Week 1: Business computing and the digital economy

Defining elements of information systems:

 They are a set of interrelated components (hardware, software)
 They collect, process, store, and distribute information
 They support decision making, coordination, and control
 They transform streams of raw facts (data) to meaningful form (information)
 An information system can be defined technically as a set of interrelated components that collect (or retrieve),
process, store, and distribute information to support decision making and control in an organization.
Information systems may also help managers and workers analyse problems, visualize complex subjects, and
create new products.
 Information systems contain information about significant people, places, and things within the organization or
in the environment surrounding it.
o By information we mean data that have been shaped into a form that is meaningful and useful to human
beings.
o Data, in contrast, are streams of raw facts representing events occurring in organizations or the physical
environment before they have been organized and arranged into a form that people can understand and
use.
 Three activities in an information system produce the information that organizations need to make decisions,
control operations, analyse problems, and create new products or services.
 These activities are input, processing, and output. Input captures or collects raw data from within the
organization or from its external environment.
 Processing converts this raw input into a meaningful form.
 Output transfers the processed information to the people who will use it or to the activities for which it will be
used.
 Information systems also require feedback, which is output that is returned to appropriate members of the
organization to help them evaluate or correct the input stage.
 Management information systems (MIS) tries to achieve broader information systems literacy. MIS deals with
behavioural issues as well as technical issues surrounding the development, use, and impact of information
systems used by managers and employees in the firm.

Week 2: eBusiness and eCommerce

E-commerce
 E-Business: use of digital technology and Internet to drive major business processes
 E-Commerce (sub-concept of e-business): buying and selling goods and services through Internet.
 E-Government: using IT to deliver information and services to citizens, employees, and businesses
 E-commerce: began in 1995, it refers to the use of the Internet and the Web to transact business. E-commerce is
about digitally enabled commercial transactions between and among organizations and individuals; transactions
that occur over the Internet and the Web. Commercial transactions involve the exchange of value (e.g., money)
across organizational or individual boundaries in return for products and services.

Global and digital marketplaces

 Dramatic reduction of cost, radical transparency of information, highly volatile pricing,
 Reduce information asymmetry (everyone knows everything)
 Greater flexibility and efficiency due to:
o reduced search costs and transaction costs
o lower menu costs (merchants’ costs of changing prices)
o greater price discrimination,
o dynamic pricing (the price of a product varies depending on the demand characteristics of the customer or
the supply situation of the seller)
o market segmentation easier to achieve than in traditional markets
o stronger network effects
 New digital markets may either reduce or increase switching costs, depending on the nature of the product or
service being sold, and they may cause some extra delay in gratification (opózniona koszulka)
 Digital markets provide many opportunities to sell directly to the consumer, bypassing intermediaries, such as
distributors or retail outlets. Eliminating intermediaries in the distribution channel can significantly lower
purchase transaction costs.
 To pay for all the steps in a traditional distribution channel, a product may have to be priced as high as 135% of
its original cost to manufacture.
 By selling directly to consumers or reducing the number of intermediaries, companies are able to raise profits
while charging lower prices. The removal of organizations or business process layers responsible for
intermediary steps in a value chain is called disintermediation.
 Disintermediation is affecting the market for services. Airlines and hotels operating their own reservation sites
online earn more per ticket because they have eliminated travel agents as intermediaries.

Types of e-commerce
Three major types by demand and supply:
 Business-to-consumer (B2C) - Example: Amazon, Argos, Tesco, Asos, Aom.com many many more!
 Business-to-business (B2B) - Example: ChemConnect (not any more), TradeKey, Amazon Business
 Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) - Examples: Craiglist, eBay, Gumtree, other online auction sites

E-Commerce business models

1. Portal: content aggregator, first point of entry; home page (Google, Yahoo)
2. E-tailer: sells physical products directly, online retail stores (B2B and B2C examples, Amazon); will generate
$24 billion in 2017, growing at an estimate of 18% per year.
3. Content provider: provides own digital content (iTunes, Netflix)
4. Transaction broker: facilitates transactions on a fee basis; usually travel services (Expedia)
5. Market creator: provides a
digital marketplace (C2C and
B2B examples, eBay)
6. Service provider: online services,
photo and video sharing, cloud
storage, software download
(Dropbox, YouTube)
7. Community provider: digital
networking and information
sharing (most social media
applications, Facebook)

E-Commerce revenue models

1. Sales revenue model: selling
products or services directly to
consumers or businesses
(Amazon)
2. Advertising: exposing a large
audience to advertisements;
content on the web is free for
visitors because advertisers pay;
companies will pay around $77
billion for online advertising in
2017
3. Subscription: subscriptions to
services (Netflix 75 million
customers in 2016)
4. Freemium/Preemium: basic
services fee, subscribe for the
rest (Spotify, Grammarly)
5. Transaction fee: fee for
executing or enabling
transaction
 6. Affiliate: referral fees, send visitors to other websites in return for fee (personal blogs often contain links to
affiliate products).

