Some say that the wireless system will become part of the background of everybody’s life—that the mobile devices are just an afterthought. Explain.
Some say that the wireless system will become part of the background of everybody’s life—that the mobile devices are just an afterthought. Explain.
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Information Technology Management
Attempt Any Four Case Study
CASE – 1 Dartmouth College Goes Wireless
Dartmouth College, one of the oldest in
the United States (founded in 1769), was one of the first to embrace the
wireless revolution. Operating and maintaining a campuswide information system
with wires is difficult, since there are 161 buildings with more than 1,000
rooms on campus. In 2000, the college introduced a campuswide wireless network
that includes more than 500 Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) systems. By the end of
2002, the entire campus became a fully wireless, always-connected community—a
microcosm that provides a peek at what neighborhood and organizational life may
look like for the general population in just a few years.
To transform a wired campus
to a wireless one requires lots of money. A computer science professor who
initiated the idea at Dartmouth in 1999 decided to solicit the help of alumni
working at Cisco Systems. These alumni arranged for a donation of the initial
system, and Cisco then provided more equipment at a discount. (Cisco and other
companies now make similar donations to many colleges and universities, writing
off the difference between the retail and the discount prices for an income tax
benefit.)
As a pioneer in campuswide
wireless, Dartmouth has made many innovative usages of the system, some of
which are the following:
·
Students
are continuously developing new applications for the Wi-Fi. For example, one
student has applied for a patent on a personal-security device that pinpoints
the location of campus emergency services to one’s mobile device.
·
Students
no longer have to remember campus phone numbers, as their mobile devices have
all the numbers and can be accessed anywhere on campus.
·
Students
primarily use laptop computers in the network. However, an increasing number of
Internet-enabled PDAs and cell phones are used as well. The use of regular cell
phones is on the decline on the campus.
·
An
extensive messaging system is used by the students, who send SMSs (Short
Message Services) to each other. Messages reach the recipients in a split
second, any time, anywhere, as long as they are sent and received within the
network’s coverage area.
·
Usage
of the Wi-Fi system is not confined just to messages. Students can submit their
classwork by using the network, as well as by watching streaming video and
listening to Internet radio.
·
An
analysis of wireless traffic on campus showed how the new network is changing
and shaping campus behaviour patterns. For example, students log on in short
burst, about 16 minutes at a time, probably checking their messages. They tend
to plant themselves in a few favorite spots (dorms, TV room, student center,
and on a shaded bench on the green) where they use their computers, and they
rarely connect beyond those places.
·
Some
students invented special complex wireless games that they play online.
·
One student has written a code that calculates
how far away a networked PDA user is from his or her next appointment, and then
automatically adjusts the PDA’s reminder alarm schedule accordingly.
·
Professors
are using wireless-based teaching methods. For example, students can evaluate
material presented in class and can vote online on a multiple-choice
questionnaire relating to the presented material. Tabulated results are shown
in seconds, promoting discussions. According to faculty, the system “makes
students want to give answer,” thus significantly increasing participation.
·
Faculty
and students developed a special voice-over-IP application for PDAs and iPAQs
that uses live two-say voice-over-IP chat
Questions
1. In
what ways is the Wi-Fi technology changing the life of Dartmouth students?
Relate your answer to the concept of the digital society.
2. Some
say that the wireless system will become part of the background of everybody’s
life—that the mobile devices are just an afterthought. Explain.
3.
Is
the system contributing to improved learning, or just adding entertainment that
may reduce the time available for studying? Debate your point of view with
students who hold a different opinion.
4.
What
are the major benefits of the wireless system over the previous wireline one?
Do you think wireline systems will disappear from campuses one day? (Do some
research on the topic.)
CASE – 2 E-Commerce Supports Field
Employees at Maybelline
The Business Problem
Maybelline is a leader in color cosmetics
products (eye shadow, mascara, etc.), selling them in more than 70 countries
worldwide (maybelline.com). The company uses hundreds of salespeople (field
merchandising representatives, or “reps”), who visit drugstores, discount
stores, supermarkets, and cosmetics specialty stores, in an attempt to close
deals. This method of selling has proved to be fairly effective, and it is used
by hundreds of other manufacturers such as Kodak, Nabisco, and Procter &
Gamble. Sales managers from any company need to know, as quickly as possible,
when a deal is closed or if there is any problem with the customer.
