Chapter 8: Operations Management and Supply Chain Management

According to Ivanka Trump, when you're starting up a company or taking over a company, whatever it is that you are looking or planning to do, make, or sell to your customers, it is crucial that you build your business on the assumption that you can do it smarter, better and more efficiently than your competitors. If you don't think that way then what is the point? It will be very hard for you to survive in the business world. This week's chapter reading refers to operations management and supply chain management. I chose an article from the online Business Week newsletters regarding competitive strategies and Ivanka Trump's strategies on building a brand for your products. According to the textbook, the five key competitive priorities are cost, quality, delivery, flexibility, and service. With the article on Ivanka's new jewelry collection, she shares her notes on what you need to do to launch a successful new business, product or service. She shares with us her top ten steps that should be followed to be successful. The ten steps include: Doing a comprehensive trademark search, develop a powerful identifier, do not confuse supply with demand, identify the void in your market and position your brand so that you uniquely fill it, create a strong and consistent identity, define your market, make sure your team understands your mission, your vision, and your objectives, focus on customer service, foster brand loyalty at every opportunity,and hold off spending whenever possible. A lot of what I was reading related a lot to what I'm learning in my business classes especially marketing. Creating a successful company ultimately comes down to how well you market yourself. Ivanka also goes on to talk about creating a phone system that allows you to connect yourself to customers. She's done well on connecting with her customers over the phone and seeing how the service was for randomly chosen customers. She also talks about the operations of the hotels that her family runs and always relating it back to her steps mentioned and staying on top of the technology world too.

You can find the article here.

Chapter 7: Networks, Telecommunications, and Mobile Technology

For this week's chapter reading, I found a very interesting article in the Business Week Magazine regarding Window's introduction of its newest development or "upgrade": Windows Mobile 6.5. I must confess that I am very bias when it comes to computer and phone companies. I have been a true Apple fan for the longest time and use mainly only Apple products. I also understand that Apple has many competitors wanting to become as innovative as Apple has become, but many of those competitors do fall short of winning that competition. I find Windows to be one of Apple's biggest competitions when it comes to the computer world and thus find it not so shocking to hear that Windows was not able to keep up with the innovative technology in the mobile industry.

Windows recently came out with its upgrade to its smartphone a couple of days ago and it did not live up to any other smartphones that are currently out on the market right now. It doesn't even sit close to the iPhones status, thus moving Windows place on the top tier of the mobile industry to a low position. Critics say that, "Unfortunately the results fall far short of what Microsoft requires to get back into the top tier of mobile communications". The next upgrade for the phone is not due until another year. By then, Windows would have lost a lot of its customers already. The phone features an almost like "App Store" like in the iPhone, but with Windows, they call it Marketplace. Each carrier company will get to choose between which apps they want to carry with their line and get a cut of the money that is earned, and those that are paid with credit cards will be split between the developers and Windows.

There is one positive thing about the new upgrade. The backing up of information from the phone to a computer will be done through Windows' program called My Phone, which is based online. The program will freely back up all of your information from the phone. I find this as a positive point to the upgrade because Apple currently uses MobileMe, which they charge for $99 a year to use as an information backup program. I'd rather see free options as I am still a poor college student at this point.

Those who own a Windows smart phone will have to use the upgrade for now and give the company some time to develop it's version 7 of an upgrade, or go my route and purchase an iPhone that is at the top of the tier in computer and mobile development.

If you're interested in this article, please click here to see the article.

Chapter 6: Databases and Data Warehouses

In a recent article in Business Week entitled: "California unveils prescription database to spot abuse", the author shares that with a new database online installed, the law enforcement will have a more advanced way of keeping track of what doctors are prescribing to their patients, and what the patients are picking up from the pharmacies. What I did not know before was that with one prescription from their doctor, people actually abuse the use of the prescription and visit multiple doctors to get multiple times the amount of drugs. With the database installed, a patient's information is stored into the online system and all the drugs that the patient is picking up is recorded and the amount that they are getting whether it be from multiple doctors or not. Each time a prescription is picked up under that name, it is recorded and let known to law enforcements. Thousands of pharmacies and doctors have signed up to join this effort but hundreds are still expected to join. With this new database installed online, law enforcements will be able to crack down on the drug abuse and also do it at a faster rate then before. California is the 26th state to join the online efforts in cracking down the abuse on the online database.