E-commerce and marketing transformation

New ways to identify and communicate with customers:
 Long tail marketing:
o Ability to reach a large audience inexpensively
o Internet advertising formats
o Website personalisation
 Behavioural targeting:
o Tracking online behaviour on websites and within apps
o Third –party cookies the major privacy concern
o EU cookie law in effect since 2012

M-commerce (mobile commerce)

 Main areas of growth (exclusive of location-based services):
o Retail sales (Amazon, eBay, etc.)
o Sales of digital content (music, movies, series etc.)
o Banking, finance and account management apps
o Mobile display advertising (e.g. ads embedded in games, videos and social networks)
 Location-based services used by most smartphone owners (74%):
o Geosocial services (findings friends)
o Geoadvertising (finding places)
o Geoinformation (finding information, e.g. price of a house)
 The fastest growing location-based services are on-demand economy firms such as UBER, Airbnb.
 Other m-commerce services: apple pay, mobile banking.

Week 3: Digital collaborations

Collaboration and the social business
 Collaboration can be formal or informal with important IT implications
 Growing importance of collaboration:
o Changing nature of work
o Growth of professional work “interaction jobs”
o Changing organization and scope of the firm
o Emphasis on innovation and managerial flexibility
 Social business
o Many firms today enhance collaboration by embracing social business—the use of social networking
platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and internal corporate social tools—to engage their employees,
customers, and suppliers.
o Use of social networking platforms to deepen interactions and facilitate information sharing a working
norm in most professions
o Engage with a range of stakeholders like employees, customers, and suppliers; if firms could tune into
these conversations, they would strengthen their bonds with consumers, suppliers, and employees,
increasing their emotional involvement in the firm.
o Create “conversations” that require new levels of information transparency

Business benefits of collaboration and social business:

1. Productivity: people interacting and working together can capture expert knowledge and solve problems
more rapidly than the same number of people working in isolation from one another. There will be fewer
errors.
2. Quality: People working collaboratively can communicate errors, and corrective actions faster than if they
work in isolation. Social technologies help reduce time delays in design and production.
3. Innovation: People working collaboratively can come up with more innovative ideas for products, services,
and administration than the same number working in isolation from one another. Advantages to diversity
and the “wisdom of crowds.”
 4. Customer service: People working together using collaboration and social tools can solve customer
complaints and issues faster and more effectively than if they were working in isolation from one another.
5. Financial performance (profitability, sales, and sales growth): collaborative firms have superior sales, sales
growth, and financial performance.
Tools for collaboration and teamwork:
 E-mail and instant messaging
 Knowledge management platforms
 Intranets and extranets
 Wikis: Wikis are a type of Web site that makes it easy for users to contribute and edit text content and graphics
without any knowledge of Web page development or programming techniques
 Virtual worlds and virtual reality tools: to reduce travel expenses
 Collaboration and social business platforms
o Virtual meeting systems (telepresence)
o Cloud collaboration services (e.g. Google Drive) Google Drive is an example of a cloud-based cyberlocker
(online file-sharing services that allow users to upload files to secure online storage sites from which the
files can be shared with others). Other cyberlocker services: Dropbox and Microsoft SkyDrive.
o Enterprise social networking tools (e.g. Yammer)
o Intranets with social networking features (e.g. MS SharePoint, IBM Notes)
 Microsoft SharePoint is a browser-based collaboration and document management platform,
combined with a powerful search engine that is installed on corporate servers. SharePoint has a
Web-based interface and close integration with everyday tools such as Microsoft Office desktop
software products. SharePoint software makes it possible for employees to share their documents
and collaborate on projects using Office documents as the foundation. SharePoint stores and
organizes information in one place, users can find relevant information quickly and efficiently while
working together closely on tasks, projects, and documents.
 Intranets:
o Internal company Web sites accessible only by employees
o Also used to increase integration and
expedite the flow of information
 Extranets:
o Company Web sites accessible externally
only to some stakeholders (usually vendors
and suppliers)
o Often used to coordinate supply chain
activities

The time/space collaboration and social tool matrix

The collaboration and social technologies are ways of
overcoming the limitations of time and space. Using this
time/space framework will help you to choose the most
appropriate collaboration and teamwork tools for your
firm.

