CHAPTER 8 - Accessing Organizational Information - Data Warehouse

History of Data Warehouse

• in the 1990s as organizations began to need more timely information about their business, they found that traditional operational information systems were too cumbersome to provide relevant data efficiently and quickly. 
• operational systems typically include accounting, order entry, customer service, and sales and are not appropriate for business analysis.

Data Warehouse Fundamentals

• data warehouse is a logical collection of information - gathered from many different operational database - that support business analysis activities and decisions making task
• the primary purpose of a data warehouse is to aggregate information throughout an organization into a single repository in such way that employees can make decisions and undertake business analysis activities.
• extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL), which is a process that extract information from internal and external databases, transform the information using common sets of enterprise definitions, and loads the information into data marts
• data marts contains a subset of data warehouse information, it is to distinguish between data warehouse and data marts, think of data warehouse as having more organizational focus and data marts as having focused information subsets particular to the needs of a given business unit such as finance or production and operations.

                           

Multidimensional analysis and data mining

• A dimension is a particular attribute of information .
• a cube is the common term for the representation of the multidimensional informational.
• data mining is the process of analyzing data to extract information not offered by the raw data alone.
• data mining tool use a variety of techniques to find pattern and relationships in large volumes of information and infer rules from them that predict future behavior and guide decision making.

 Information Cleansing Or Scrubbing

• An organization must maintain high-quality data in the data warehouse
• Information cleansing or scrubbing – 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 Systems



Accurate and complete information


Information cleansing activities

Bu business intelligence

•Business intelligence – information that people use to support their decision-making efforts

•

•Principle BI enablers include:

–Technology

–People

–Culture

CHAPTER 7 : STORING ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION - DATABASES

Relational Database Fundamentals 

• database maintains information about various type of object (inventory), events (transactions), people (employees), and places (ware-house).
• In hierarchical database model, information is organized into a tree-like structure that allows repeating information using parent/child relationships in such a way that it cannot have too many relationships
• the network database model is a flexible way of representing objects and their relationships.
• the relational database model is a type of database that stores information in the form of logically related two-dimensional tables.

Entities and Attributes

• entity in the relational database model is a person,place,thing,transaction, or events about which information is stored.
• attributes also called fields or columns , are characteristics or properties of an entity class. 

Keys and Relationships

•  a primary key is a fields (or group of fields) that uniquely identifies a given entity in the table.
• a foreign key in the relational database model is a primary key of one table that appears as an attribute in another table and acts to provide a logical relationship between the two tables.

relational database advantages

• increased flexibility 
• increased scalability and performance
• reduced information redundancy
• increased information integrity (quality)
• increased information security

Increased Flexibility

• database tends to mirror business structures, and a good database can handle changes quickly and easily, just as any good business need to be able to handle changes quickly and easily
• the physical view of information deals with the physical storage of information on a storage device such as hard disk.
• logical view of information focuses on how users logically access information to meet their particular business needs.

Increased scalability and performance

• scalability refers to how well system can adapt to increased demands.
• performance measure how quickly system performs a certain process or transaction.

Reduced information redundancy

• redundancy is the duplication of information, or storing the same information in multiple places.
• redundant information occurs because organizations frequently capture and store the same information in multiple location.

Increased information integrity (quality)

• information integrity is a measure of the quality of information.
• integrity constraints are rules that help ensure the quality of information.
• relational integrity constraints are rules that enforces basic and fundamental information-based constraints.
• business-critical integrity constraints enforce business rules vital to an organization's success and often require more insight and knowledge than relational integrity constraints.

database management system (DBMS)

• DBMS is software through which users and application programs interact with a database.

data driven websites

• data driven websites is an interactive website kept constantly update and relevant to the needs of its customers through the use of a database.

integrating information among multiple databases

• integration allows separate system to communicate directly with each other.
• forward integration takes information entered into a given system and send it automatically to all downstream systems and processes.
• a backward integration takes information entered into a given system and send it automatically to upstream system and process. 

