The Information Age in Which

You Live
Changing the Face of Business
CHAPTER ONE
 Customer Relationship
Management
Today’s new business world that includes such
facets as electronic commerce and customer
relationship management is certainly an
exciting one with many challenges. Those
challenges include making the best use of
information, information technology tools and
the people within your organization. And
that’s what management information system
is all about.
Customer Relationship
Management
 Information Age

It is the information age—a time when

knowledge is power. Today, more than
ever, businesses are using information to
gain and sustain a competitive advantage.
You’ll never find a business whose slogan
is “What you don’t know hurts you.”
Businesses understand that what they
don’t know become an Achilles heel and a
source of advantage for their competitors.
 Think about your major. Whether it’s
marketing, finance, civil or electrical
engineering, business administration,
political science or any of the many other
specializations in a business or technical
program, you’re preparing to enter the
business or technical world as a knowledge
worker. Simply put, a knowledge worker
works with and produces information as a
product.
 Sure, you may work with your hands to
write notes or use a mouse and keyboard
to produce a spreadsheet, but what you’ve
really done is use your mind to work with,
message, and produce more information.
Accountants generate profit and loss
statements, cash flow statements,
statements of retained earnings, and so
on, some of which appear on paper. But
you wouldn’t say that an accountant
produces paper and more that you would
Michelangelo was a commercial painter of
churches.
In the information age, business information
systems is an important topic. Why?
Because business information systems
deals with the coordination and use of three
very important organizational resources—
information, information technology, and
people.
 As previously mentioned:
Business information system (BIS) deals
with the planning for, development,
management, and use of
information technology tools to help people
perform all tasks related to information
processing and management.
 Business Information Systems
Challenge
• Some people will tell you that information technology is the
solution to all your problems. Not true. Information technology
(IT) is a set of tools for working with information. If we weren’t
in the information age, IT would probably not be as important.
Indeed, many of us would not even carry notebook computers,
smart phones and PDAs, much less have a computer at
home. For IT to be successful in your organization, you must
carefully coordinate its use with information and with other
knowledge workers. And that’s what MIS is all about.
• To help you better understand role of IT and BIS in an
information-based organization, look at the diagram on the
next slide.
• Business is in the business of servicing its customers. Whether it’s
building cars, mowing lawns, or providing telecommunications
services around Liberia, a business will only survive if it provides
perfect service to its customers. Perfect service occurs at the
customer’s movement of value. That is, perfect service occurs when
the customer wants it (time) where the customer wants it (location),
how the customer wants it (form), and in a manner that is
guaranteed to the customer. We call the guarantee to the customer
“perfect delivery.” Today perfect service is only possible if a
business has accurate information in the hands of the right people
at the right time; this occurs through the appropriate use of
information technology. Therefore the challenge facing any business
is to plan for, develop, manage, and use its three most important
resources— information, information technology, and people—to
provide perfect service at the customer’s moment of value. The
planning for, development, management, and use of these three
falls within the function of management information systems, or BIS
 Let’s take a closer look at BIS
Challenge
1. What business do
2. Customer moment of value
3. The role of information
 What Business Do?
Businesses serve their customers, it’s that
simple. And it doesn’t matter whether you
own a business that makes dog treats, are
employed by an organization that provides
telecommunications services around the
world, or work at a school that gives
students an education, the goal of the
business (and the only reason it will
continue to stay in business) is to serve its
customer base.
 Customer Moment of
Value
• Serving the needs of customers extends beyond
just providing products and services—it includes
providing perfect service to the customer, which
occurs at the customer’s moment of value.
Customer moment of value is define as
providing service
1. When the customer wants it (time)
2. Where the customer wants it (location)
3. How the customer wants it (form)
4. In a manner guaranteed to satisfy the customer
(perfect delivery)
 Customer Moment of Value Final
Characteristic
The final characteristic of a customer’s moment of
value deals with providing the first three—time,
location, and form—in a manner guaranteed to
satisfy the customer (What I called perfect
delivery). In business, perfect delivery amounts
to saying “We know our customer’s moment of
value according to time, location, and form, and
we’re willing to guarantee that we can meet
those characteristics.” This guarantee of perfect
delivery comes in many forms.
For Example: Indian Stores and Pizza Delivery in
US.
 The Role of Information
Technology
An organization’s ability to provide perfect
service at customer moment of value
depends on three things:
1. Knowing the time at which the customer’s
moment of value occurs
2. Knowing the location at where the
customer’s moment of value occurs
3. Knowing the form in which the customer’s
moment of value occurs
 Career Opportunities
• Many businesses today have forgotten about the customer.
Some have tried but failed to regain their customer service
and are now out of business. In your career, take every
opportunity to make your customer number 1— they are the
reason you’re in business. And you can keep your customers
and gain new ones by focusing on their moment of value.
• Achieving perfect service at the customer’s moment of value
is of great importance to all businesses today. And perfect
service is difficult; in fact, it’s sometimes impossible to achieve
every time you deal with a customer. But that doesn’t mean
you shouldn’t try. What if you owned a business—would you
rather have employees who always tried to provide perfect
service or employees who attempted to just “get by” while
providing your customers with a product or service you’d
obviously want the first set of employees—so do the
businesses that might someday be your employer.
 Team Work
Defining Customs and their Moment of Value
• In reality, businesses have many sets of customers. Consider a plastic manufacturing
firm. It has customers who consume or use its products, the community from which it
draws employees, stockholders and financial institutions who have invested money in
it, and various government agencies that regulate certain aspect of its business.
These are all ‘customers’ expecting to be served.
Your school or business is no different. It too has many sets of customers to whom it
must provide perfect service at the appropriate moment of value.
1. Create an imaginary business
2. Define each set of customer for your school.
3. For each customer set, define the products and services your school is provides.
4. For each customer set, define the moment of value in terms of time, location, and
perfect delivery.