Enterprise social networking is an organization's use of social media, internally and externally, to connect
individuals who share similar business interests or activities. Important implications of enterprise social networking
for:
 Access to and organisation of internal knowledge
 Internal systems of connectivity and control
 Professional profiling and relationships especially within large organisation

Capabilities of enterprise social networking (or social media)

 Profiles: internal networking in large organisations to help find work-related associations and expertise (e.g.
skills, projects, teams)
 Content sharing: share, store and manage content in many different forms (e.g. documents, presentations,
videos, emails, external content)
 Feeds and notifications: real-time information streams about status updates, announcements, new interactions
 Groups and team workspaces: establish groups to share information, collaborate on content and set up private
or public groups
 Tagging and social bookmarking: “linking”, sharing and classifying information
 Permissions and privacy: make sure information flows and nature of business relationships are maintained
according to company standards
Week 4: Business systems and Enterprise Resource Planning
Transaction processing systems (TPS)
 Computerized system that performs and records the daily routine transactions necessary to conduct business,
such as sales order entry, hotel reservations, payroll, employee record keeping, and shipping.
 Systems that serve operational managers and staff
 Perform and record daily routine transactions necessary to conduct business like sales order entry, payroll,
shipping, credit decisions
 Allow managers to monitor status of operations and relations with external environment
 Serve predefined, structured goals and decision making
 Short term decision making horizon

Business intelligence is a contemporary term for data and software tools for organizing, analysing, and providing
access to data to help managers and other enterprise users make more informed decisions. Business intelligence
systems for middle management help with monitoring, controlling, decision-making, and administrative activities.

Management information systems (MIS) provide middle managers with reports on the organisation’s current
performance. This information is used to monitor and control the business and predict future performance.

Decision-support systems (DSS) focus on problems that are unique and rapidly changing, for which the procedure
for arriving at a solution may not be fully predefined in advance. DSS use internal information from TPS and MIS,
they often bring in information from external sources, such as current stock prices or product prices of competitors.

Executive support systems (ESS)

 Support senior management and non-routine decisions usually in long term horizon
 Requiring judgment, evaluation, and insight
 Incorporate data about ext. events (new tax laws or competitors) and summary information from MIS and DSS
 Example: digital dashboard with real-time view of firm’s financial performance: working capital, accounts
receivable, accounts payable, cash flow, and inventory

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, to integrate business processes in manufacturing and production,
finance and accounting, sales and marketing, and human resources into a single software system. Information that
was previously fragmented in many different systems is stored in a single comprehensive data repository where it
can be used by many different parts of the business.

Three main features of ERPs:

1. Suite of integrated software modules and a common central database
2. Collects data from many divisions of firm for use in nearly all of firm’s internal business activities
3. Information entered in one process is immediately available for other processes

Business value of ERP:

 Increase operational efficiency
 Integration with legacy applications
 Provide firm-wide information to support decision making
 Rapid responses to customer requests for information or products
 Include analytical tools to evaluate performance

Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRM)

 Capture and integrate customer data from all over the organisation
 Consolidate and analyse customer data
 Distribute customer information to various systems and customer touch points across enterprise
 Provide single enterprise view of customers
 Help manage relationships with customers
 Provide information to coordinate all of the business processes that deal with customers in sales, marketing, and
service to optimize revenue, customer satisfaction, and customer retention.
 This information helps firms identify, attract, and retain the most profitable customers; provide better service to
existing customers; and increase sales.
Typical CRM functions:
 Partner relationship management (PRM)
o PRM uses many of the same data, tools, and systems as customer relation- ship management to enhance
collaboration between a company and its selling partners.
o If a company does not sell directly to customers but rather works through distributors or retailers, PRM
helps these channels sell to customers directly
o Integrating lead generation, pricing, promotions, order configurations, and availability
o Tools to assess partners’ performances
 Employee relationship management (ERM)
o Setting objectives, employee performance management, performance-based compensation, employee
training
o ERM software deals with employee issues that are closely related to CRM, such as setting objectives,
employee performance management, performance-based compensation, and employee training.
 Sales force automation (SFA)
o Sales prospect and contact information, sales quote generation capabilities
o systems help sales staff increase their productivity by focusing sales efforts on the most profitable
customers, those who are good candidates for sales and services.
 Customer service
o Assigning and managing customer service requests, Web-based self-service capabilities
o tools to increase the efficiency of call centres, help desks, and customer support staff.
 Marketing
o Capturing prospect and customer data, scheduling and tracking direct marketing mailings or email,
o cross-selling: is the marketing of complementary products to customers.

Business value of CRM software:

 Increased customer satisfaction and sales revenue
 Reduced direct marketing costs
 More effective marketing
 Lower costs for customer acquisition/retention
 Indicator of growth or decline of firm’s customer base
 Managing complicating social conversations or interactions happening in multiple spaces
 Information from CRM systems increases sales revenue by identifying the most profitable customers and
segments for focused marketing and cross-selling.
 Customer churn is reduced as sales, service, and marketing better respond to customer needs. The churn
rate measures the number of customers who stop using or purchasing products or services from a company.
It is an important indicator of the growth or decline of a firm’s customer base.