 

 

CHAPTER 6

VALUING ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION

ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION

• information is everywhere in an organisation

• employees must be able to obtain and analyse the many different levels, formats, and granularity of organisational information to make decisions

• successfully collecting, compiling, sorting, and analysis information can provide tremendous insight into how an organisation is performing

• levels. format, any granularity of organisational information





THE VALUE OF TRANSACTIONAL AND ANALYTICAL INFORMATION

• transactional information encompasses all of the information contained within as single business process or unit of work, and its primary purpose is to support the performing of daily operational tasks

• analytical information encompasses all organizational information, and its primary purpose is to support performing of managerial analysis tasks


THE VALUE OF TIMELY INFORMATION

• timeliness is an aspect of information that depends on the situation

• Real-time-information means immediate, up-to-date information

• Real-time- system provides real-time information in response to query requests


THE VALUE OF QUALITY INFORMATION

• business decisions are only as good as the quality of the information used to make the decisions

• you never want to find yourself using technology to help you make a bad decision faster

• characteristics of high-quality information include:

• accuracy

• completeness

• consistency

• uniqueness

• timeliness

UNDERSTANDING THE COSTS OF POOR INFORMATION

• The four primary sources of low quality information include:

• online customers intentionally enter inaccurate information to protect their privacy
• information from different systems have different entry standards and formats 
• call center operators enter abbreviated or erroneous information by accident or to save time
• third party and external information contains inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and errors

• potential business effects resulting from low quality information include:

• inability to accurately track customers 

• difficulty identifying valuable customers 

• inability to identifying selling opportunities 

• marketing to nonexistent customers 

• difficulty tracking revenue due to inaccurate invoice 

• inability to build strong customer relationships

UNDERSTANDING THE BENEFITS OF GOOD INFORMATION

• high quality information can significantly improve the chances of making a good decision

• good decisions can directly impact an organisation's bottom line

CHAPTER 5

ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES THAT SUPPORT STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES

• organisational employees must work closely together to develop strategic initiatives that create competitive advantages

• ethics and security are two fundamental building blocks that organisations must base their business upon

IT ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• information technology is a relatively new functional area, having only been around formally for around 40 years

• recent IT-related strategic positions:

> Chief Information Officer (CIO) is oversees all uses of IT and ensures the strategic alignment of IT business goals and objectives

> Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is responsible for ensuring the throughput, speed, accuracy, availability, and reliability of an organization's information technology

> Chief Security Officer (CSO) is responsible for ensuring the ethical and legal use of information within an organization

> Chief Knowledge Office (CKO) is responsible for collecting, maintaining, and distributing the organisation's knowledge

THE GAP BETWEEN BUSINESS PERSONNEL AND IT PERSONNEL

• business personnel possess expertise in functional areas such as marketing, accounting and sales

• IT personnel have the technological expertise

• this typically causes a communications gap between the business personnel and IT personnel

IMPROVING COMMUNICATIONS

• business personnel must seek to increase their understanding of IT

• IT personnel must seek to increase their understanding of the business

• it is the responsibility of the CIO to ensure effective communication between business personnel and IT personnel

ORGANIZATIONAL FUNDAMENTALS - ETHICS AND SECURITY

• ethics and security are two fundamental building blocks that organisations must base their businesses on to be successful

• in recent years, such events as the Enron and Martha Stewart, along with 9/11 have shed new light n the meaning of ethics and security

Ethics

• the principles and standards that guide our behavior toward other people

• privacy is a major ethical issue. the right to be left alone when you want to be, to have control over your      own personal possessions, and not to be observed without your consent

• issues affected by technology advances

• intellectual property - intangible creative work that is embodied in physical form

• copyright - the legal protection afforded an expression of an idea, such as a song, video game, and some types of proprietary documents

• fair use doctrine - in certain situations,it is legal to use copyright material

• pirated softwarebcounterfeit software - software that is manufactured to look like the real thing and sold as such

• one of the main ingredients in trust is privacy

• primary reasons privacy issues lost trust for e-business

• loss personal privacy is atop concern for american in the 21st century

• among Internet user, 37 percent would be "a lot" more inclined to purchase a product on a Web site that had a privacy policy

• privacy/security is the number one factor that would convert internet researchers into Internet buyers

Security

• organization information is intellectual capital - it must be protected

• information security - the protection of information from accidental or intentional misuse by person inside or outside an organization

• E-business automatically creates tremendous information security risks for organizations 

CHAPTER 4 > Measuring the Success of Strategic Initiatives

Efficiency and Effectiveness

• Efficiency IT metrics measure the performances of the IT system itself including throughput ,speed and availability.

