MIS Assignment #7 - When making a database of private and company-strategic information available to the public can be Good

MIS Assignment #6 - When making a database of public information available to the public can be bad

MIS Assignment #5 - The Business of Social Media and Making the ROI Case

Questions 1

Let’s suppose your current annual sales are $1 million. You implement a social media strategy and begin generating $200,000 in revenue through your Facebook page. At the end of the year, your sales are still $1 million. Was your social media strategy successful? Why or why not?

With the assumption of the ultimate goal of implementing a social media strategy is to increase sales and not of gaining more or better relationships or brand awareness, here we can conclude that the implementation of social media strategy was not successful.

This is because it does not able to increase the bottom line revenues at the end of the year.

Although it has generated $200,000 in revenue through Facebook page, however we assumed it somehow has affected the revenues from other sales points such as e-commerce web portal and physical store. 

Questions 2

Every social media strategy costs money to implement and we listed a few those costs in this case study. Create a more comprehensive list of social media strategy costs. Briefly describe each cost and identify it as either a fixed cost or a variable cost.

Besides the costs of hiring people, here are other costs associated to  implementing social media strategy: 

Fixed Cost	Variable Cost
Tools/SaaS – Used to manage all social media activities such as management of contents, images, videos, marketing campaigns, data analysis, market research, etc. Customer Service – Used to create new relationship and retain existing customers, suppliers and partners. Outsource – Outsourcing of social media work to 3rd party such as designing, consulting, auditing, maintenance and support etc.	Content – Articles, posts, webinars, videos, images, etc Advertisement and Promotions – Number of social media sites participate on such as on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter etc.

Questions 3

Suppose you have a successful business with a well-liked product. One day something goes wrong and you ship 100,000 defective products. Almost the entirety of your customer base is disgruntled. What social media strategy would you employ to help? Why? Would you be better off just “waiting for it to blow over“ or “sticking your head  in the sand”?

From our opinion, since social media has the speed to disseminate shared information therefore it would be the right strategy for public relation management to use social media platforms to outreach the public and overcome negative impact. 

Questions 4

In the case study, we listed five steps to success.

•       Clearly Identify Goals and Objectives

•       Think Quality, Not Quantity

•       Build Compelling Social Media

•       User Social Media as a Market Research Tool

•       Take Advantage of Analytic

Identify two others and briefly describe them.

•       Build Relationship – Response to customers, suppliers and business partners in a timely manner. Give free advice and tips and get known as a subject expert.

•       Learn to use the tools properly - You have the plan and strategy, therefore master the tools to smoothen the implementation and operation so that can be more productive, effective and efficient. 

MIS Assignment #4 - Coca-Cola Is Everything: SCM, CRM, SRP, Social Media, You Name It

Question 1 

Why is standardization so important in supply chain management?

•       Standardization is the process of building and implementing technical standards and it is very important in supply chain management because it will make the process of supply chain management to be more efficiently streamlined  therefore it can save money by reducing expenses associated with supply chain activities.

Coke is developing its own set of software services for bottlers to use. Do you think Coke charges the bottlers for these software services? Why or why not?

•       From our point of view, the purpose coke develop their own software is to ensure the supply chain processes are standardized and streamlined for better and ease of control, integration, enhancement and performance management. 

Question 2 

How is My Coke Rewards an example of a switching cost?

•       We assume that “My Coke Rewards” is a marketing program that has 2 purposes. One is to attract new customer to switch to  Coke and second is to retain customers loyalty by creating stickiness to Coke and therefore make customer reluctant to switch to other substitutes products or switch to other competitors product. 

How can a switching cost not have a monetary penalty associated with it?

•       We assume that “My Coke Rewards”  is about playing with level of emotional or psychology where anything that make people reluctant  to switch can be a switching cost.

Question 3

What sort of business intelligence could Coke gather from its My Coke Rewards Web site?

Preference/Behavior

•       Site/link browsed

•       Item searched

•       Points collected

How could it use this information for customer relationship management activities?

•       Rewards

•       Sweepstakes

•       Instant Win

•       Spend Points on Promotions

Question 4

Visit Coca-Cola’s Facebook page. Can you buy Coke products there?

•       No. I don’t see any link that can redirect to an e-commerce site

What social media tools are present that allow you to communicate with Coca-Cola?

•       From Social Networking sites – Facebook , Twitter, Instagram, Google +, Pinterest, Linkedin

•       From Social Locationing sites – Foursquare

Question 5

Now, visit Pepsi’s Facebook page. Compare and contrast it to Coca-Cola’s Facebook page. Which has more eye appeal?

•       The looks and feels seem to be the same.

Which seems to have more activity?

•       Coca-Cola

Why do you think this is true?

MIS Assignment #2: The Social Media Megaphone: Transparent Life Intensified

Q1.  What do you think of Stacy Snyder’s story? Should she be denied a degree for publicly endorsing drinking to her underage students? To what extent do you believe that potential employers should explore social networking sites to validate the goodness of potential employees? Is there anything on your Facebook page that might turn off potential employers? If so, are you going to take any action?   