Week 5: IT strategy and competitive advantage

Should business strategy drive IT strategy?
Aligning IT with business objectives is a difficult process involving careful decisions and big investments
Business system integration  usually involving substantial changes in business processes, especially when it comes
to ERP systems

PORTER’S COMPETITIVE FORCES MODEL  industry level analysis

 Competitive rivalry (competitor balance, barriers, differentiation, growth rate, fixed costs)
 The threat of entry (scale & experience, differentiation, expected retaliation, supply/distribution channels)
 The threat of substitutes (price/performance ratio, extra-industry effects)
 The power of buyers (concentration, switching costs, competition)
 The power of suppliers (concentration, switching costs, competition)
Existence of sixth force implies that companies are complementators rather than competitors, what means that they
can help each other by making their products more attractive to customers; e.g. McAfee security makes Microsoft
more appealing to customers, as they know that their computer will be protected; so if both companies inform each
other about updates etc. they both can benefit from it.

Information system strategies use for Generic strategies:

 Cost leadership – becoming lowest-cost organization in a domain of activity Primark; Lidl
o Walmart’s inventory replenishment system
o Efficient customer response system (Walmart as well)
 Differentiation – involves uniqueness along some dimension that is sufficiently valued by customers to allow
a price premium BMW; Mercedes-Benz
o Use of information systems to enable new products and services– Google (introducing new systems
and search engines as google maps); Ebay bought PayPal; Apple introduced iPod and iTunes music
o Mass customization – creating personalized products – NIKEiD customized shoes
 Focus strategies – targets a narrow segment or domain of activity and tailors its products or services to the
needs of that specific segment to the exclusion of others
o Cost focus – identify areas where broader cost-based strategies fail because of the added costs of
trying to satisfy a wide range of needs Iceland foods; Ryanair
o Differentiation focus – look for specific needs that broader differentiators do not serve so well focus
on one particular need helps to build specialist knowledge and technology, increases commitment to
service and can improve brand recognition and customer loyalty Fairphone; ARM
o Information systems enable companies to analyse multiple factors – Hilton Hotels, determining
guests’ preferences
 Customer and supplier intimacy – increasing switching costs (Netflix offer you recommendations, so when
you switch all recommendations will be gone) – all loyalty programmes etc.

In many industries, digital solutions have become a matter of survival rather than competitive advantage, so
sustaining competitive advantage becomes even more difficult than before. For this reason aligning IT with business
objectives and managing strategic transition is crucial

Network-based strategy:
 Network economics – sth as economies of scale but building a network – adding more subscribers doesn’t
rise the cost but increase the gain
 Virtual company
 Business ecosystem
o Value co-creation is very common in digital services  multiple industries work together to deliver
value to the customer
o Industry sets of firms providing related services and products (e.g. software developers)
o Keystone firms: dominate ecosystems by creating platforms used by other firms (e.g. operating
systems like Windows or OSX)
o Niche firms: rely on platform developed by keystone firm
 o Individual firms can consider how IT will help them become profitable niche players in larger
ecosystems
o IT plays an important role in enabling a dense network of interactions among the participating firms

Business Model (HBR article)

 The way of doing business but not only in terms generating profit or revenue structures
 Business mode links strategy with operations by describing how the business creates value  not the same
as operational model
 Describes the structure of product, service and information flows and the roles of the participating parties
 Once established are often taken for granted. Models can become institutionalised and form a ‘recipe’ for
the industry
 Even if competitors share a business model their strategies may still differ. e.g. Airbnb have differentiation
advantages based on their size and network effects even though others use the same model
 Can help us understand why and how strategies succeed or not in practice
 Useful to capitalise on a new technology by wrapping it a new business model around it
 Help link business strategy with operations
 Business model example: Primark
o Value proposition: to provide a wide range of clothing options at the cheapest possible price in the
B2C markets, ‘fast fashion’ added values. The target costumers are both locals and visitors in every
market.
o Profit formula: low margin per item aiming at bulk purchases, e.g. selling density twice as much
H&M. Clear implementation of cost leadership strategies based on economies of scale.
o Key resources: store size and organisation, massive speedy production in vast numbers while serving
the whole range of the market, minimum labour skills
o Key processes: a range of processes to maximise clothes sold per square foot, ruthless cost
cutting/control to improve efficiency in retail operations, e.g. no complication from customer
services, low implementation of e-commerce options to avoid complicated supply chains.

