Information Systems

Looking back over the class, what I believe will make the biggest difference in my professional career relates to change management.  As managers and leaders of companies in our future, we will be assigned the tough task of changing organizations to foster growth, creativity, and innovations.  We won't be hired to simply keep things on an even keel, and settle for less than the situations we walk into.  We will be asked to exhibit an entrepreneurial nature that spurs on our organizations to new heights.  And this is what change management is about.  It's never easy to get people to change, it's human nature that we get ourselves stuck into a routine, and many times people start to say 'that's not how things are done around here'.  Most of the people in organizations don't understand why things should change and that we always want improvement and to be better at what we do, especially in organizations.  I for one plan on using what we learned in class in my career and hopefully create change in meaningful ways.  These concepts and many other things that I didn't know before are the reasons I decided to come back for graduate school and so far, I'm really glad that I did.

The Importance of Selling Online

http://www.cio.com/article/636070/Is_Black_Friday_Dead_on_Arrival_?source=rss_news

I read this article on Black Friday promotions and thought that this was pretty interesting.  Finding deals during the holidays is pretty important, especially if you have a large family or friends that you buy gifts for.  I remember a few years ago when I first started to shop online, mainly at Amazon to buy books for cheaper prices.  Now trying to find a good deal won't be looking at the newspapers, but almost completely online.  While many physical retailers will still push huge deals and savings on Black Friday, since an increasing number of customers have moved purchasing online over the past few years a lot of these retailers have responded with moving the savings and promos here as well.  Just another example of technology driving trends...

Outsourcing's External Factors - The Vendor's Perspective

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_46/b4203016835355.htm

This article focuses on the external factors hitting outsourcing companies located in India.  With the US as their biggest market, and Obama working to keep jobs from being outsourced, this represents a serious threat to Indian companies.  They have had to react to this factor that is external to the company in 2 majorly different ways.  First, they've tried to diversify, mostly into China.  Second, they've made acquisitions in the U.S. and tried to move more of their work into the US so there would be more of a sense of near-shoring instead of offshoring.  This makes many US companies more comfortable with the prospect of outsourcing these huge IT contracts.  Nonetheless, it just goes to show how external factors to your company can change the way you approach business overnight.

Managing Software Vendor Relationships

I found this article on Moodle as it relates to several companies managing software vendor relationships:

http://www.cio.com/article/627382/Users_List_What_s_Wrong_with_Software_Vendors?source=rss_news


Many large companies outsource their software needs because it doesn't make sense to spend that money on what is not their core competency.  What arises however are problems related to updates, costs, lack of transparency, and lack of speed on updates to stay current with laws and regulations, perhaps mostly because these software companies don't operate in the same industry as most of their clients.  The CIO's in this article have a hard time managing this relationship and are coming together to propose a set of standards to be followed by software vendors, which could help reduce inefficiencies and enhance productivity for these managers worldwide. 

This brings attention to the always challenging question....do we outsource or not?  And if we do, we better make sure that we are prepared to manage that relationship so we can keep our company as productive as possible while mitigating the risk.  We want to achieve cost-efficiency but not in terms of losing the effectiveness that outsourcing is set to produce in the first place.

Knowledge Sharing in Corporate America

I'd like to talk about some of the issues Dr. Schwarz raised about knowledge sharing.  Is it inherently flawed? How do firms encourage it? And are there models to knowledge sharing that can work better than current models? 

Personally, I believe knowledge sharing as a concept has great uses, but ultimately its effectiveness depends on the culture of the firm.  What better ways to learn about dealing with difficult situations than through the eyes of experience.  Even before technology was advanced as it is today, many firms had mentorship programs in place, some formal and many informal.  New employees in a firm were encouraged to find mentors, people who were successful and had career paths that they wished to follow and learn from.  This is knowledge sharing in its most basic form.  If the two employees had compatible personalities, knowledge was effectively shared.  Young employees received 'free' training and coaching as far as the company is concerned and more knowledgeable/highly skilled employees create more value for the firm. 

I believe the skeptics view of knowledge sharing has some validity to it.  Of course a person who shares their knowledge has the potential to lose some leverage in 'what it is' that the person knows.  However, no one knows everything.  If a firm creates their culture around sharing the knowledge, sharing insights, and encouraging employees to learn from each other, the firm stands to benefit, and the employee stands to benefit as well when he/she opens up the opportunity to learn from others.  Most employees who keep to themselves and refuse to share, lose the opportunity to learn as much from other co-workers, and in this way a culture can provide the incentives for these types of employees to open up. 

To combine this into the types of things going on today.  I believe if firm applied the 'facebook' type of platform at work to encourage the mentor/mentee relationships with colleagues, it can increase the ability for employees to share knowledge when spread across large geographic regions.  Technology can be leveraged to amplify what's going on in this area, but it is up to executives at the top to set the culture and tone to encourage these types of realtionships to develop.

Incentives for Physicians to use IT

I found this article that related to the class discussion:

http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/financial-incentives-drive-physicians-adopt-technology

I think no matter what the industry is, people continue to have the same issues when it comes to IT.  A major issue in this article and in the CareGroup case we're about to discuss in class is the possibility of workflow disruption.  IT can be used to radically re-engineer business processes, the learning curve on technology does disrupt human nature's love of a routine.  You're forced to change the way things have always been done, which are now the most comfortable and the 'easiest'.  Until people are caught up to speed in the more efficient use of technology it can slow them down temporarily. 

Technology also has a significant upfront cost.  Physicians in this article were reimbursed for investment in electronic health record technology and penalized if they didn't.  Most of the physicians surveyed were motivated to adopt because of these rewards and penalties. 

While all people are naturally reluctant to change, if they are educated on how technology can improve their lives, productivity, and efficiency, then motivated and held accountable, resistance to change can be reduced.  The positive impact technology can have on lives will only be realized if people are influenced to accept it.

Business use of Social Media

I believe social media will eventually be the primary way that businesses connect with their customers.  I don't know the last time I watched a commercial the whole way through when it wasn't the Super Bowl.  Social Media is the most effective way the small business can grow.  Where print media (newspapers, magazines, etc.) are on their biggest declines and also very expensive for a small business, social media's free for businesses to connect with their customers and are very effective.  From being able to search who is talking about your company and what people are saying, it's also an effective way to gauge how your product is selling compared to the competition.  I believe it will only be a matter of time before large corporations really harness the power of what's available for them to leverage their brands online and really develop social media as the top advertising vehicle for business.

Technology is definitely changing everything...

Companies are forced to use technology and the internet everyday because what's worked in the past, works no longer.  Compared with 10 years ago, think of how much more time you spend on the internet and how much less time you spend watching TV.  Social Networking sites have become a new way of driving business that are different from the TV machine of the past.  Companies are constantly looking for new ways to send business to their locations and social networking sites seem to be part of the answer where TV and magazine ads have failed.

In addition, I can't remember the last time I had a cashier check me out at the grocery store.  Or spoke to someone behind the counter at the airport.  I'm using a self check-out and a self check-in while I had more time to update my facebook status in an effort not to speak to anyone in real life.  Am I upset that it's becoming less human?  Not really, these little interactions were never anything I looked forward too anyway.

On a side note, I'd say that google talk definitely has a chance to compete with Skype.  I'm not sure how many users are on Skype at the moment, but 1,000,000 calls in the first day of operation is no joke for a company that just started out with a technology.  I know I'm signing up for it and have never used Skype in the past.