• Effectiveness IT metrics measure the impacts IT has on business processes and activities including customer satisfaction, conversion rates, and sell-trough increase.

> doing thing right addresses efficiency - getting the most from the most resources.

> doing the right things addresses effectiveness - setting the right goals and objectives and ensuring they are      accomplish.

Benchmarking - Baseline Metrics

• benchmarking is a process of continuously measuring system results, comparing those results to optimal system performance (benchmark values), and identifying steps and procedures to improve system performance.

The Interrelationships of efficiency and effectiveness IT metrics.

• Throughput - The amount of information that can travel through a system at any point.
• Transaction speed - The amount of time a system takes to performs transaction.
• System Availability - The number of hours a system is available for users.
• Information Accuracy - The extent to which a system generates the correct results when executing the same transaction numerous times.
• Web Traffic - Includes a host of benchmarks such as the number of page views, the number of unique visitors, and the average time spent viewing a web page.
• Response Time - The time takes to respond to user interactions such as a mouse click.
• Usability - The ease with which people perform transaction or find information. A popular usability metric on the internet is degrees of freedom, which measure the number of clicks required to find desired information.
•  Customer Satisfaction - Measured by such benchmarks as satisfaction surveys, percentages of existing customer retained, increases in revenue dollars per customer.
• Conversion Rates - the number of customers an organization "touches" for the first time and persuade to purchase its products or services. this is a popular metric for evaluating the effectiveness of banner, pop-up, and pop-under ads on the Internet
• Financial -  Such as return on investment (the earning power of an organization's assets), cost- benefits analysis (the comparison of projected revenue and costs including development, maintenance, constant revenues equal ongoing costs).  

METRICS FOR STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

· metrics for measuring and managing strategic initiatives include:

·web site metrics

· supply chain management (SCM) metrics

· customer relationship management (CRM) metrics

·business process re engineering (BPR)

· enterprise resource planning (ERP) metrics

WEBSITE METRICS

·abandoned registrations

*   number of visitors who start the process of completing a registration page and then abandon the activity.

·abandoned shopping cards

*  number of visitors who create a shopping card and start shopping and then abandon the activity before paying for the merchandise.

·  click - through

* count of the number of people who visit a site, click on an ad, and are taken to the site of the advertiser.

·conversation rate

*   percentage of potential customers who visit a site and actually buy something.

·cost-per-thousand (CPM)

* sales dollars generated per dollar of advertising. this is commonly used to make the case for spending money to appear on a search engine.

· page exposures

*  average number of page exposures to an individual visitor.

·   total hits

*  number of visits to a web site, many of which may be by the same visitor.

·  unique visitors

*  number of unique visitors to a site in a given time. this is commonly used by Nielsen/Net ratings to rank the most popular Web sites.

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT METRICS

· back order

* an unfilled customer order. A back order is demand (immediate or past due) against an item whose current stock level is insufficient to satisfy demand.

· customer order promised cycle time

*  the anticipated or agreed upon cycle time of a purchase order. it is a gap between the purchase order creation date and the requested delivery date.

·   customer order actual cycle time

*  the average time it takes toi actually fill a customer's purchase order. This measure can be viewed on an order or an order line level.

·    inventory replenishment cycle time

*   measure of the manufacturing cycle time plus the time included to deploy the product to the appropriate distribution center.

·     inventory turns (inventory turnover)

*   the number of times that a company's inventory cycles or turns over per year. it is one of the most commonly used supply chain metrics.

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT METRICS

· customer relationships management metrics measure user satisfaction and interaction        

BUSINESS PROCESS RE ENGINEERING AND ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING METRICS

·   the balanced scorecard enables organizations to measure and manage strategic initiatives