2.Suggest a list of Information Technology Key Performance Indicators and outline the Advantages and Disadvantages associated with IT KPI.
3.What is SaaS and outline its Benefit and Disadvantages. Explain your answer.
4.What Business Risks had Liberty Wines Faced?.
Business Intelligence: It is a procedure which is dependent upon technology for the processing and analysis of information and presenting the same in such a manner which would help the organizations, managers, and other key management personnel to be able to take more sound decisions. Business intelligence includes an array of tools, applications and methods which support the entities to gather data from both the internal as well as external sources , prepare the said sources for the purpose of investigation , build up and run enquiries against the information thus finally create reports, consoles and data visualisations so that the investigative outcomes are made accessible to the decision makers (Lloyd. 2011). Thus BI helps in taking important decisions thus leaving little or no room for any disaster, improvise upon the operational efficiency and further gain competitive advantages.
IT AGility: Agility is a common phenomena used to find out how fast are the entities being able to act in response to the various opportunities as well as threats. The same is done via key agility indicators. IT agility is defined as how well the Information technology installed in a company is being able to develop agility into the business processes (Oosterhout. 2007). It is basically the coalition between the business and the IT and it is believed that better alignment will lead to better agility.
SWOT Analysis: It is a procedure that defines the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats of an organization. It is an analytical tool that helps an entity to find out what is possible for an entity to do and what is not, within as well as outside the organization. The strength of a company may be management of the procedure of brand development at a faster pace whereas an organization’s weakness could be in the management of the accounts receivables (Taylor 2016). However, the opportunities and threats are not under the control of the company.
Strategic Planning: It is a long term planning which helps to direct the effort of a business. It highlights the various long term problems which would help the organization reach new highs and also enable it to survive in this competition. It is basically the job of the directors and the executives (Hartl 2004).
Entrprise Architechture: It is a procedure that helps to link and integrate the business intelligence, link the strategies to final action and ensure that there is flexibility and ease in adaptation so that business can be conducted in line with the strategy changes (Malan et.al. 2006).
Management Information System: It is a recently developed concept and is defined as an incorporated system of man and machine which helps to provide adequate data which in turn provides support to the operations and the various decision making functions of a business entity (Harsh 2005). Therefore it can be rightly be called a system which helps to provide data for decision making.
MIS And DSS : MIS is a computer based management information system which basically helps to fulfil the daily information requirements of an organization whereas a DSS also being a computer based system is used by any one executive or group of executives at the decision making level of an organization so as to take decisions about certain issues. It helps to give such an output which produces valuable reports and statistical data (Asemi et.al. 2011).
Cloud Infrastructure: The infrastructure that is required for supporting the cloud computing services is termed as cloud infrastructure. It only details about the infrastructural part or the physical location (Winans & Brown. 2009).
Data and Text Minning: Data mining is examination of observational facts situated to discover unsuspected associations and sum up the data in new ways that are both comprehendible as well as constructive to the owner of the information. Thus it helps to gain high end data quality information from the available text (Solka. 2008).
DMS: It is the abbreviated version of document management system. It is a system which is used to store, manage and track the documents kept in electronic form and those document which are captured with the help of a document scanner.
Big Data: As the name suggests it is a set of large amount of data whether structured or unstructured which can be further worked upon for extraction of valuable data. It basically can be summarised as 3Vs i.e. volume, variety and velocity (Rouse).
2.Some of the IT KPIs are account create success, customer connection effectiveness, Email client availability, internet proxy performance, Server growth rate etc (kpidashboards.com. 2017).
The advantages associated with IT KPIs are that it helps to provide the decision makers with the correct data and at the correct time. Further to this IT KPIs follow a more structured approach thus enabling to take a more informed decision. However IT KPIs are disadvantageous to the extent that it fails to quantify measure and analyse some of the most significant metrics of achievement such as the engagement of a member of staff.
3.SaaS is the abbreviated form of Software as a Service or popularly known as on demand software which is a software release reproduction wherein the software and the allied facts are hosted centrally and contacted by means of a thin-client such as a web browser or an internet. Therefore it provides far-flung admission to software as a web based service.
The benefits of SaaS are that it helps to save money on the purchase of licenses, calls for a low cost of maintenance and purchase of hardware. The cost of installing the same is very low and the ROI is attained at a faster pace.
The disadvantages of SaaS are that even if the same is cheaper yet the organizations are always exposed to the risk of ‘sticker shock’ wherein the initial investment may seem to be low but the additions of various services can increase the expense. The market is very crucial while choosing upon the vendor from whom the software is being purchased as the same is being offered at a lower cost wit greater benefits but with no sanctity of the vendor. Further the SaaS has an issue to integrate the system with the existing one (Deyo. 2008).
Thus SaaS has its own advantages and disadvantages to offer.