Week 6: Business intelligence

Business intelligence
 “Business intelligence (BI)” is a term used by hardware and software vendors and information technology
consultants to describe the infrastructure for warehousing, integrating, reporting, and analysing data that comes
from the business environment, including big data. The foundation infrastructure collects, stores, cleans, and
makes relevant information available to managers.
 Includes databases, data warehouses, data marts and delivery platforms so that they right users can see the right
data
 Shortly: infrastructure for collecting, storing, analysing data produced by business

BI features capabilities and tools to manage and analyse large quantities of data produced by the business:
 includes different types of data from multiple sources
 easy-to-use query and reporting tools for casual business users
 more sophisticated analytical toolsets for power users (analytics)
 BI is essentially a gradual progress of database capabilities within organisations pushed by new tools that allow
data integration with less effort

Business analytics
 Analytics is the discovery of meaningful patterns in data.
 Business analytics are tools and techniques for analysing data:
 Online analytical processing (OLAP) supports viewing data using multiple dimensions
o Each aspect of information (product, pricing, cost, region, time period) is different dimension
o Quick answers to ad hoc queries, e.g. how many bikes we sold in Bristol last December compared with
London?
 Data mining are techniques of finding hidden patterns, relationships in datasets and predicting behaviours (e.g.
product associations)
 Text mining extracts key elements from large unstructured data sets
 Location analytics and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
 Business analytics are heavily based on traditional statistics
 Big data: phenomenon associated with the large growth of volume, velocity and variety of data-intensive
applications
 Business intelligence and analytics are about integrating all the information streams produced by a firm into a
single, coherent enterprise-wide set of data;
 and then, using modelling, statistical analysis tools (like normal distributions, correlation and regression analysis,
Chi square analysis, forecasting, and cluster analysis), and data mining tools (pattern discovery and machine
learning), to make sense out of all these data so managers can make better decisions and better plans, or at least
know quickly when their firms are failing to meet planned targets.

Main functionalities of BI systems:

1. Delivering accurate real-time information to decision makers when they need it and in forms that are usable
2. Predefined production reports based on industry specific requirements
3. Parameterised reports for ad hoc analysis, Users enter several parameters as in a pivot tableto filter data
and isolate impacts of parameters.
4. Dashboards/scorecards visual tools for visualising data
5. Ad hoc query/search/report creation: allow users to create their own reports based on queries/searches
6. Drill down ability to move from higher level summary to more detailed views
7. Forecasts, scenarios, models: the ability to perform linear forecasting, what-if scenario analysis, and analyse
data using standard statistical tools.

Six elements in this business intelligence environment:

1. Data from the business environment: Businesses must deal with both structured and unstructured data from
many different sources, including big data. The data need to be integrated and organized so that they can be
analysed and used by human decision makers.
2. Business intelligence infrastructure: The underlying foundation of business intelligence is a powerful database
system that captures all the relevant data to operate the business. The data may be stored in transactional
databases or combined and integrated into an enterprise-data warehouse or series of interrelated data marts.
3. Business analytics toolset: A set of software tools are used to analyse data and produce reports, respond to
questions posed by managers, and track the progress of the business using key indicators of performance.
4. Managerial users and methods: BI hardware and software are only as intelligent as the human beings who use
them. Managers impose order on the analysis of data using a variety of managerial methods that define strategic
business goals and specify how progress will be measured. These include business performance management
and balanced scorecard approaches focusing on key performance indicators and industry strategic analyses
focusing on changes in the general business environment, with special attention to competitors. Without strong
senior management oversight, business analytics can produce a great deal of information, reports, and online
screens that focus on the wrong matters and divert attention from the real issues.
5. Delivery platform—MIS, DSS, ESS: The results from business intelligence and analytics are delivered to
managers and employees in a variety of ways, depending on what they need to know to perform their jobs. MIS,
DSS, and ESS deliver information and knowledge to different people and levels in the firm—operational
employees, middle managers, and senior executives. In the past, these systems could not share data and
operated as independent systems. Today, one suite of hardware and software tools in the form of a business
intelligence and analytics package is able to integrate all this information and bring it to managers’ desktop or
mobile platforms.
6. User interface: Business analytics software suites emphasize visual techniques such as dashboards and
scorecards. They also are able to deliver reports on BlackBerrys, iPhones, and other mobile handhelds as well as
on the firm’s Web portal. BA software is adding capabilities to post information on Twitter, Facebook, or internal
social media to support decision making in an online group setting rather than in a face-to-face meeting.

Who Uses Business Intelligence and Business Analytics?

 Over 80% of the audience for BI consists of casual users who rely largely on production reports.
 Senior executives tend to use BI to monitor firm activities using visual interfaces like dashboards and scorecards.
 Middle managers and analysts are much more likely to be immersed in the data and software, entering queries
and slicing and dicing the data along different dimensions.
 Operational employees will, along with customers and suppliers, be looking mostly at pre-packaged reports.