I would say that the story of Stacy Snyder’s was quite an unfortunate considering there are many others like her such as young and has decent career, did the same.

Her intention was not on the sole purpose to endorse drinking but just to share her activities like many young professionals at her age. Her actions probably to show that being a teacher also needs some kind of social life style or she may not fit in among her friends. 

In her case, her website exposed her real identity and made publicly to others even to her fellow potential employer.  Social networking has certain use to its advantage. Depending on what you pose a story inside, that reflects your self and other to think who you are. If you uploads contents that is suitable for everyone to read, then it may have good impact to readers. However, as a viewer, some sort of information-literate as knowledge worker should be possessed. The information should be viewed as business intelligence to certain extend.

I am not an active Facebook users, and careful what I pose information on it.  Should there be any information posted that could be harmful to me or jeopardize my career or family, I would definitely delete it.

Q2: The webcasting of funerals is an interesting example of the flatness of the world.  Is this an evasion of privacy or do next-of-kin have the right to make such a decision?  What other significant events in a person’s life might be suitable for webcasting? Identify at least three such events and then do some research to determine if webcasting of those events is already taking place.

The IT using internet to webcast of any event has benefited the people to communicate due to distance. In this case, webcasting of funeral over the internet could pose a solution for those friends and relative who could not make to the funeral to watch or streaming real life or for the next 30 days.

There are examples of significant event in a person life might be suitable for webcasting such as meetings, weddings and graduation.

Q3: Osama Bin Laden represents a very dark image for most Americans. His participation in the planning of the September 11^th attacks will forever mark him as evil. Should people like Rashard Mendenhall, who make positive or perhaps even neutral comments about terrorists like Bin Laden be fired from endorsement contracts?  Can making such comments be considered grounds for termination of employment? Maybe dismissal from your school as a student?

There is information which sensitive to most of us. If the message seems bias to the opponent, probably you will be questioned by the majority who are supporting the actions. Though it seems that he has given neutral comments, for him, but to the extremist it may not. Posting or tweeting message during this event by giving positive response, may spark anger or hatred among the people who are supporting the action. This will cause unexpected incident to happen.

Making such comments, ethically, may not lead to dismissal or termination. In US, they practice freedom of speech (but maybe not freedom of tweet) everywhere, which everybody accepts whatever opinion that is being said.  It is such a honest remark which few of us have, but the only difference was that it was made in public.

  

Q4: Very few people would question the service and commitment of military personnel to our country.  The two sergeants who created the YouTube video openly criticized Delta Airlines for its charging of baggage fees to military personnel. Is this open for criticism of businesses and their practices acceptable?  Will it help businesses be more accountable to customers?

There are times where military officers to have special attention and particularly for Government employees. Delta Airlines may apply same baggage fees across the board, regardless of who you are attached with. Using the media technology, YouTube, among these military officers, seems irrational. If this happen, then US Army will claim to have free baggage fee to rest of the army officers. In business, for Delta Airline, they could lose millions of dollars should they provide baggage fee as complimentary. And, worse case scenario, it has to be applied to all airlines.

Q5:  The use of Facebook (or any social networking site) can truly make the person’s life transparent, available for the whole world to see.  Should there be legislation regulating the openness of your life on the Internet? Can we expect society somehow to regulate this without any laws?

There should be a self regulating the openness of one’s life on the internet. It is up to the person whether he or she would want to share to the whole world or to selected friends or none at all.  In Facebook, there is a function which you can enable it, for viewing among friends only or to the intended person.

In organization, information posted will be filtered by the managers to which it will benefit the company and its business.

As posted in www.zdnet.com on October 2012, Malaysian and Singapore will not enforce regulations on how users post their contents in Facebook or Tweeter or any application of internet social media. It was mentioned that “Singapore, Malaysia unlikely to implement social media laws:  The two will not likely follow in footsteps of others in the region, because it will be a "huge leap" from how they manage other cyber-related issues with potential public backlash”.

Additionally, Malaysia make its stance not to rule out any laws on contents posted on internet social media while advise users to be prudent to post contents for public views. Posted on  www.borneopost.com  dated November 2013, the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) head of industry surveillance and enforcement, Zulkarnain Mohd Yasin, said self-regulation was crucial to address abuse of the social media in the country.  He said consumers should be taught to not use the social media to stir racial sentiment, spread lies, poison the people’s mind to an extent of damaging  public order.“Although there is no content control or legal screening in the social media, social media users, like Facebook and Twitter, should have self-regulation on contents and information which they shared, as well as to not send negative content.  

Reference: 

http://www.theborneopost.com/2013/11/05/social-media-users-urged-to-enhance-self-regulation/#ixzz2tXsbZKOb)

MIS Assignment #3 - GOOGLE AND APPLE KNOW WHERE YOU ARE, MAYBE

Management information systems within an organization comprise of three key resources on which MIS focuses – people, information, and information technology

In this second case study, we will address how organizations are using technology to track the location of people.  In some instances, people don’t even know they are being tracked.