Information technology has
been used extensively to support sales reps and their managers. Until 2000,
Maybelline, as well as many other large consumer product manufacturers,
equipped reps with an interactive voice response (VR) system, by means of which
they were to enter, every evening, information about their daily activities.
This solution required that the reps collect data with paper-based surveys
completed for every store they visited each day. For example, the reps noted
how each product was displayed, how much stock was available, how items were promoted,
etc. In addition to the company’s products the reps surveyed the competitors’
products as well. In the evening, the reps translated the data collected into
answers to the voice response system which asked them routine questions. The
reps answered by pressing the appropriate telephone keys.
The IVR system was not the
perfect way to transmit sales data. For one thing, the IVR system consolidated
information, delivering it to top management as a hard copy. However,
unfortunately, these reports sometimes reached top management days or weeks too
late, missing important changes in trends and the opportunities to act on them
in time. Frequently, the reps themselves were late in reporting, thus further
delaying the needed information.
Even if the reps did report
on time, information was inflexible, since all reports were menu-driven. With
the voice system the reps answered only the specific questions that applied to
a situation. To do so, they had to wade through over 50 questions, skipping the
irrelevant ones. This was a waste of time. In addition, some of the material
that needed to be reported had no matching menu questions. Considering a
success in the 1990s, the system was unable to meet the needs of the
twenty-first century. It was cumbersome to set up and operate and was also
prone to input errors.
The Mobile Solution
Maybelline replaced the IVR by equipping
its reps with a mobile system, called Merchandising Sales Portfolio (MSP), from
Thinque Corp. (thinque.com, now part of meicpg.com). It runs on handheld,
pen-based PDAs, which have hand-writing recognition capability (from NEC),
powered by Microsoft’s CE operating system. The system enables reps to enter
their information by hand-writing their reports directly at the clients’ sites.
From the handheld device, data can be uploaded to a Microsoft SQL Server
database at headquarters every evening. A secured Internet connection links to
the corporate intranet (a synchronization process). The new system also enables
district managers to electronically send daily schedules and other important
information to each rep.
The system also replaced some
of the functions of the EDI (electronic data interchange) system, the pride of
the 1990s. For example, the reps’ report include inventory-scanned data from
retail stores. These are processed quickly by an order management system, and
passed whenever needed to the shipping department for inventory replenishment.
In addition to routine
information, the new system is used for decision support. It is not enough to
speed information along the supply chain; managers need to know the reasons why
certain products are selling well, or not so well, in every location. They need
to know what the conditions are at retail stores affecting the sales of each
product, and they need to know it in a timely manner. The new system offers
those capabilities.
The Results
The system provided managers at
Maybelline headquarters with an interactive link with the mobile field force.
Corporate planners and decision makers can now respond much more quickly to
situations that need attention. The solution is helping the company forge
stronger ties with its retailers, and it considerably reduces the amount of
after-hours time that the reps spend on data transfer to headquarters (from
30-50 minutes per day to seconds).
The new system also performs
market analysis that enables managers to optimize merchandising and customer
service efforts. It also enables Maybelline to use a more sophisticated
interactive voice response unit—to capture data for special situations.
Moreover, it provides browser-based reporting tools that enable managers,
regardless of where they are, to view retail information within hours of its
capture. Using the error-checking and validation feature in the MSP system,
reps make significantly fewer data entry errors.
Finally, the quality of life
of Maybelline reps has been greatly improved. Not only do they save 30 to 40
minutes per day, buy also their stress level has been significantly reduced. As
a result, employee turnover has declined appreciably, saving money for the
company.
 |
| Some say that the wireless system will become part of the background of everybody’s life—that the mobile devices are just an afterthought. Explain. |
Questions
1.