With more and more people being caught for the abuse, we as a state will be able to save ourselves quite some money. "If you took the dollars that were wasted on diverted and abused medicines in this country, it would come to billions of dollars a year".

This link to this article can be found here.

Chapter 5: Enterprise Architectures

When you are running a lot of projects on several different computers, it is essential that all of your work is continually backed up on external hard drives in case your computer ever crashes spontaneously. If the files and projects are not backed up continuously and the computer crashes, it may cost the company a lot of time and money to have their employees either re-do the work or recover the projects.

For example, I have been working all summer on five different video projects on five separate PC computers. I just learned tonight that of the five computers, two of them have been infected with a virus through some internet web page that the students accessed without permission. They violated a trust that we had for them. What concerns me most is that this is going to set back the project and cost me more time to get the projects up and running again.

According to PC World Magazine, there is an easier way to store over 400 types of files on your computer with the new Storage Appliance's Clickfree Automatic Backup line, the Clickfree Backup Drive. The drive has a storage space of 1TB. I've noticed that as time passes and equipments become "easier and cheaper" to make for companies, these external hard drives and flash drives are also becoming cheaper to purchase. The Clickfree Backup Drive's cost ranges between $160 to $250 depending on which merchant you make the purchase from.

The back up drive starts off with a 25-second countdown and then scans your computer's system for data files that are compatible with it to back up. After it has scanned the system and found the files that it can back up, it will ask you and warn you that it will back up those files. When the warning pops up, you are able to choose which files you wish to remove from the list or which other files to include. Once the files are backed up, you are still able to access the files on the backup drive through the Clickfree software to either print, share, email, or etc the files.

The backup drive is similar to other ones out there but it does not back up system files or support disaster recovery. The backup drive performs glitch-free on most operating systems but reviewers found problems with it when using the Windows XP system. The backup drive also has a reminder clock installed to ask you occasionally when to next back up your drive.

Overall, I need something like this in my line of work. It's hard to remember to backup all of the work that I do because I get so caught up in the work, but with a Clickfree backup drive, it can automatically search my system for me to backup my files at set times.

The link to this article can be found by clicking here.

Chapter 4: Ethics and Information Security

According to the Business Week article written on September 15, 2009, the country of France is approving a bill that will allow the police and authorities to shut down the Internet usage of someone illegally downloading music/movies/ etc. There are millions and millions of Internet users in the world today and how France is planning on containing the population of Internet users in its country is mind blowing for me. How do they even plan on maintaining a close eye on who downloads what? They need for Internet users to install a program onto the computer user's computer that will allow authorities to watch over what is being done over the time of Internet usage. Does this not violate privacy laws? I would not want the government to watch over everything that I do on the Internet. They would be able to read what I write, see what I see, and etc. I would have no privacy at all on my own computer usage and thus it violates my privacy as a citizen. This bill has been in circulation for the past year, having different versions declined. This latest version that was approved on Tuesday, allows for a judge to make the decision on cutting the Internet usage in a home because of illegal downloading and charging the person with up to 300,000 euros ( which is about $435,000 in US money).

I don't know why this issue isn't being brought up to the bigger public. I would not have known about this bill if I did not read this article. I believe that the government is moving away from a hands off approach to basically violating privacy rights of the public. If France allows this bill to pass, imagine other countries taking on the same law. Yes, illegal downloading is wrong and people should know that ethically it is not right, but people's privacy should not be violated to correct this problem.

You can check out the article by clicking here. I'll try to stay on top of what's next to come.