QUESTION 1

Location-based tracking is common to all smartphones, for good reason or bad.  The popular location-based service company Foursquare has an app so you can check in at various locations to receive discounts, become Mayor, and see who else might be there.  DealLeak, which aggregates deals from the likes of Groupon and Living Social, needs your location in order to offer local discounts on products and services to you.  How many location-based service apps do you have on your smartphone?  How often do you use them and why?

DISCUSSION

I am using Android smartphone by Samsung. As a result most of my application by Google play. Few of the most frequent location service I use are Google Maps and Waze. Both of the services help me to navigate my route and travelling with my car.

I am using it everyday to find the journey distance and how long it will take me to arrive at the destination.  This will help me to schedule and plan my travelling for an appointment.Besides, early notification of the traffic condition and live traffic update really help me a lot to avoid certain road.

QUESTION 2

Apple and Google defended their processes by stating that their privacy policies very clearly stated what information would be gathered, how that information would be used, and how and with whom that information might be shared.  When was the last time you read the privacy policy of any technology tool, such as a Web browser or app?  Do you think very many people actually read these?  Do the disclaimers in these privacy policies give the offering organization the right to do anything with your information?

DISCUSSION

I read it last week for an application installation inside my notebook when the company IT deploy an update for our new Email client.

I don't think many users by default read the full description of the Privacy Policy and End User agreement before we install application in our devices. They are interested to click, I agree at the checkbox of End-User License Agreement (EULA).

Yes, inside the privacy policies Google did mention the usage of the information they collect about user when they are using the Google services.

In this Google Privacy Policies [ http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/ ], it mention Google Privacy Policy  that explains:

•       What information Google collect and why they collect it.
•       How they use that information.
•       The choices Goole offer, including how to access and update information.

To the end users they must be aware of this Privacy Information gathering and their potential usage. The need and important to spend time and reading the Agreement and Privacy statement.To the Organization, choices and notification to the customers is important so correct measurement and Data handling is taken care off.

QUESTION 3

What about location-based tracking in car systems like GM’s OnStar?  Those systems know the car’s location to give you driving directions and perhaps identify local restaurants or other venues.  Are you comfortable with this?  When was the last time you bought a paper map?  How much do you rely on your car’s GPS system?

DISCUSSION

Yes, many people are comfortable with the GPS systems in cars. Initially customers looking for the GPS system to provide security to track their Car if got stolen. Besides, it can help traveling and aid driver with the unfamiliar route to their destination.

The location awareness services will provide customers the list of shops and restaurant in certain location. Not to forget, the Petrol Station and als Emergency services like Police station and Hospital or clinics.

As a result, end user need to trade off their privacy information to the service providers and their partners to gain the extra services for additional benefits to users.

QUESTION 4

What about smartphone tracking for parents who want to know where their children are and where they’ve been?  Minors under the age of 18 have very few privacy rights, especially when it comes to parents’ knowledge of where they are.  Are parents going too far in wanting to know where their children are?  What are the benefits of such systems for parents?  For the children?  What does the term “helicopter parent” refer to?

DISCUSSION

Secondary school kids will see this as intrusion to their privacy. They prefer to be most of the time with their friends and do activity together. They feel independence and can take care of themselves.

Parents that always checking on the kids will be threat to the degree of the freedom they want.

The modern parents nowadays will look at the Tracking application as an additional safety assurance to their kids. Whether they are in the school then attend the tuition class or participate with the school extra co curricular activity. Parents will love and comfortable since they know whereabouts of their kids.

Helicopter parenting refers to "a style of parents who are over focused on their children," says Carolyn Daitch, Ph.D., director of the Center for the Treatment of Anxiety Disorders near Detroit and author of Anxiety Disorders: The Go-To Guide. "They typically take too much responsibility for their children's experiences and, specifically, their successes or failures," Dr. Daitch says. [Source http://www.parents.com/parenting/better-parenting/what-is-helicopter-parenting/ ] The term "helicopter parent" was first used in Dr. Haim Ginott's 1969 book Parents & Teenagers by teens who said their parents would hover over them like a helicopter; the term became popular enough to become a dictionary entry in 2011.

MIS Assignment #1 - Outrageous Industry Transformation: Cell Phones Doom Phone Revenues for Hotels

When was the last time you used a pay phone? 
It was way back since 1995. During that time, to subscribe for a mobile phone line was very expensive for me as a student.  



How often have you used a pay phone in the last year?
Never use any pay phone since 1995. I either use fixed premise phones or mobile phones. 



If you need to use a pay phone, would you know immediately where one was located?
Yes, I can still spot pay phone in places such as schools, community complexes, hospitals, shopping complexes and bus stations.



When was the last time you used your cell phone? 
Just about 10 minutes ago. Attending to SMS and WhatsApp messages. 

  

How often have you need your cell phone in the last day?
Looking at my call and message history lists, it can be said that I need my cell phone every 30 minutes.