IVR
systems are still popular. What advantages do they have over even older systems
in which the reps mailed or faxed reports?
2.
Summarize
the advantages of the new system over the IVR one.
3.
Draw
the flow of information in the system.
4.
The
existing technology enables transmission of data any time an employee can
access the Internet with a wireline. Technically, the system can be enhanced so
that the data can be sent wirelessly from any location as soon as they are
entered. Would you recommend a wireless system to Maybelline? Why or why not?
CASE – 3 Precision Buying, Merchandising, and
Marketing At Sears
The Problem
Sears, Roebuck and Company, the largest
department store chain and the third-largest retailer in the United States, was
caught by surprise in the 1980s as shoppers defected to specialty stores and
discount mass merchandisers, causing the firm to lose market share rapidly. In an
attempt to change the situation, Sears used several response strategies,
ranging from introducing its own specialty stores (such as Sears Hardware) to
restructuring its mall-based stores. Recently, Sears has moved to selling on
the Web. It discontinued its over 100-year old paper catalog. Accomplishing the
transformation and restructuring required the retooling of its information
systems.
Sears had 18 data centers,
one in each of 10 geographical regions as well as one each for marketing,
finance, and other departments. The first problem was created when the
reorganization effort produced only seven geographical regions. Frequent
mismatches between accounting and sales figures and information scattered among
numerous databases users to query multiple systems, even when they needed an
answer to a simple query. Furthermore, users found that data that were already
summarized made it difficult to conduct analysis at the desired level of
detail. Finally, errors were virtually inevitable when calculations were based
on data from several sources.
The Solution
To solve these problems, Sears
constructed a single sales information data warehouse. The replaced the 18 old
databases which were packed with redundant, conflicting, and sometimes obsolete
data. The new data warehouse is a simple repository of relevant decision-making
data such as authoritative data for key performance indicators, sales
inventories, and profit margins. Sears, known for embracing IT on a dramatic
scale, completed the data warehouse and its IT reengineering efforts in under
one year—a perfect IT turnaround story.
Using an NCR enterprise
server, the initial 1.7 terabyte (1.7 trillion bytes) data warehouse is part of
a project dubbed the Strategic Performance Reporting System (SPRS). By 2003,
the data warehouse had grown to over 70 terabytes. SPRS includes comprehensive
sales data; information on inventory in stores, in transit, and at distribution
centers; and cost per item. This has enabled Sears to track sales by individual
items (skus) in each of its 1,950 stores (including 810 mall-based stores) in
the United States and 1,600 international stores and catalog outlets. Thus, daily
margin by item per store can be easily computed, for example. Furthermore,
Sears now fine-tunes its buying, merchandising, and marketing strategies with
previously unattainable precision.
SPRS is open to all
authorized employees, who now can view each day’s sales from a multidimensional
perspective (by region, district, store, product line, and individual item).
Users can specify any starting and ending dates for special sales reports, and
all data can be accessed via a highly user-friendly graphical interface. Sears
managers can now monitor the precise impact of advertising, weather, and other
factors on sales of specific items. This means that Sears merchandise buyers
and other specialists can examine and adjust, if needed inventory quantities,
merchandising, and order placement, along with myriad other variables, almost
immediately, so they can respond quickly to environmental changes. SPRS users
can also group together widely divergent kinds of products, for example,
tracking sales of items marked as “gifts under $25.” Advertising staffers can
follow so-called “great items,” drawn from vastly different departments, that
are splashed on the covers of promotional circulars. SPRS enables extensive
data mining, but only on sku- and location-related analysis.
In 1998 Sears created a large
customer database, dubbed LCI (Leveraging Customer Information), which
contained customer-related sale information (which was not available on SPRS).
The LCI enables hourly records of transactions, for example, guiding hourly
promotion (such as 15% discounts for early-bird shoppers).
In the holiday season of
2001, Sears decided to replace its regular 10% discount promotion by offering
deep discount during early shopping hours. The new promotion, which was based
on SPRS, failed, and only when LCI was used was the problem corrected. This
motivated Sears to combine LCI and SPRS in a single platform, which enables
sophisticated analysis (in 2002).