Production Reports: the most widely used output of a BI suite of tools are pre-packaged production reports. (Sales:
Forecast sales; Service/Call Centre: Customer satisfaction; Marketing: Campaign effectiveness; Financials: General
ledger, cash flow, profitability; Human Resources: Employee productivity; compensation; workforce demographics)
Week 8: (Big) data analytics
The 3Vs of Big Data:
1. Volume
a. More data cross the internet every second than were stored in the entire internet just 20 years ago.
b. Datasets easily extend to petabytes or the equivalent of about 20 million filing cabinets’ worth of text.
2. Velocity
a. For many applications, the speed of data creation is even more important than the volume.
b. Real-time or nearly real-time information makes it possible for a company to be much more agile than its
competitors
3. Variety
a. Big data takes the form of messages, updates, content posted to social networks, readings from sensors
(Internet of Things), GPS signals from cell phones and more
b. Many of the most important sources of big data are relatively new  new data are also big!

Additional Vs:
 Veracity
o Trustworthiness of the data in terms of quality and accuracy
o Does volume make up for the lack of quality or accuracy? Sometimes yes!
o Example: if you classify the sentiment of a million tweets not all of them will be right but the overall will
be accurate and will probably fluctuate accurately over time
 Value
o Enthusiasm about big data but the business value not always evident
o Not all big data applications can generate value or good value (compared to costs)
o Value is not about the data itself what we do with them
 Visualisation
o Visualisations have become very important in our understanding of big data
o Infographic = information graphic
 Variability (or validity)
o Variation in the meaning of the data on the top of diversity in sources and technical formats
o e.g. if you call something ‘great’ in a tweet it can be either positive or ironical
o Metadata = data about the data

Applications of big data analytics

 Retailing: real-time personalised shopping experiences ( e-commerce - Netflix, Amazon, eBay)
 Smart cities: regulatory and planning data, city analytics
 Sports analytics: formula one sensors, football and basketball data analytics
 Finance and banking (Fintech): fraud detection, credit scoring, stock markets
 Big science: how do particles behave?
 Predictive analytics: using a variety of data and techniques to predict future trends and behaviour patterns
 Numerous other applications incorporated in BI environments like sales, marketing, health care, credit scoring,
responses to marketing campaigns
 Example: Companies such as Walmart, Netflix, and eBay are analysing big data from their customer transactions
and social media streams to create real-time personalized shopping experiences.

Operational analytics
 Not doing new things but really improving what we need to do:
o Predicting product demand by combining enterprise with social media data
o Car data for insurance companies to understand how well their customers actually drive instead of
predicting from general factors (e.g. age)
o Optimising business processes like recruitment and supply chains
 o Transport optimisation: traffic data to control lights, TFL data
‘Small data’: more actionable data for everyday tasks, e.g. targeting costumers
 Many aspects of big data are about having more data to apply our classic statistics or predictive models

Big data criticism:

 As all major technological advancements, big data is neither good nor bad
 Myth: large data sets offer a higher form of intelligence and knowledge that can generate insights that were
previously impossible.
 Bigger data are not always better data, consider sampling and representations limitations (e.g. Twitter data does
not represent everyone, not even all Twitter users!)
 Taken out of context, behavioural data might mean little (Facebook friends might may not be real life friends)
 Ethical and privacy considerations – are social media data ‘public’ data?
 Access to data creates new digital divides – especially when it comes to market and academic research

Week 9: Mobile, wireless and cloud computing

Cloud computing - a model of computing in which computer processing, storage, software, and other services are
provided as a pool of virtualized resources over a network, primarily the Internet. These “clouds” of computing
resources can be accessed on an as-needed basis from any connected device and location.

Essential characteristics of cloud computing:

1. On-demand self-service: Consumers can obtain computing capabilities such as server time or network storage as
needed automatically on their own.
2. Ubiquitous network access: Cloud resources can be accessed using standard network and Internet devices,
including mobile platforms.
3. Location-independent resource pooling: Computing resources are pooled to serve multiple users, with different
virtual resources dynamically assigned according to user demand. The user generally does not know where the
computing resources are located.
4. Rapid elasticity: Computing resources can be rapidly provisioned, increased, or decreased to meet changing user
demand.
5. Measured service: Charges for cloud resources are based on amount of resources actually used.

Benefits and potential: Drawbacks and limitations:

 Cost savings from large IT investments the main
benefit
 Ubiquitous access and integration with devices
 Large and instant availability
 Security concerns (heard about those lost iCloud
photos?)
 Reliability and network access are critical
 Technical complexities like interoperability and
standards

What makes mobile devices so special?

