IS in organisations
Management of information systems is critical to this area. There is a variety of implementing what is known as the “five forces” (not listed.) These include the locking in of customers or suppliers, building switch costs, raising barriers to entry, and leveraging investment in investment technology. Locking in customers or suppliers builds new relationships while keeping them from leaving a firm. Building switching costs make customers or suppliers depend on the continued use of innovation and causes customers or suppliers to think twice about paying on time. Raising barriers to entry increased the amount of investment of complexity of technology needed to compete in an industry or a market segment which may slow or discourage firms from coming into a market. Lastly, leveraging information technology makes investing in advanced systems increase efficiency while allowing for more development. Corporations enable firms to have leverage over their prior investments.
The main value in a business is to build a customer-focused business. The traits in this area are the ability to keep loyal customers, guess the needs of future customers’ needs, respond to customer concerns, and provide high-quality service. Customers see companies that can offer the best value as having the ability to keep track of their customer’s preferences, keep up with market trends, supply products, services, and information anytime and anywhere, and offer services specific to the special needs of the customer.
Value chains are important in Information Systems. Reengineering is also key in strategy. Information technology plays a strong role here. Virtual companies are becoming more efficient, and sharing infrastructure is just one reason to form them. Knowledge management systems have become on main strategic use in IT.
Effect of IS on individual
Information systems have a number of significant effects on workers including time-space distancing, increased trust in abstract systems, removal of stable identities, removal of local social relations, removal of clear roles, and reflexive reordering of social relations
Strategy in IS
The main aspects of organisational management are operational effectiveness, strategic positioning, and how activities are performed, while the differences must be sustained. The red queen evolution is a company’s attempting to compete within each in a counterproductive cycle, and thus should be avoided. Alignment between IS and organisational strategy is essential. The goal is a sustainable competitive advantage, which has many resultant and obvious benefits. Innovation of course is also an obvious strategy to use. Core traits of competence should be clearly defined. Strategic information systems (SIS) can link the supplier with the customer and allow the provision of new products or services along with other benefits. The Five Forces model is useful to SIS, and basically is a representation of threats and rivalries. SIS is strategic because it is unique among other reasons while finding SIS requires a level of understanding and analytical skills.
Stakeholders in IS
There are a variety of ways to organise a company, including centralised, distributed, and outsourced. Centralised all run from one office, distributed are small groupings of IT personnel across departments, while outsourced IT function and systems development is run by another entity. Stakeholders should be identified early on in the process, while the project leader should be aware that not everyone who is involved has the same agenda. Project managers provide the leadership, while it is their responsibility to organise and control a project.
Steering committees are responsible for the success of a project, while it has the power to authorise resource usage. It assigns responsibility to the project manager. It focuses on managerial control of related components while overseeing the project from many perspectives.
HR Issues in IS
IT staff includes front and back office. Customer relations are known as a front office while programmers and other non-customer-related people are in what is known as the back office. There are many factors of motivation that should be considered. Studies show computer personnel has a high requirement for challenges and growth, while they also have low social need. Excellent programmers have the traits of logical ability, attention to detail, persistence, and other vital traits that should be required. Excellent analysts have the traits of knowledge, listening, and experience among other important traits. Judgments of these areas, however, are subjective in most cases.
Good appraisals are needed for most IT management while allowing staff to learn and grow. Appraisals make a clear purpose, establish clear standards, monitor performance, and have a written evaluation. Appraisals improve employee productivity and development while identifying possible needs for training. Staff turnover is a serious problem for most departments.
There is a gap between IT and business culture. IT professionals do not see political nature, like neat situations, and tend to avoid emotional situations.
Marketing IS
Marketing messages should attempt to bridge the culture gap. IS can help clients do a better job for the company and themselves while delivering strategic benefits. IS is an integrated service. IS also understands the business.
Marketing techniques can vary greatly. Mediums also vary greatly, especially with changing technology. Seminars are sometimes used to get the most out of understanding how to best use departmental processes and technology. Branding plays a key role in the marketing process as it tries to create energy for the company while relating to the customer. Information systems need marketing skills.
Building the IT team
Forming, storming, and norming are major components of building a team. Performing is the next step. There are five kinds of team members, controllers, enablers, executives, planners, and drivers. There are nine major roles for any team, and these are plant, resource investigator, coordinator, shaper, monitor evaluator, team worker, implementer, completer-finisher, and specialist.
Organizational Change
Hard and soft changes refer to hard or soft problems. Hard or soft problems are either related to difficult process issues or more pliable personal issues. There are many types of organisational change, behavioural change, attitude change, and cultural change. There are a variety of types of power: the power of resources, power of process, power of meaning. The main issues to be addressed in organizational change include participation, ownership, relevance, training, incrementalism, goals, review, flexibility, context, and politics.
Implementing change involves management and business processes. A change management process is not the only process while more general processes exist.
Quality in IS
Quality is an important part of providing and operating a good information system. It must be made for all processes within management. There are four absolutes in management, referring to customer demand, prevention of poor quality, zero defects, and conformity versus non-conformity. Quality is maintained through quality assurance. TickIT certification trains for high quality. Management is responsible for defining quality policy, organisational structure, promoting the quality system, and reviewing. Quality management systems have better user acceptance, less rework, strategic aspects, and software engineering.
Service in IS
Reasons for success include user involvement, planning, and expectations. Reasons for failure include lack of user input, incomplete requirements, changing requirements and specifications, lack of administrative support, and lack of technical skills.
A service can be defined as the delivery of a process. Services are intangible and cannot be resold. Rands’ statements are commonly considered in these areas while they include that ownership cannot be defined in service in the same way it can be in manufacturing, so, ownership is in some ways not applicable and thus ‘not generally transferred’ between processes. Also, services are paid for and performed, so the result is a process and not an item. Items can be resold, processes cannot. So, services cannot be resold.
Both statements mean providing IT service is very different than providing products at all levels, including management. Services depend on employees. Challenges to services include maintaining quality, managing capacity and demand, selecting and motivating IT staff, balancing standardization and customisation, and organizing the control of IT.
The customer’s role is vital to service, while many if not all aspects are tailored to meet their needs. Challenges to management are marketing the service and managing career advancements.
Front and back office categories are relevant to the customer, while front office refers to customer relations as back-office refers to company relations.
Advantages to moving in this way included increased task dependency, increased staff contact hours, increased end-user computing, and increased customer involvement. Disadvantages include the necessity to consider the time spent placing people, developing new differences between the front and back office, developing new cost reduction and efficiency strategies, and ensuring quality do not suffer as a result. Advantages include cost savings, economies of scale, and reduced staff hours in user contact. Disadvantages include the cost and use of new required technology, potential loss of quality, and perceived (but not actual) loss in quality creating a loss in reputation. IT service quality is designed to fit between the users’ expectations and their idea about the service.
Front office operations in IT/IS include direct customer interactions, so customer service and interpersonal skills or any other general service skills are important. Back office operations here include factory activities, technical processes, and other aspects not related to customer interaction. So, manufacturing, technical skills, and general skills not related to customer service may be required. An example of applied front office skills is training and requirements analysis. Examples of applied back office skills include programming and repairs to hardware. Direction, effectiveness, friendliness, and many other elements are essential. Marketing, necessity, and reliability are also important among these areas. There are also many gaps that should be considered, such as consumer expectation, management perception, service quality specifications, service delivery, expected service, and others.