By 2001, Sears also had the
following Web initiatives: an e-commerce home improvement center, a B2B supply
exchange for the retail industry, a
toy catalog (wishbook.com), an
e-procurement system, and much more. All of these Web-marketing initiatives
feed data into the data warehouse, and their planning and control are based on
accessing the data warehouse.
The Result
The ability to monitor sales by item per
store enables Sears to create a sharp local market focus. For example, Sears
keeps different shades of paint colors in different cities to meet local
demands. Therefore, sales and market share have improved. Also, Web-based data
monitoring of sales at LCI helps Sears to plan marketing and Web advertising.
At its inception, the data
warehouse hand been used daily over 3,000 buyers, replenishers, marketers,
strategic planner, logistics and finance analysts, and store managers. By 2004,
there were over 6,000 users, since users found the system very beneficial.
Response time to queries has dropped from days to minutes for typical requests.
Overall, the strategic impact of the SPRS-LCI data warehouse is that it offers
Sears employees a tool for making better decisions, and Sears retailing profits
have climbed more than 20 percent annually since SPRS was implemented.
Questions
1.
What
were the drivers of SPRS?
2.
How
did the data warehouse solve Sears’s problems?
3.
Why
was it beneficial to integrate the customers’ data-base with SPRS?
4.
How
could RFID change Sears’s operations?
CASE – 4 Dollar General Uses Integrated Software
Dollar General (dollargeneral.com)
operates more than 6,000 general stores in the United States, fiercely
competing with Wal-Mart, Target, and thousands of other stores in the sale of
food, apparel, home-cleaning products, health and beauty aids, and more. The chain
doubled in size between 1996 and 2002 and has had some problems in addition to
the stiff competition, due to its rapid expansion. For example, moving into new
states means different sales taxes, and these need to be closely monitored for
changes. Personal management also became more difficult with the organization’s
growth. an increased number of purchasing orders exacerbated problems in the
accounts payable department, which was using manual matching of purchasing
orders, invoices, and what was actually received in the “receiving” department
before bills were paid.
The IT department was flooded
with request to generate long reports on topics ranging from asset management
to general ledgers. It became clear that a better information system was
needed. Dollar General started by evaluating information requirements that
would be able to solve the above and other problems that cut into the company’s
profit.
A major factor in deciding
which software to buy was the integration requirement among the existing
information systems of the various functional areas, especially the financial
applications. This led to the selection of the Financials suite (from Lawson
Software). The company started to implement applications one at the time.
Before 1998, the company installed the suite’s asset management, payroll, and
some HR applications which allow the tens of thousands of employees to monitor
and self-update their benefits, 401k contributions, and personal data
(resulting in big savings to the HR department). After 1998, the accounts
payable and general ledger modules of Lawson Software were activated. The
accounting modules allow employees to route, extract, and analyze data in the
accounting/finance area with little reliance on IT personnel. During 2001-2003,
Dollar General moved into the sales and procurement areas, thus adding the
marketing and operation activities to the integrated system.
Here are a few examples of
how various parts of the new system work: All sales data from the point-of-sale
scanners of some 6,000 stores are pulled each night, together with financial
data, discounts, etc., into the business intelligence application for financial
and marketing analysis. Employee payroll data, from each store, are pulled once
a week. This provides synergy with the sales audit system (from STS Software).
All sales data are processed nightly by the STS System, broken into hourly
journal entries, processed and summarized, and then entered into the Lawson’s
general ledger module.
The original infrastructure
was mainframe based (IBM AS 400). By 2002, the 800 largest suppliers of Dollar
General were submitting their bills on the EDI. This allowed instantaneous
processing in the accounts payable module. By 2003, service providers, such as
utilities, were added to the system. To do all this the system was migrated in
2001 from the old legacy system to the Unix operating system, and then to a
Web-based infrastructure, mainly in order to add Web-based functionalities and
tools.