Chapter 3: Ebusiness

When the Internet was first discovered, it did not have many users at all because it came very complicated for the public to learn how to. However, when the Internet expanded into more and more of the population, demand for businesses to expand their work onto the World Wide Web started increasing. To be successful in today's business market, one must be available to its consumers and customers via the Internet. The Internet has allowed information to be easier to compile, increased richness, increased the reach of one's business to a global level, and it has definitely improved upon the content of the business that can be shared with the public. According to a Business Week article, successful businesses must be online. However, to remain successful once it is up and running online, the company must keep an eye out on its "reputation" online. There are so many review web sites of companies and products that the company must be aware of what is being said about them from the customers or critics, whether it is positive or negative. Using popular search engines like Google and Yahoo! can be helpful in maintaining an eye and ear on what is being stated from the customers or critics. But if you want extra protection, there are even sites that you can pay for them to send you alerts whenever there is something new posted about you on the Internet. If a company does not pay attention to what is being said about their services and products, the company can potentially lose its customers to the bad reviews. The BW article features the Escapist, "a 39-employee video gaming Web site based in Durham, N.C." that helps companies protect its reputation online. The company's services provides that whenever there is any new information posted about a particular company, that company is informed of it right away; allowing the company to either take action against the negative comment or dwell in the positive feedback they were able to receive. A lot of small businesses are still unaware of its reputation online. Just because something is not said about you on your own website, it doesn't mean that you are not being talked about on other websites.

Link to article: CLICK HERE

Chapter 2. Strategic Decision Making

In this week's chapter reading, chapter two briefly reflected upon artificial intelligence (AI). We have learned previously that technological advancements are a force to be reckoned with in the business world. Artificial intelligence "simulates human intelligence such as the ability to reason and learn. AI systems can learn or understand from experience, make sense of ambiguous or contradictory information, and even use reasoning to solve problems". With AI in the business field more effective decisions can be made and high costing jobs could be replaced with robotics. The whole idea about artificial intelligence is to try to produce a system that will "re-create" or mimic human intelligence. According to the text, "AI systems dramatically increase the speed and consistency of decision making, solve problems with incomplete information, and resolve complicated issues that cannot be solved by conventional computing".

The article that I chose to read about this week is from the Business Week newsletter entailing artificial intelligence and the creation of a new school by inventor Ray Kurzweil, called Singularity University. The school is located at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. The courses, which have already taken place this past summer, featured "intense three to ten day workshops to help senior executives steer their companies into the future". The school recruited top executives and staffs from such companies as Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, NASA and other corporations to be a part of the staff at the school. Taking this course is costing each individual $15,000, causing many to doubt if the school's mission is truly to help businesses "grasp the implications of fast-changing fields such as biotechnology and robotics". The executive director of Singularity, Ismail says: "If CEOs are not asking themselves big questions about how rapidly accelerating technologies apply to their business, you have to start asking them some questions". At the beginning of the summer, the school received applications from over sixty different countries. We have yet to hear back from any of the Singularity students on what they have gained from the institute.

Business Week Article

Chapter 1. Infromation Systems in Business

Google is one of the biggest companies in the technology and business industry today. Their impact on the business market is massive. My workplace uses all the applications within Google for everything work related (Google Calendar, Gmail, Docs, Spreadsheets, Picasa, etc). You name it, and if it is Google related, then we use it at work. We use it to build a better culture of sharing paperwork, communication, etc. The applications allow the levels within the organization to be interdependent upon one another.

However, according to an article from PC World entitled "Does Google Know Too Much About You?" by Ian Paul, it is daunting that Google may know too much about me and my co-workers; more importantly, our organization and its functionality. Everything that you search for through Google goes through their servers and "Google tracks your online behavior to deliver relevant advertising". That's something that I've never considered. Does it help if you delete your cache and erase your history every time you close your browser for those searches to go away? Besides that though, Google still maintains all of our information through Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Is it safe to maintain important information online then? Google also has access to a lot more information than you can think of too. Through Google Maps they know where your location is, through Google Voice they have a copy of your voice and etc. Google has brought up that the privacy of its users is of importance to them and that they only keep your information for up to 18 months and that it is anonymous. The user privacy information has also been made more aware of on their websites as well. However, one last thing, Google is planning to create its own operating system (OS) called Chrome OS. How much further will the company go and where will the new OS put the company on terms of privacy? People fear that Google will be able to access your “online behavior” even offline. My concern for Google is not quite that high yet but this article has truly got me thinking about keeping my personal information online and who uses my computer to search for what.

Check out the PC World article here.