Expert Systems

Expert system is an artificial intelligence program that has expert-level knowledge about a particular domain and knows how to use its knowledge to respond properly. Domain refers to the area within which the task is being performed. Ideally the expert systems should substitute a human expert. Edward Feigenbaum of Stanford University has defined expert system as “an intelligent computer program that uses knowledge and inference procedures to solve problems that are difficult enough to require significant human expertise for their solutions.” It is a branch of artificial intelligence introduced by researchers in the Stanford Heuristic Programming Project.

Neural Networks

A type of artificial intelligence that attempts to imitate the way a human brain works. Rather than using a digital model, in which all computations manipulate zeros and ones, a neural network works by creating connections between processing elements, the computer equivalent of neurons. The organization and weights of the connections determine the output.

Neural networks are particularly effective for predicting events when the networks have a large database of prior examples to draw on. Strictly speaking, a neural network implies a non-digital computer, but neural networks can be simulated on digital computers.

The field of neural networks was pioneered by Bernard Widrow of Stanford University in the 1950s. Neural networks are currently used prominently in voice recognition systems, image recognition systems, industrial robotics, medical imaging, data mining and aerospace applications.

Genetic Algorithms

Genetic Algorithms (GAs) are adaptive heuristic search algorithm based on the evolutionary ideas of natural selection and genetics. As such they represent an intelligent exploitation of a random search used to solve optimization problems. Although randomised, GAs are by no means random, instead they exploit historical information to direct the search into the region of better performance within the search space. The basic techniques of the GAs are designed to simulate processes in natural systems necessary for evolution, specially those follow the principles first laid down by Charles Darwin of "survival of the fittest.". Since in nature, competition among individuals for scanty resources results in the fittest individuals dominating over the weaker ones.

Intelligent Agent

Special-purposed knowledge-based information system that accomplishes specific tasks on behalf of its user.

“An intelligent agent is one that is capable of flexible autonomous action in order to meet its design objectives, where flexible means three things:

• Reactivity: agents are able to perceive their environment, and respond in a timely fashion to changes that occur in it in order to satisfy its design objectives;
• Pro-activeness: intelligent agents are able to exhibit goal-directed behavior by taking the initiative in order to satisfy its design objectives;
• Social ability: intelligent agents are capable of interacting with other agents (and possibly humans) in order to satisfy its design objectives”;

Virtual Reality 

While the word "virtual" is typically overused in the computer world, it is aptly placed in the phrase "virtual reality." According to the American Heritage Dictionary, virtual means "existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name." It can also mean "created, simulated, or carried on by means of a computer or computer network." Therefore, virtual reality is best described as an illusion of reality created by a computer system.

A person may enter a world of virtual reality by putting on special glasses and headphones attached to a computer system running the virtual reality program. These devices immerse the user with the sights and sounds of the virtual world. Some virtual reality systems allow the user to also wear gloves with electronic sensors that can be used to touch or move virtual objects. As the user moves his head or hands, the computer moves the virtual world accordingly in real-time.

Virtual reality has been widely used for entertainment purposes, but the technology has found its way into the military and medical fields as well. While virtual reality systems have advanced significantly over the past decade, for the most part they are still more "virtual" than reality.

Organizational Structures That Support Strategic Initiatives

1.Diffentiation between chief information officer (CIO) , chief technology officer (CTO) , chief security officer (CSO) , chief privacy officer (CPO) and chief knowledge officer (CKO).

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER (CIO)

• responsible for overseeing all uses of information technology and ensuring the strategic alignment of IT with business goals  and objective. The CIO often report directly to the CEO. CIO must process a solid and detailed understading of every aspect of an organization coupled with tremendous insight into the capability of IT.
• ensure the delivery of all T projects on time and within budget.
• ensure the strategic vision of IT is in line with the strategic vision of the organization.
• advocate and communicate the IT strategy by building and maintain strong executive relationship.