A development tool embedded
in Lawson’s Financials allowed users to customize applications without touching
the computer programming code. This included applications that are not
contained in the Lawson system. For example, an employee-bonus applications was
not available at Lawson, but was added to Financial’s payroll module to
accommodate Dollar General’s bonus system. A customized application that
allowed additions and changes in dozens of geographical areas also solved the
organization’s state sales-tax collection and reporting problem.
The system is very scalable,
so there is not problem in adding stores, vendors, applications, or functionalities.
In 2003, the system was completely converted to Web-based, enabling authorized
vendors, for example, to log on the Internet and view the status of their
invoices by themselves. Also the Internet/EDI enables small vendors to use the
system. (An EDI is too expensive for small vendors, but the EDI/Internet is
affordable.) Also, the employment can update personal data from any Web-enabled
desktop in the store or at home. Future plans call for adding an e-purchasing
(procurement) module using a desktop purchasing model.
Questions
1.
Explain
why the old, nonintegrated functional system created problems for the company.
Be specific.
2.
The
new system cost several millions dollars. Why, in your opinion, was it
necessary to install it?
3.
Lawson
Software Smart Notification Software (lawson.com) is being considered by Dollar
General. Find information about the software and write an opinion for adopting
or rejection.
4.
Another
new product of Lawson is Service Automation. Would you recommend it to Dollar
General? Why or why not?
CASE – 5 Singapore and Malaysia Airlines Intelligent
System
The problem
Airlines fly around the globe, mostly
with their native crew. Singapore Airlines and Malaysia Airlines are relatively
small airlines, but they serve dozens of different countries. If a crewmember
is ill on route, there is a problem of quickly finding a replacement. This is
just one example why crew scheduling may be complex, especially when it is
subject to regulatory constraints, contract agreements and crew preferences.
Disturbances such as weather
conditions, maintenance problems, etc, also make crew management difficult.
The Solution
Singapore Airlines uses Web-based
intelligent systems including expert systems and neural computing to manage the
company’s flight crew scheduling and handle disruptions to the crew rosters.
The Integrated Crew Management System (ICMS) project, implemented in Singapore
since 1997, consists of three modules: one roster assignment module for cockpit
crew, one for the cabin crew, and a crew tracking module. The first two modules
automate the tracking and scheduling of the flight crew’s timetable. The second
module tracks the positions of the crew and includes an intelligent system that
handles crew patterns disruptions.
For example, crews are
rearranged if one member falls ill while in a foreign port; the system will
find a backup in order to prevent understaffing on the scheduled flight. The
intelligent system then determines the best way to reschedule the different
crew members’ rosters to accommodate the sick person. When a potentially
disruptive situation occurs, the intelligent system automatically draws upon
the knowledge stored in the database and advises the best course of action.
This might mean repositioning the crew or calling in backup staff. The crew
tracking system includes a crew disruption handling module that provides
decision support capabilities in real time.
A similar Web-based system is
used by Malaysia Airlines, as of summer 2003, to optimize flight crew
utilization. Also called ICMS, it leverages optimization software from ilog.com.
Its Crew Pairing Optimization (CPO) module utilizes Ilog Cplex and Ilog Solver
optimization components to ensure compliance with airline regulations, trade
union agreements, and company policies, to minimize the costs associated with
crew accommodations and transportation and to efficiently plan and optimize staff
utilization and activities associated with long-term planning and daily
operations. The Crew Duty Assignment (CDA) module provides automatic assignment
of duties to all flight crews. The system considers work rules, regulatory
requirements, and crew requests to produce an optimal monthly crew roster.
The Results
Despite
the difficult economic times, both airless are competing successfully in the
region, and their balance sheets are better than most other airlines.
Questions
1.
Why
do airlines need optimization systems for crew scheduling?
2.
What
role can experts’ knowledge play in this case?
3.
What
are the similarities between the systems in Singapore and Malaysia?
4.
The
airlines use ADSs for their pricing strategy (pricing and yield optimization).
Can they use an ADS for crew management? Why or why not?
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