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BM/APR 2009/MGT300

UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MARA

FINAL EXAMINATION

COURSE

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN BUSINESS

COURSE CODE

MGT300

EXAMINATION

APRIL 2009

TIME

3 HOURS

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES
1.

This question paper consists of four (4) parts :

2.

Answer ALL questions from PART A and PART B. Answer any two (2) questions from
PART C and ALL questions from PART D.
i)
ii)
iii)

PART A (20 Questions)

PART B (20 Questions)
PART C (4 Questions)
PART D (1 Question)

Answer PART A in the True/False Answer Sheet

Answer PART B in the Objective Answer Sheet.
Answer PART C and D in the Answer Booklet. Start each answer on a new page.

3.

Do not bring any material into the examination room unless permission is given by the
invigilator.

4.

Please check to make sure that this examination pack consists of:
i)
ii)
iii)
iv)

the Question Paper

an Answer Booklet - provided by the Faculty
a True/False Answer Sheet - provided by the Faculty
an Objective Answer Sheet - provided by the Faculty

DO NOT TURN THIS PAGE UNTIL YOU ARE TOLD TO DO SO

This examination paper consists of 10 printed pages
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BM/APR 2009/MGT300

PART A

1.

Almost all organizations today have an internal IT department, often called

Information Systems (IS), or Management Information Systems (MIS).

2.

Information is raw facts that describe the characteristics of an event.

3.

A competitive advantage is typically temporary, unless it is a first-mover advantage.

4.

An entry barrier is typically used to influence the rivalry among existing competitors.

5.

ERP allows employees to make decisions by viewing enterprise wide information on

all business operations.

6.

A business process is the analysis and redesign of workflow within and between
enterprises.

7.

Efficiency and effectiveness metrics are two primary types of IT metrics.

8.

Measuring the amount of Web site traffic is the best way to determine a Web sites
success.

9.

It is the responsibility of the CIO to ensure effective communications between

business and IT personnel.

10.

Ethics are the laws that guide our behavior toward other people.

11.

Reports for each sales person, product, and part are examples of detail or fine
information granularities.

12.

Product Statistics is an example of analytical information.

13.

One of the advantages found in a relational database is increased information

redundancy.

14.

Data-driven business intelligence occurs when users run queries or use analytical
tools, such as a Pivot Table, on a database that is attached to a Web site.

15.

The primary purpose of a data warehouse is to perform transactional processes.

16.

Data mining tools are used to find patterns and relationship in large volumes of
information.

17.

The ultimate goal of Al is the ability to build a system that can mimic human
intelligence.

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BM/APR 2009/MGT300

18.

Information technology, consumer behavior, visibility, and speed are the four
changes resulting from advances in technology that are driving supply chains.

19.

RFM stands for Regency, Frequency, and Monetary.

20.

One of the primary reasons for ERPs explosive growth is that an ERP system is a
logical solution to the many incompatible applications found in business today.

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BM/APR 2009/MGT300

PARTB

1.

What is a general name for the business function and academic discipline covering
the application of people, technologies, and procedures to solve business problems?
A.
B.
C.
D.

2.

What can IT enable an organization to accomplish?

A.
B.
C.
D.

3.

B.
C.
D.

A product that an organization's customers place a lesser value on than

similar offerings from a competitor.
A product or service that an organization's customers value more highly than
similar offerings from a supplier.
A service that an organization's customers place a lesser value on than
similar offerings from a supplier.
A product or service that an organization's customers place a greater value
on than similar offerings from a competitor.

All of the following are common tools used in industry to analyze and develop
competitive advantages, except:
A.
B.
C.
D.

5.

Reduce costs.
Improve productivity.
Generate growth.
All of the above.

What is competitive advantage?

A.

4.

Information technology.
Management information systems.
Technology's role in business.
Technology's impact on business.

Five Forces Model.

Three Generic Strategies.
Competitive analysis model.
Value chain analysis.

What does supply chain management involve?

A.
B.
C.
D.

The management of production material flows between and among stages in

a supply chain to maximize total supply chain efficiency.
The management of information flows between and among stages in a supply
chain to maximize total supply chain costs.
The management of information flows between and among stages in a supply
chain to maximize total supply chain effectiveness and profitability.
None of the above.

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6.

B.
C.
D.

C.
D.

ensuring the delivery of all IT projects, on time and within budget.

ensuring that the strategic vision of IT is in line with the strategic vision of the
organization.
building and maintaining strong executive relationships.
building and maintaining strong customer processes.

What is intangible creative work that is embodied in physical form?

A.
B.
C.
D.

11.

Baseline metrics.
Business Process Reengineering (BPR) metrics.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) metrics.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) metrics.

Broad functions of a CIO include all of the following, except:

A.
B.

10.

Efficiency IT metrics.
Effectiveness IT metrics.
All of the above.
None of the above.

Which of the following is not an example of information system metrics?

A.
B.
C.
D.

9.

The schedule for production activities including testing, packaging, and

preparation for delivery.
The product delivery processes and elements including orders, warehouses,
carriers, defective product returns, and invoicing.
The strategy for managing all the resources required to meet customer
demand for all products and services.
The partners chosen to deliver finished products, raw materials, and services
including pricing, delivery, and payment processes along with partner
relationship monitoring metrics.

What type of metrics measure throughput, speed, and availability?

A.
B.
C.
D.

8.

BM/APR 2009/MGT300

Which of the following defines supply chain strategy?

A.

7.