1. Portability: smartphones of up to 7in screens and tablet computers usually in the range of 7-10.1in are highly
portable social and work stations
2. Interoperability and file sharing using cloud or other synchronisation services.
3. Constant connectivity using Wi-Fi and mobile Internet networks
4. Social presence, networking and information sharing applications in addition to voice calls and traditional short
text messages
5. Personalisation and customisation features like widgets, notifications, reminders and advanced applications for
taking notes (e.g. Evernote)
6. Location-aware services that support a series of geographical tagging features but also raise privacy concerns
7. Contactless payments using Near Field Communication (NFC)

Comparison of Android vs. iOS as business ecosystems

Google Android – an open ecosystem
 The largest operating system of any kind based on installations, users and devices
 Android is a linux-based open source system developed by Google
 Most applications written in Java –> high interoperability standards, resource-intensive
 Google Play is the main market for applications with over one millions apps offered since 2013 – limited
restrictions for developers
 Used by manufacturers like HTC, Samsung, Huawei, Motorola, Asus, LG Electronics, ZTE, Sony, Xiaomi
 Google Nexus and Pixel devices offer a pure Android experience other manufacturers adapt the system to their
own needs
Apple iOS – a (rather) closed ecosystem
 iOS is based on Mac OS X that is a certified UNIX that has similarities with the UNIX-like Android system
 Apple controls the ecosystem based on high quality standards, high integration of software/hardware
 “People who are serious about software should make their own hardware”
 Apple takes a flat 30% of developers’ revenue and closely controls
 application standards
 Applications are developed in Objective-C and more recently using Apple's programming language Swift

Week 10: The crowd economy

Crowdsourcing:
 Definition: “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and
outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call”
 Basic premise is that IT allows ideas and efforts to be openly shared over the Internet and facilitates new forms
of connections
 Related to the concepts of open innovation, co-creation, collective intelligence, user innovation and open
source
 Includes activities like innovation contests, idea evaluation, voting, fund collection (crowdfunding), knowledge
generation (e.g. Wikipedia), micro-tasks executed by large paid crowds (crowd labour), policy and regulatory
input (e.g. Red Tape Challenge), crowd science (e.g. Galaxy Zoo), crowd journalism
 Crowdfunding:
o The Internet has always been about raising monetary contributions from large audiences
o Community projects and charitable giving to new product development and highly innovative ideas
o Usually involves ‘perks’ like a special edition of the product or the first X products if developed
o Finding the right “crowd” can be helpful as a marketing tool in addition to fund raising
 Social or peer-to-peer lending
o Peer-to-peer or social lending is the practice of matching lenders and borrowers through a platform that
mediates the relationship
o The features of the platform highly affect the way capital is distributed and the management of risk and
interest
o More recently, such schemes have become more regulated and mainstream to the UK public via tax-free
allowance accounts (ISAs)
o The P2P lending platform Zopa exists since 2005, hence surviving the financial crisis of 2008 - 2009!

From creation to consumption: the sharing economy

 Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) platforms and applications
 Temporary access to a good without transfer of ownership
 Sharing physical assets based on an on-demand economy
 Sharing or access economy? This is about convenient new value propositions, not exactly sharing because
“low levels of trust between strangers when there is no market mediation”

Regulating the sharing economy

 Policy and regulation are usually slow and struggle to cope with fast evolving new technologies
 Enabling completely new value propositions but also disrupting traditional industries -> due to network
effects, risks of monopolies are evident
 Both Uber and AirBnB have not facilitated authorities on tax collection, banning illegal services and other
issues -> should they be regulated more?

Week 11: Government computing

 “government-owned or operated systems of ICTs that transform relations with citizens, the private sector and/or
other government agencies so as to promote citizen empowerment, improve service delivery, strengthen
accountability, increase transparency, or improve government efficiency”.
 The public sector includes all organisations involved in the delivery of public services (e.g. local government,
NHS, police)
 E-Government or digital government is about the use of IT in the public sector in a variety of contexts and
applications (e.g. online service delivery)
 We use “government computing” as a term that is directly comparable to business computing
Fundamentals of “government computing”
 The public sector has an obligation to be transparent as well as cost effective. There are no “commercial”
secrets about public services.
 Online public services should address the needs of all citizens and citizen groups, including meeting high
accessibility and usability standards.
 Although public sector organisations are not for-profit, they still seek efficiency in the execution and
coordination of business processes (e.g. using ERPs).
 Coordination and back-office integration are major challenges in the public sector. Changing organisational
structures and bureaucracies is difficult.
 The public sector is the guardian but also the generator of large amounts of data that need to be stored and
made accessible to the public in appropriate forms.