A. How does your business use technology to provide your customers with product and
services at their moment of value?
B. How else can your business or society (environment or government) use technology to
better provide you with products or services according to your moment of value?
 KNowledge
• All these can be summed up easily—it’s having
Knowledge, and knowledge comes from
having information.
• Gaining knowledge through information is the
role of IT in today’s information-based business.
IT is a set of tools that can help provide the right
people with the right information at the right time.
This will help those people make the best
decisions possible about the time, location, and
form of the customer’s moment of value.
 Characteristics of Today’s New
Business
• In preparing to enter today’s fast-paced ever-changing,
and exciting business environment, you need to
understand the new thinking in business. To do that, let’s
examine some of the most important factors shaping
today’s business and the many changes that have come
about as a result of those factors. The four such factors:
globalization, information as a key resource, electronic
commerce, and knowledge worker computing. These
and other factors have created dramatic changes in the
workplace. Some are external forces that have provided
outside pressure and have forced organizations to
change within. Others are simply internal results of
external pressure.
 Globalization
• Take a look around your home or room. How
many of the products that you see are wholly
domestic? It might surprise you to learn that
many of them are “foreign.” For example, the
pencil or pen you’re taking notes with may have
come from Japan, and the paper on which text is
printed may have come from Canada. Business
today is global business. Even if you own a
small business and have suppliers and
customers who are wholly domestic, you
probably have some sort of foreign competition
 Globalization
Globalization, a factor shaping today’s business, is
a result of many factors including privatization,
deregulation, improve worldwide transportation
and telecommunication, the emergence of
transnational firms, and trade blocs. Think about
trade blocs for a moment. The three that
dominate the world today are the World Trade
Organization (formally known as the General
Agreement on Trades and Tariffs, or GATT), the
European Union (EU), and the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
 Information as Key Resource
This truly is a time when knowledge is power, and knowing
your competition as well as your customers will define
the success of your organization. Everyday, you pick up
any business magazine such as Amandala, People
Magazine, Forbes, Business Week, or Fortune and read
about the many information-based success stories of
businesses in Belize and the world as well as in other
industries around the world, I am sure you can’t yourself
but appreciate the value of information. But why is
information so important—why must businesses have
information to be successful?
• Again, there are many reasons; one such reason is that
we now operate in a want-driven economic. Some 40
years ago that wasn’t true—people mainly purchased
only what they needed. Not so today, because wants
often exceed needs and consumers are more than
willing to spend their money on products and services
they want rather than spend their money on just what
they need. Consider a seemingly trivial example: Dual
Subscriber Identity Module card, or SIM card cell phones
versus having two phones, an Apple Iphone 4G and the
Samsung Galaxy S. Now, how many Belizeans do you
think really need two phones on their person? Very few,
if any, but if that’s what they want, that’s what they’ll buy.
For business, this requires a dramatic shift in thinking,
marketing, and product research and development.
Businesses can no longer base product decisions on
what people need. Businesses must do their research
and find out what people want, or figure out how to make
people want a product they’re producing. This need to
capture and record information about with people want
has led to the many IT-based databases and data
warehouses of which businesses are now boasting.
These databases and data warehouses contain valuable
information detailing customers’ wants and desires.
 Team Work
TEAM WORK

• I Want It!
Having two name-brand cell phones (Apple Iphone 4G and Samsung Galaxy S) on your
person are just few of the many wants-based products that have recently surfaced in
Belize market. Think about want-based products you can find in the hands of
professional bankers, government officials as well as students alike, and then fill in
the table below. I want you to critically think about information a business must about
its customers to identify potential buyers. Also, I want you to stay away from food—
we need very few actual food products, but our taste buds deserve variety.
• Now that you’ve identified a few wants-based products, consider how technology
relating to people who buy those products. Where would that information come from?
Could you use technology to capture that information? Once you have that
information, what technology could you use to process that information?

Product Price Why People Want It What Kind of

People Buy It