Intellectual property.
Copyright.
Pirated software.
Fair use doctrine.

Characteristics of high quality information include all of the following except:

A.
B.
C.
D.

accuracy
timeliness
redundancy
completeness

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12.

physical, transactional
physical, operational
logical, transactional
logical, operational

What is data mining?

A.
B.
C.

D.

17.

Increased flexibility.
Increased performance.
Increased information redundancy.
Increased information integrity.

A data warehouse is a
collection of information-gathered from many
different
databases-that supports business analysis activities and
decision-making tasks.
A.
B.
C.
D.

16.

Inventory.
Transactions.
Employees.
All of the above.

Which of the following is not an advantage of database-stored information?

A.
B.
C.
D.

15.

Database management system.

Real-time system.
Expert system.
Multi-Agent system.

Which of the following information can be maintained on a database?

A.
B.
C.
D.

14.

BM/APR 2009/MGT300

Which system provides immediate, up-to-date information in response to query

requests?
A.
B.
C.
D.

13.

A common term for the representation of multidimensional information.

A particular attribute of information.
A techniques to find patterns and relationships in large volumes of
information and infer rules from them that predict future behavior and guide
decision making.
A process of analyzing data to extract information not offered by the raw data
alone.

What is drill-down capability?

A.
B.
C.
D.

Involves the aggregation of information and features simple roll-ups to

complex groupings of interrelated information.
The ability to look at information from different perspectives.
Enables users to get details, and details of details, of information.
Finds the inputs necessary to achieve a goal such as a desired level of
output.

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18.

Plan
Source
Cost
Deliver

CRM allows an organization to accomplish all of the following, except:

A.
B.
C.
D.

20.

BM/APR 2009/MGT300

Which of the following is not one of the five basic components of supply chain
management?
A.
B.
C.
D.

19.

Provide better customer service.

Make call centers more efficient.
Complicate marketing and sales processes.
Help sales staff close deals faster.

What is at the heart of any ERP system?

A.
B.
C.
D.

Information.
Employees.
Customers.
Database.

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BM/APR 2009/MGT300

PARTC

QUESTION 1
a)

Organizations frequently face a decision as to whether to enter a new industry or

industry segment. Michael Porter's Five Forces Model is a useful tool to aid in this
challenging decision. List and describe each of the five (5) forces in Porter's Five
Forces Model.
(20 marks)

QUESTION 2
a)

Describe and provide an example of each of the five (5) characteristics of high
quality information.
(15 marks)

b)

State five (5) potential business effects resulting from using low quality information in
making decisions.
(5 marks)

QUESTION 3
a)

Define Decision Support System (DSS).

(2 marks)

b)

Describe three (3) quantitative models typically used by DSS.

(9 marks)

c)

List and describe four (4) categories of Al systems.

(9 marks)

QUESTION 4
a)

What is collaboration system?

(1 mark)

b)

Describe two (2) categories of collaboration.

(4 marks)

c)

Define knowledge management (KM). Differentiate between explicit knowledge and

tacit knowledge.
(6 marks)

d)

Briefly explain three (3) primary types of content management systems.

(9 marks)

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BM/APR 2009/MGT300

PARTD

CASE STUDY: How Expedia Is Using Web Services to Provide Customer Service
Expedia.com is a leading online travel service in the United States, with localized versions in
the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany. Expedia operates in a very competitive
marketplace with competition from similar services such as Travelocity and Orbitz, ticket
discounters such as Priceline and Lastminute.com, traditional travel agencies such as
Rosenbluth, and, increasingly, the airlines and hotels themselves. Expedia harnesses the
power of Web Services to distinguish itself in this market.
Expedia's competitive strategy is driven by nearly every traveler's need to receive up-to-thesecond, diverse information at any time and any place. Expedia actively supplies travelers
with dynamic and real-time personalized information, such as flight status. This information
is pushed to travelers (sent to them from Expedia) as well as pulled from the company's
portal (accessed by the travelers through specific inquiries). Travelers use desktop
computers, cell phones and other Web-enabled devices to receive or access this
information. This multichannel provision of timely travel information is the key for attracting
new customers and for keeping existing customers.
To make this happen, Expedia needs to connect to many service providers (airlines, hotels,
car renting companies,) as well as airports, news services, map services and more. By using
Web Services the company solves the integration problem as well as creates deviceindependent information delivery. This way Expedia can write information only once and
then deliver it via whichever method the customer wantseliminating the need to rewrite the
information for each delivery method. Expedia can also tie information into the users'
existing "buddy lists" and calendars.
The architecture of the system is flexible enough to work with non-Internet devices. For
example, many people with PDAs do not have wireless capabilities. So they can receive
information from Expedia by synchronizing the information from a PC to their PDAs and vice
versa. By using a system development vendor (Microsoft), Expedia did not have to build
services such as authentication, message notification and calendaring. This enabled the
company to be a first-mover in getting these services to market. Using XML-based service,
Expedia adds value to their customers, which provides Expedia with a competitive edge in
the travel market.
Sources: Compiled from expedia.com and from Microsoft's publicity brochure (2001).

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10

BM/APR 2009/MGT300

QUESTION 1
a)

Identify three (3) of the online customer services mentioned in the case study.
(6 marks)

b)

Briefly explain four (4) examples of company benefits in providing online customer
services?
(12 marks)

c)

Identify a non-Internet mobile computing that can be used by Expedia.

(2 marks)

END OF QUESTION PAPER

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