E-Government – the “front” office

 Advisory and public information online:
o agency, authority, departmental websites
o designed to provide clients/customers with guidance on how to access services
o specific warnings about service interruptions
o information about agency activity and performance
 Transactions online (e.g. applying for benefits, licences, passports, filling out tax forms)
o Government to Government (G2G)
o Government to Citizen (G2C)
o Government to Business (G2B)
o Integrated public sector service access centres online (gov.uk)
 Social media – especially Twitter
o announcements and news about advisory, transactions and public information
o increasingly, reputation management for managing public relations during crises, service failures

E-Government – the “back office”

 Client record systems and databases (e.g. police systems, courts, benefits and hospital patient record
management systems)
 Payment management systems (e.g. receipts, payables, fraud checking)
 Customer relations management systems (e.g. contact centre systems)
 Identity management systems (e.g. to avoid multiple registrations, detailed profiling of individuals)
 Client intelligence management systems (e.g. child protection social work staff)
 Enterprise systems (finance, HR etc)
 Knowledge management systems (e.g. policy evidence systems and other forms of digital collaborations)
 Data archiving systems
o Capture and archiving government websites for public access
o Capture and archiving confidential back-office information incl. emails (UK National Archives)

Open and big government data

 The public sector is one of the main generators but also the guardian data
 Public sector datasets have evolved to include large volumes of diverse sources of information:
o Datasets expanded as “big” from clickstreams, citizens’ use of government web sites, mobile devices
social media data and many other sources
o Advances in analytics, system interoperability, visualisations and dashboards were imported from the
business sector
 o Useful not only about aggregation of data but also segmentation (e.g. reaching local communities with
specific needs)
 Open data is about making anonymised sets of data from administrative routine collections available for
secondary analysis and examination by the public and other groups (e.g. researchers)
 There is great potential to create public value through the release of government data

“Government as a Platform is a new vision for digital government; a common core infrastructure of shared digital
systems, technology and processes on which it’s easy to build brilliant, user-centric government services.”

Case study 1
The new Google Pixel 2 smartphone entered the UK market in the fourth quarter of 2017. Amongst other features,
Google Pixel 2 benefits from an advanced camera system and was the first device to receive the Android Oreo
operating system.

General info about Pixel 2:

 2 versions: normal and XL (with curved screens)
 Competitors: Samsung Galaxy S8; iPhone
 Features: inoffensive design; front-facing stereo speakers; amazing camera (front and back); image
stabilisation; portrait mode (only one camera needed while in iPhone two); personal digital assistant – just
speak to the phone or squeeze it; Android Oreo; attaching stickers to the world while viewed on the screen
(augmented reality); lens – visual search engine (take pic of the book and lens will send you to Google book
or Wikipedia); no headphones socket; super fast charger; unlimited full-resolution backup; Now Playing –
Shazam option without Shazam – works even in plane mode; water resistant
 Attack Apple: cool features for all sizes; includes a fast charger; unlimited backup (vs. paid tied iCloud) BUT
only for 3 years;
 Discrepancies in design of 5in and 6in (5in looks bad, similar to some old phone)
 Cons: large bezels, dated design (5in), expensive, no expandable storage or removable battery, no
headphone jack, no wireless charging

Android Oreo:
 Features: longer battery life, speed, security, greater control of apps, snoozing notifications, picture-in-
picture mode (playing video while using different app), auto-fill systems (passwords, information, etc.);
restricted background activities, contextual press-to-hold options (phone finding which app open sth with –
address in google maps etc.), adaptive icons, new emoji, notification dots, easter egg (flying octopus),
 Cons: updates of Android takes ages, approval needed etc.,

5 forces: generic strategies; how core competencies led to development of GP2; competitive advantage; features of
mobile devices; development of GP; position in the mobile ecosystem; how GP2 may lead to transformation of
todays business; why would it be good for BYOD; m-commerce; Android Oreo vs IOS;

Case study 2
Uber Eats is an online meal ordering and delivery platform that was launched in California in 2014 and soon
expanded to a number of cities around the world including London. Uber Eats connects its users to participating
restaurants around London.

General info:
 Initially uber Eats was part of Uber app, next to UberBLACK and UberX
 Searching for particular restaurants, kind of cuisine or meal, delivery time
 Tracking your food delivery progress
 Rating food and driver separately
 Pros: no minimum order; allowing customisation; can be uber and uber eats simultaneously; ability to use
the same account as on Uber;
 Cons: ordering only from your area; higher prices than in restaurant directly;
 Better working conditions that Deliveroo

UberEats business model:

  Customer Value Proposition (target customers, offering, job to be done)
 Profit formula (revenue model, cost structure, margin model, resource velocity)
 Key resources (people, technology, equipment, information, channels, brand, partnership)
 Key processes (processes, rules and metrics, norms)

5 forces; generic strategies; core competencies; competitive advantage; business model; how it may lead to
transformation of todays business/how IT transformed the business, app, ordering online etc.; m-commerce;
business model; ecosystems?? – how uber expanded to uber eats?