Business information system Essay

1. What might have happened to Apple if its top executives had not supported investment in iPads? If the top executives had not supported investment in pads, the new product will be known by less people. Without investment in iPad, people will not receive the information of new technology. 2. Why would it be unethical for Apple to sell its iTunes customer information to other businesses? The customer’s information is about personal privacy, any company can’t sell customer’s information without their permit. 3. Evaluate the effects on Apple’s business if it failed to secure its customer information and all of it was accidentally posted to an anonymous website. The customers will not trust apple again, and they will not leave personal information on iTunes. This will influence Apple that people will not use apple store for purchasing. If the security problem let customer’s credit card information been stolen, Apple will response for that. 1 Do you agree or disagree that Apple’s iTunes, iPhone applications and iPad applications give the company a competitive advantage? Be sure to justify your answer. Yes, I agree with that. One of the main factors that brought Apple back from near oblivion was its ability to produce, market, and sell IT products such as the iPod, iPhone, and customer developed applications. If Apple’s top executives did not have the foresight to view the MP3 players as a competitive advantage, then chances are the company would not have made a strong comeback in the highly competitive electronics market. People who got iPhone, iPad, they will go to Apple’s store to download and buy the application. Other company can only develop application to Apple; they can’t sell or provide their application to customer directly. This is a big advantage for Apple. 2 Why are data, information, business intelligence and knowledge important to Apple? Give an example of each type in relation to the iPad. Data are raw facts that describe the characteristics of an event or object. Before the information age, managers manually collected and analysed data, a time-consuming and complicated task without which they would have little insight into how to run their business. Lacking data, managers often found themselves making business decisions about how many products to make, how much material to order, or how many employees to hire based on intuition or gut feelings. In the information age, successful managers compile, analyse, and comprehend massive amounts of data daily, which helps them make more successful business decisions. Examples include: Sales date, Quantity sold, Cost, Sales price, Total profit, Shipping address, Customer address, Wireless type, Memory amount, Colour. Information is data converted into a meaningful and useful context. Having the right information at the right moment in time can be worth a fortune. Having the wrong information at the right moment; or the right information at the wrong moment can be disastrous. The truth about information is that its value is only as good as the people who use it. People using the same information can make different decisions depending on how they interpret or analyse the information. Thus information has value only insofar as the people using it do as well. Business intelligence (BI) is information collected from multiple sources such as suppliers, customers, competitors, partners, and industries that analyses patterns, trends, and relationships for strategic decision making. BI manipulates multiple variables and in some cases even hundreds of variables including suc h items as interest rates, weather conditions, and even gas prices. For instance, BI can predict inventory requirements for a business for the week before the Super Bowl if, say, the home team is playing, average temperature is above 80 degrees, and the stock market is performing well. This is BI at its finest, incorporating all types of internal and external variables to anticipate business performance. Knowledge includes the skills, experience, and expertise, coupled with information and intelligence that creates a person’s intellectual resources. Knowledge workers are individuals valued for their ability to interpret and  analyse information. Today’s workers are commonly referred to as knowledge workers and they use BI along with personal experience to make decisions based on both information and intuition, a valuable resource for any company. 3 Analyze Apple using Porter’s Five Force model. Apple’s buyer power was low when it first introduced the iPod since it was first to market with the product. Now, there are many competitors to Apple’s iPod and its buyer power is increasing since customers can choose from many different manufacturers of MP3 players. Apple’s supplier power was high and now it is decreasing since buyers have many choices of whom to buy from. Apple can use environmental scanning, or the acquisition and analysis of events and trends in the environment external to an organization, to analyse rivalry. Apple can use environmental scanning to analyse everything from competitor strategies to understanding new and shifting market trends to determining the strategic placement of Apple stores. Without watching its environment and understanding what its competitors are doing and where the market is headed, Apple will have a difficult time setting its strategic direction, as Steve Jobs determined when he thought he had missed the MP3 bandwago n. 4 Which of the three generic strategies is Apple following? Apple follows a focused strategy. 5 Which of Porter’s Five Forces did Apple address through its introduction of the iPhone? Apple decreased the power of its buyers and increased its own supplier power by introducing the iPhone. Since the iPhone was the first to market with an internet access, data storage, MP3 player, etc., its buyers had no power and no choice but to purchase the product from Apple. Unfortunately, Apple could not create an entry barrier and soon many other companies began offering integrated cell phones, which increased buyer power and reduced supplier power. 6 Which of Porter’s Five Forces did Apple address through its customer-developed applications? Apple decreased the power of its buyers and increased its own supplier power by introducing customer developed applications. Since the iPhone was the first to market with an internet access, data storage, MP3 player, which could all accept customer developed applications, its buyers had no power and no choice but to purchase the product and the applications from Apple. Unfortunately, Apple could not create an entry barrier and there are more and more companies offering customer developed applications such as Google and its Android operating system.