of your work or personal life.Describe these two scenarios.Answers may vary. They all should state the objective, the specific information gathered (sensed) and how that information is used in delivering the desired service. Such applications could involve remote operations of appliances, sensing status changes, and reminders for time-specific events, such as: turn on the oven remotely by sending a message to the home network; open the door for the pet when it makes a certain type of noise (the sensor is set to detect it).

• What might the privacy concerns be?

Various data points about customers are collected. The data might contain personally identifiable information (PII) as well. Therefore, protection of such information, especially when used in conjunction with cloud computing, could be a major privacy concern. Only the minimum necessary personal data should be collected to reduce this risk in handling PII. Sometimes such data may be shared with other businesses and this may require transferring the data to other locations. Such extended use of customer information increases the risks concerning privacy. Judicious collection of customer information is used in Zipcar. For instance, even though it is easy to track where all of the customers travelled, such information is not collected in the system.

(Information Technology for Management Advancing Sustainable Profitable Business Growth 10e Turban Linda Gregory) (Solution Manual all Chapters) 1 / 4

1.2 Wearable Technology

• Discuss how wearable electronics and the instant feedback they send to your mobile

device could be valuable to you.Answers may vary. Principal value today is in athletic performance and the monitoring of health conditions.

• How can data from wearable technology be used to improve worker productivity or

safety?Answers may vary. Some answers may include feedback on movements to improve performance (as with time-motion studies) and alerting workers when they have had too much repetitive movement or not enough movement for good health (as in a sedentary job.)

• What are two other potentially valuable uses of instant feedback or data from wearable

technology?Answers may vary. Some answers may include sales personnel looking up information, such as warehouse stock or sale prices, without leaving the customer; wearing something like Google Glass to instantly access information on a sales client or medical patient or product prices from different vendors; monitoring health (pulse, blood pressure, etc.) and medication reminders.

• How can wearable devices impact personal privacy?

Answers may vary. Such devices might be used by vendors to offer on the spot discounts, at the expense of collecting data on location and buying habits of the individual. Access to wireless devices may reveal not only current location information, but habitual information (when you leave/arrive home, when and where you go running, etc.)

1.3 AutoTrader Redesigns Its Order-to-Cash Process

• Discuss how the redesigned order process supports the company’s three new business

objectives.By reducing the process to only six human tasks, assigning to and alerting the right people when new work is added, and allowing dealers to make changes directly to their contracts, the system became much more agile, able to respond to changing conditions.The new system reduced order fulfillment to one day, with fewer than five percent needing clarification from sales, generating revenue much more quickly. Reducing cycle time relieved the aggravation customers experienced from unnecessary delays, improving customer satisfaction.

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• How does the reduced cycle time of the order fulfillment process improve revenue

generation and customer satisfaction?The new system reduced order fulfillment from more than six to eight days down to one day, generating revenue much more quickly. Reducing cycle time allowed for handling a greater volume while also relieving the aggravation customers experienced from unnecessary delays, thus improving customer satisfaction.

• Does reducing the cycle time of a business process also reduce errors? Why or why not?

Yes, reducing the cycle time, the time required to complete a process, can reduce errors.Reduction in cycle time is achieved by automating tasks as much as possible and by optimizing other tasks. This reduces the number of human tasks to be completed and makes those tasks as routine as possible.

1.4 Finding Qualified Talent

• Visit and review the Amazon Mechanical Turk Web site. Explain HITs. How do they

provide an on-demand workforce?Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is a marketplace for helping companies with small tasks attract short term contract employees to fulfill those tasks. Amazon defines the Mechanical Turk as a “marketplace for work” where they “give businesses and developers access to an on-demand, scalable workforce.”

Amazon Mechanical Turk’s HITs stand for Human Intelligence Tasks and are small tasks that need to be completed by a person. They can consist of small activities which are very difficult, if not impossible, for machines to do, but which can be done with relative ease by humans.

Amazon provides an on-demand workforce by providing a framework that allows companies to post tasks as they become available and potential contract employees to search through those tasks. Businesses post a task, its description and details about the task such as the time requirements, the reward they are willing to pay for the task, and the quantity needed, and then individuals search through the tasks to see which ones they are qualified to perform and then submit a request to perform that task. Contract employees can work on the task on their own time.

• Visit and review the InnoCentive Web site. Describe what they do and how.

InnoCentive is an open innovation company that posts research and development “challenge problems” in a marketplace format for anyone to try to solve. Challenge problems come from a broad range of domains including: engineering, computer science, math, chemistry, life sciences, physical sciences, and business. Cash prizes are awarded to the best solutions. Through this resource, organizations hope to obtain high quality, new ideas that will help them to solve problems faster in a more cost effective manner and with less risk.

InnoCentive challenges pose larger problems than Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, require greater skill, and provide a larger reward. InnoCentive lists a number of large 3 / 4

organizations that have used this resource over the past ten years including: the AARP Foundation, Booz Allen Hamilton, Cleveland Clinic, Eli Lilly & Company, EMC Corporation, NASA, Nature Publishing Group, Procter & Gamble, Syngenta, The Economist, and The Rockefeller Foundation.

Companies seeking solutions post problem challenges along with the financial award for the best workable solution. These companies pay a fee to post their challenge. Problem solvers can view challenges and submit their solutions. If the problem poster finds a workable solution that they want to implement, they pay the reward to the problem solver for the intellectual property rights of the solution. Awards have ranged from $5,000 to over $1 million.

Review Questions

1.1 Every Business is a Digital Business

• What are the benefits of cloud computing?

With cloud computing, IT services are delivered via the Internet on-demand. Some benefits are faster application deployment, no need for upfront hardware costs, a flexible capacity for changing computing requirements, and the ability to add, or reduce, server space on-demand.

• What is machine-to-machine (M2M) technology? Give an example of a business process

that could be automated with M2M.Machine-to-machine (M2M) technology enables sensor-embedded products to share reliable real-time data via radio signals. M2M is also referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT) and is widely used to automate business processes in industries ranging from transportation to health care. By adding sensors to trucks, turbines, roadways, utility meters, heart monitors, vending machines, and other equipment they sell, companies can track and manage their products remotely.

• Describe the relationships in the SoMoClo model.

The SoMoClo model refers to social, mobile, and cloud technologies and their relationships, creating the technical infrastructure for digital business. At the core is the cloud, providing 24/7 access to storage, apps, and services. Handhelds and wearables, such as Google Glass, Pebble, and Sony Smartwatch (Figure 1.8), and their users form the edge. Social channels connect the core and edge.

• Explain the cloud.

The cloud consists of huge data centers accessible via the Internet which provides 24/7 access to storage, apps, and services.

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