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER(CTO)

• Develop and approve the DISA net-centricity and IP convergence strategy.
• Review and approve detailed net-centricity and IP convergence plans developed by Program and Service Managers.
• Conduct technical reviews of all solutions, products and services to determine compliance with overall DISA strategy and evaluate soundness of technical approach.  Provide recommendations as required to appropriate DISA leadership.
• Conduct technical reconnaissance to identify and recommend innovative engineering techniques, technologies, and products that may be of use to DISA.
• Represent DISA at senior level technical exchanges, conferences, panels, etc.
• Advise the Director and Vice-Director on all aspects of technology relevant to DISA efforts.
• Approve all technical standards leaving DISA and oversee all standards development.
• In conjunction with CAE, AFE, and SPI, conduct end-to-end reviews of all solutions, programs (how programs fit together), and services, ensuring all are consistent with GIG architecture and standards.
• Exercise governance over Joint Capability Technology Demonstrations and other technology innovation initiatives.
• Guide, direct and lead the Chief Engineers Panel.
• Work in conjunction with the Technical Director for Global NetOps to ensure the technical soundness of global NetOps systems and solutions.
• responsible for ensuring the throughput,speed,accurancy,availability and reliability of an orgaization information technology
• CTO process well-rounded knowledge knowledge of all aspect of IT  including hardware,software and telecommunications.

CHIEF SECURITY OFFICER (CSO)

• Ensuring the confidentiality of sensitive information processed by, stored in, and moved through information systems and applications belonging to the enterprise. Examples of sensitive information processed by enterprise include personally identifiable information and other Privacy Act protected records; pre-release economic statistics; information provided by companies and individuals under the assumption of confidentiality; and pre-award contract financial information.
• Ensuring the integrity of the enterprise information such that decisions and actions taken based upon the data processed by, stored in, and moved through enterprise information systems can be made with the assurance that the information has not been manipulated, the information is not subject to repudiation, the source of the changes to information can be determined as best as possible.
• Ensuring the availability of the enterprise information systems and applications during routine operations and in crisis situations to support the enterprise Mission.
• responsibility for ensuring and developing strategic and IT safeguards against attacks from hackers and viruses.
• CSO posess detailed knowledge of networks and telecommunication because hackers and viruses usually find their way into IT system through networked computers.

CHIEF PRIVACY OFFICER (CPO)

• responsibility for ensuring the ethical and legal use of information within an organization
• CPO are the newest senior executive position in IT.
• lawyers traning enabling them o understand the often complex legal issues surrounding the use of information.

CHIEF KNOWLEDGE OFFICER (CKO)

• responsible for collecting ,mainting and dstributing the organization knowledge.
• CKO desigs programs and system that make it easy for people to reuse knowledge.
• can contribute directly to the organization bottom line by reducing the learning curve for new employees or employees taking on new roles.

Storing Organizational Information-Database

1.Descride two primary method of integriting information across multiple database?

Firstly forward integration takes information entered into a given system and send it automatically to all downstream system and process.Secondly backward integration takes information entered into given system and send it automatically to all upstream system and process.

2.Describe the benefit of data-driven web site ?

Allow the website owner to make changes any time,a statis website requires a programmer to make updates,having a data-driven website enables to site to grow faster than would be possible with a static site and even the most competent programmer charged with the task of maintaining many pages will overlook things and make mistakes.

3.Define the fundamental concept of the rational database model?

Fundamental concept of rational database model have two types firstly entities and attributes.Entities in the rational database model is the person ,place,thing,transaction or event about which information is stored.Attributes also called fields or colums are characteristic or properties of an entity class.Secondly keys and relationships.

4.Evaluate the advantages of the rational database model?

Firstly increase flexibility.increased scalability and performance,reduced information redundancy,increased information integrity(quality) and increased information security.

5.Compare operational integrity constraints and business-critical integrity constraints?

Operational integrity constraints are rules that enforce basic and fundamental information-based constraints.Business-critical integrity constraints are rules that enforce rules vital to an organization success and often require more insight and knowledge than operational integrity constraints.

