Information Technology Essay

A technologically enabled organization is a technologically capable company. Data and information will be at the heart and information re-use shall be constant. In other word, everything is integrated, finance, services, customer files, support database, helpdesk, quality management, customer satisfaction, email, attachments†¦ The information both flow in and out where you can get an holistic view of every information, communication, exchange concerning a specific project that might affect multiple customers, or every bits and pieces of information that pertain to a specific customer. It is a an organization where you have a symbiosis between the customer, who request and the customer who contribute, again, idea bounce in and out and might potentially be shared among interest group, much like a social network, the organization being the enabler between various customers with similar issue, reason why they are the customer of organization XYZ. The information is on the ecommerce site, in the corporate portal, in the intranet, on the mobile phone, the communications are interactive and customers share whiteboard, desktop, files, document management with the organization. Every relation the organization have with its customer contact is managed through a unique ID assigned to each of those contact, nothing complex, maybe an OpenID since so many people already have them or a simple challenge response via SMS, Text Message, Email to login your customer/employee experience center†¦ I hope this will help you understand my perspective of a technologically enabled enterprise, it is a only a vision for now, but it might be the future, who knows 🙂 For now, to me, any subset of those features with integration within a specific business workflow would classify has a technology enabled organization. 2. How does an Organization acquire & disseminal knowledge? First respondent meant from technical perspective . data 1s and 0s .knowledge can be acquired by working in a domain . no other legitimate shortcut. both for a business and anindividual. it is the collective experience that resides in a non physical plane of existence.it can be imparted/propogated to others in the form of a processor documentation( paper or electronic ) or it will be ingrained in the team members even without documentation.this process or documentation should not be dependent on a single person. ie nobody should be indispensableincluding top leadership. many business entities thrive as leaders even without proper documentation of theirworking knowledge . it is ingrained in their employees& stakeholders.There are a number of ways, but all are connected with a common link-experienced workers need to share bestpractices. Formal Mentor programs encourage face to face meeting where mentors can monitor and validate theirprotege’s progress. Another method that we are implementing is wikis where we ask very specific questions andmonitor the responses. This has been a good way for the organization to share the collective knowledge anddefines our corporate culture. 3. Why do you suppose inquiry – only applications were developed instead of fully on lines system? Participation constraint – a participation constraint determines whether relationships must involve certain entities. An example is if every department entity has a manager entity. Participation constraints can either be total or partial. A total participation constraint says that every department has a manager. A partial participation constraint says that every employee does not have to be a manager. Overlap constraint – within an ISA hierarchy, an overlap constraint determines whether or not two subclasses can contain the same entity. Covering constraint – within an ISA hierarchy, a covering constraint determines where the entities in the subclasses collectively include all entities in the super class. For example, with an Employees entity set with subclasses Hourly Employee and Salary Employee, does every Employee entity necessarily have to be within either Hourly Employee or Salary Employee? Weak entity set – an entity that cannot be identified uniquely without considering some primary key attributes of another identifying owner entity. An example is including Dependent information for employees for insurance purposes. Aggregation – a feature of the entity relationship model that allows a relationship set to participate in another relationship set. This is indicated on an ER diagram by drawing a dashed box around the aggregation. Role indicator – If an entity set plays more than one role, role indicators describe the different purpose in the relationship. An example is a single Employ ee entity set with a relation Reports-To that relates supervisors and subordinates. 4. What kind of technology is least flexible? Most flexible? I would say that it is dependent on the licensing. The most flexible being that which comes from the Open Source family. At the root of it all, Open Source software allows any to read edit and redistribute any technology they encounter(based on the licensing). The closed source model, is exactly that closed, you can not even view the code usuallywithout first signing a non-disclosure agreement, if you can even see it at all. This means you can not audit thecode that may be entering your environment, nor can you make any real modifications or taylor it to your own specific needs. In the Software Industry an example of this is the adoption of Unix (Free BSD) by Apple to develop their Softwareon. The BSD licensing has been a favorite of big business due to its flexibility. However it would seem Apple hasshot themselves in the foot by alienating the open source community, the lack of support from Apple for theOpenDarwin project resulted in its end of life. This was a community who was actively contributing to the core of their Operating System for free. There is still a wealth of portable code that is available to anyone looking todevelop on their platform, however the closed source elements within due definitely inhibit growth. Linux is often deemed the champion of Open Source Software, however since its inception it has been a mixed bagof software licenses. This has been brought to light by the influx of lawsuits over the years, its licensing GPL may beless favorable for the corporate developer. 5. How does strategic planning differ between a firm that offers services & one that manufacturers a product? Is there a difference in the impact of technology on strategy in any two types of firms? The Strategic Planning Process So let’s step back and take a look at what an end-to-end product planning cycle might look like when integrated with the company’s strategic planning cycle. Assuming that a company resets its corporate strategy, financial plans, and product plans once per year, the planning process would ideally occur during the 3rd and 4th quarters of the fiscal year in preparation for the upcoming year. The five basic steps in the planning process (as depicted in figure 1) are: 1. Market review.  2. Financial review. 3. Corporate strategy. 4. Product strategy. 5. Product Roadmap and Release schedules. During the first step, product management presents a market review to executive management sharing facts on market trends and opportunities, key customer needs, and competitor moves and positions. Though product management will keep tabs throughout the year on many of these items, this is the opportunity to update the information to make sure it is complete and current. Other functions may be invited to provide their perspectives on the market and customers as well. During the financial review phase, the finance organization presents results on the financial performance for the company overall, for its sales channels and for its products. Providing revenue and profitability by product is critical to making good product decisions and developing effective strategies. The next step is where the company’s executive team outlines its corporate strategy in terms of its vision, financial goals and its plan for achieving those goals. The corporate strategy should be explicitly presented to the product management team to facilitate development of a product strategy. For some smaller businesses, steps 3 and 4 may be combined into a single step. During step 4, product management develops its product strategy considering market dynamics, customer needs, financial goals, and corporate strategy. It specifies what changes to the products are needed and indicates the financial plan for each product area. The product strategy should be reviewed by the executive team to ensure alignment with the corporate strategy before proceeding to the next step. The final step involves the development of a product roadmap and more detailed release plans for the coming quarters consistent with the product strategy. This roadmap becomes the official â€Å"product plan of record† and should be managed with formal change control procedures. This step is executed at the conclusion of the annual planning cycle and is repeated every 3 or 4 months to allow responses to changing market conditions and deployment schedules and should be re-approved by executive management.