4.The lack of a good IT system suiting to the expanding business was the biggest risk being faced by Liberty Wines. There computer systems were running at a very slow pace and cost of maintenance was also very high because of which the staff could not reply to the customer queries on time. This ultimately led to loss of time while processing customer orders and inventory management as well.
The organization’s current system is not being able to support the expanding business line of Liberty Wine. It lacks competence in management of huge data sets thus losing a number of customers. Therefore it affected the competitive advantage of the company with others in the market.
But the server virtualisation had really become a boon for the company from the environmental as well as employee beneficial perspective as well. Some of the advantages that server virtualisation had on the Liberty Wine and its environment are as under:
- The server virtualisation led to reduction of physical servers from ten to just three and one additional server for backup purpose. This ensured savings in the cost of space as well as availability of an extra back up in case of crashing of the main server.
- The company’s carbon footprint also reduced by more than 50 percent because of usage of lesser power and ACs as well.
- The apps of Liberty Wines started to work at a faster pace which enabled the staff of the company to become more responsive to the customer query.
- The overall overhead costs of the company also reduced and virtualisation proved to be a boon for smaller companies such as Liberty Wines (Marshall. 2011).
5.FinCen was suffering from IT issues prior to the year 2008 due to which it was not being able to provide financial data relating to money laundering and terrorism at the correct time. Due to inefficient IT system, they were unable to gather data and crucial information on a timely basis. Also unavailability of the online system and usage of the off line system for the dissemination of information amongst various agencies led to delays in taking action against the various serious financial crimes.
Updation of the analytical potentials of FinCen in line with the IT infrastructure as well as the management of the data set is the need of the hour of FinCen for the successful accomplishment of its goals and mission. If the system gets updated then the bureau will be able to transmit information using faster methods including processing of the same as well. It has in the near past launched an App which has helped them to get real time accessibility of the past decade’s data for the benefit of the analysts, law enforcement officials and regulators.
The financial intelligence is reliant upon thriving scrutiny of information to distinguish models and linkages that picture likely unlawful movements.
The ability to recognize the patterns and relationships is critical for the security of the nation simply because these agencies and financial bureaus have the required amount of talent and resources to find any kind of illegal and uncensored financial acts which can endanger the safety of a nation and its citizens. Therefore their main purpose is to ensure that any kind of danger approaching a nation is identified in advance and relevant action can be taken to disrupt the act.
The recent financial crime detected and disrupted by FinCen is the aggressive Mexican pills associations who as a matter of regular affair bring in illegal cash from the American narcotics sales within Mexico, deposit it in their own local banks and then transmit the money back to USA. Ann Martin an associate of FinCen analysed big data sets and seven years ago in the year 2010 stated that huge sum of illicit amount from US was entering the Mexican souk. The Government of Mexico acknowledged the fact that for the first time they have got a proper analysis against the crime (Partners for Public Services. 2011). The same could happen only because FinCen has shifted its way of processing data into the automated form which supported valuable correlation of data from many sources in detail as well as in the right time.
References
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Deyo,J. (2008). Software as a Service (SaaS). Retrieved from https://www.isy.vcu.edu/~jsutherl/Info658/SAAS-JER.pdf
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Harsh,S.B. (2005). Management Information Systems. Retrieved from https://departments.agri.huji.ac.il/economics/gelb-manag-4.pdf
Kpidashboards.com. (2017). Example KPIs for Information Technology (IT) departments. Retrieved from https://kpidashboards.com/kpi/department/information-technology/
Lloyd,J. (2011). Identifying Key Components of Business Intelligence Systems and Their Role in Managerial Decision Making. University of Oregon, Applied Information Management, Retrieved from https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/11389/Lloyd-2011.pdf
Malan,R. Bredemeyer, D., Krishnan,R., & Lafrenz,A. (2006). Enterprise Architecture as Business Capabilities Architecture. Retrieved from https://www.bredemeyer.com/pdf_files/Presentations/EnterpriseArchitectureAsCapabilitiesArch.pdf
Marshall, D. (2011). Top 10 benefits of server virtualisation. Retrieved from https://www.infoworld.com/article/2621446/server-virtualization/server-virtualization-top-10-benefits-of-server-virtualization.html
Oosterhout,M.V., Waarts, E., Heck, E.V., & Hillegersberg,J.V. (2007). Business Agility : Need, Readiness and Alignment with IT Strategies. Retrieved from https://media.techtarget.com/searchDataManagement/downloads/Business_Agility.pdf
Partners for Public Services. (2011). Ann Martin: Disrupting the Flow of Dirty Money. Retrieved from https://breakinggov.com/2011/09/20/ann-martin-disrupting-the-flow-of-dirty-money/
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Winans,T.B. & Brown, J.S. (2009). Cloud Computing – A collection of working papers. Retrieved from https://www.johnseelybrown.com/cloudcomputingpapers.pdf