Accessing Organizational Information-Data Warehouse

1.Describe the roles purpose of data warehouse and date marts in an organization.

Data warehouse is a logical collection of information gathered from many different operational databases that support business analysis and decision-making tasks.

Data marts-contains a subset of date warehouse information

2.Compare the multidimensional nature of data warehouse with the two-dimensional nature of databases.

Data base contain information in a series of two dimensional tables which means that you can only ever view two dimensional of information at one time.In a database warehouse and data marts information is multidimensional it contains layers of colums and rows.Each layer in a data warehouse or data marts represents information according to an additional dimension.Dimensions could such things as products,promotion,stores,category,region.stock price,date,time and even the weather.The ability to look information from different dimensions can add tremendous business insight.

3.Identify the importance of ensuring the cleanliness of information throughout an organization.

Maintain high quality data in the data warehouse.a process that weeds out and fixes or discards inconsistent,incorrect,or incomplete information,contact information in an operational system,standardizing customer name from operational system,information cleansing activities and accurate and complate information quality management.

4.Explain the relationship between business intelligence and data warehouse.

Business intelligence is the information that people use to support their decision-making efforts.

Data warehouse a logical collection of information-gathered from many different operational databases-that supports business analysis activities and decision-making tasks.

MEASURING THE SUCCESS OF STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

Introduction 

+ IT professionals know how to install and maintain information systems

+ Business professionals know how to run a successful business

Measuring IT's Success

+ Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

How an organization defines and measures progress toward its goals

Key Performance Indicators, also known as KPI or Key Success Indicators (KSI), help an organization define and measure progress toward organizational goals. 

Once an organization has analyzed its mission, identified all its stakeholders, and defined its goals, it needs a way to measure progress toward those goals. Key Performance Indicators are those measurements.

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This is the EFFICIENCY and EFFECTIVENESS IT METRICS

Efficiency:

There is 6 common types of Efficiency in IT metrics

1. Throughput ~> amount of info that can travel in system at any point
2. Speed ~> the times takes for a system to perform a transaction
3. Availability ~> available number of hours in a system to be use by customer and employee
4. Accuracy ~> the extents to which a system generates the correct results when executing the same transaction numerous time
5. Web traffic ~> number of page views, number of unique visitors and average spend on viewing the web page
6. Response time ~> time takes to respond to user interactions such as mouse click 

Effectiveness:

• Usability = the ease which people perform transaction/ find info. E.g: unlimited use of internet
• Customer satisfaction = benchmarks such as surveys, percentages of existing customers retained & etc
• Conversion rates = number of customers an organizations touches for the first time and convince to purchase its product or services
• Financial = the cost benefit analysis, breakeven analysis

Business in Facebook. How efficiency and effectiveness? 

Efficiency:

• Easy for the dealer to discuss or dealing with the buyers
• It is easy, low cost, and did not take to much times to promote about new product
• Very fast and very simple
• Can post advertisements just in second so everyone can see it less than minutes
• Easy for dealer to hear the request from buyers

Effectiveness

• More customers 
• Dealer can spread his business not only in this country but the world wide
• The dealer can expand his business and achieve his goals and objectives  

Introduction

The essence of the information technology revolution and, in particular, the World Wide Web is the opportunity to build better relationships with customers than has been previously possible in the offline world. By combining the abilities to respond directly to customer requests and to provide the customer with a highly interactive, customized experience, companies have a greater ability today to establish, nurture, and sustain long-term customer relationships than ever before. The ultimate goal is to transform these relationships into greater profitability by increasing repeat purchase rates and reducing customer acquisition costs.

A major purpose I writes this is to provide a managerially useful, end-to-end view of the customer relationship management (CRM) process from a marketing perspective. The basic perspective taken is that of the customer, not the company. In other words, what do managers need to know about their customers and how is that information used to develop a complete CRM perspective? There is 7 basic components of CRM activities: 

1. A database of customer activity.

2. Analyses of the database.

3. Given the analyses, decisions about which customers to target.

4. Tools for targeting the customers

5. How to build relationships with the targeted customers.

6. Privacy issues.

7. Metrics for measuring the success of the CRM program.

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The means of Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Defined as a software product, a data method, a sales strategy or data analyze. CRM totalize this definition and many others depending on each user necessity.

CRM means establish, to implement, to maintain and optimize of a long time relationship between the client and the company.

Another definition: CRM (customer relationship management) is an information industry term for methodologies, software, and usually Internet capabilities that help an enterprise manage customer relationship in an organized way.

Porter's Five Forces Model

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Buyer Power

• High-when buyers have many choices of whom to buy.
• Low-when their choices are few.
• Bests practices of IT-based
• Loyalty program in travel industry(e.g. rewards on free airline tickets or hotel stays)

Supplier Power

• High-when buyers have few choices of whom to buy from.
• Low-when their choices are many.

Threats of Substitute Products and Services

• High-when are many alternatives to a product or service
• Low-when there are few alternatives from which to choose
• An organization like to be on the market in which there are few substitutes of their product or services

E.g. Electronic product-same function different brands

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Threats of New Entrants

• High-when it is easy for new competitors to enter a market
• Low-when there are significant entry barriers to entering a market

Entry barriers is a product or service feature that customers have come to expect from organizations and must be offered by entering organization to compete and survive.

E.g. New bank must offers online paying bill, account monitoring to compete.

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Rivalry Among Existence Competitors

• High-when competition is fierce in a market 
• Low-when competition is more complacent

Existing competitors are not much of the threat: typically each firm has found its "niche"

Changes in management, ownership, or "the rules of the game"can give rise to serious threats to long term survival from existing firms.

E.g. Digi, Celcom, Maxis

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Case from chapter 2 " charge it " with your cell phone

                                         

1. Do you view this technology as a potential threat to traditional telephone companies? if so, what counterstrategies could traditional telephone companies adopt to prepare for this technology?

• yes, if possible somehow tie the profit to the cell phone to traditional telephone companies to : 

* make some money off it without putting them out of business.

•  make traditional telephone more appealing to people and possibly cheaper packages than what they already have 

• Traditional telephone companies have lost a large part of their market share, and the associated revenues, to cell phone companies.  If this new technology attracts even more customers to the cell phone market, the traditional telephone companies stand to lose additional market share and revenues.  For this reason, this type of technology is a definite threat to the traditional telephone companies.  The traditional telephone companies will have to find new ways to entice customers.  One possibility would be to implement the ability for the home phone owner, who is also an ISP customer, to purchase online retail goods and have the charge applied to their home telephone bills.

2. Describe barriers to entry for new technology using Porter's Five.

• Entry barrier- product or service feature that customers have come to expect from organizations in a particular  industry  and must be offered by an entering organization to compete and survive

*Cell phone company must offer customer an array of services that this new technology will provide.

• Switching cost - are cost that can make customer reluctant to switch to another product or services.

*Cell phone companies can monitor what customers buy

*after many times of visiting sites they can tailor  products to what the customer likes

*if they shop else where, there will be a switching cost since the new shopping site does not have a profile of the past's purchases the customer made.

•    The barriers to entry include the new technology (special chip for the phone) required to support associating a cell phone with a credit card, partnership between the credit card company and the cell phone company, minimizing security issues associated with the technology, and gaining consumer trust.  One of the biggest barriers to entry will be convincing cell phone users that the technology is secure.  

3.  Which of Porter’s three generic strategies is this new technology following? 

• This technology is following a differentiation strategy for a broad market
• •Focused strategy- target a niche market
• •Targeting the growing market of cell phone users and purchasing products and services from the cell phone

4. Describe the value chain of using cell phones as a payment method.

• value chain increase the infrastructure of phone companies and improve technology development

•payment method can receive/store information from the consumers purchases and send that to the phone company. 

•more people will engage in this type of payment method.  

5. What types of regulatory issues might occur due to this type of technology?

•people will be skeptical with putting personal information out there not knowing what kind of security protection the company has.

•people will find a way to hack into cell phones.