It’s
not business as usual in the global economy anymore. As managers, most of you
will work for firms that are intensively using information systems and making
large investments in information technology. You will certainly want to know
how to invest this money wisely. If you make wise choices, your firm can
outperform competitors. If you make poor choices, you will be wasting valuable
capital.
Check out London Business Training &
Consulting (LBTC)’s Advanced Management Information
Systems course.
How Information Systems are Transforming
Business
Changes
in technology, and new innovative business models, have transformed social life
and business practices. Smartphones, social networking, texting, emailing, and
Webinars have all become essential tools of business because that’s where your
customers, suppliers, and colleagues can be found.
Businesses
are using information technology to sense and respond to rapidly changing
customer demand, reduce inventories to the lowest possible levels, and achieve
higher levels of operational efficiency. Supply chains have become more
fast-paced, with companies of all sizes depending on just-in-time inventory to
reduce their overhead costs and get to market faster.
As
newspaper print readership continues to decline, more than 168 million people
read a newspaper online, and millions more read other news sites. About 83
million people watch a video online every day, 66 million read a blog, and 25
million post to blogs, creating an explosion of new writers and new forms of
customer feedback that did not exist five years ago. Social networking site
Facebook attracted over 1 billion monthly visitors in 2014 worldwide.
Businesses are starting to use social networking tools to connect their
employees, customers, and managers worldwide. Many Fortune 500 companies now
have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and Tumblr sites.
E-commerce
and Internet advertising continue to expand. Google’s online ad revenues
surpassed $17 billion in 2013, and Internet advertising continues to grow at
more than 15 percent a year, reaching more than $43 billion in revenues in 2013.
Strategic Business Objectives of Information
Systems
Entire
sectors of the economy are nearly inconceivable without substantial investments
in information systems. E-commerce firms such as Amazon, eBay, and Google,
simply would not exist. Today’s service industries – finance, insurance, and
real estate, as well as personal services such as travel, medicine, and
education – could not operate without information systems. Similarly, retail
firms such as Walmart and manufacturing firms such as General Electric require
information systems to survive and prosper. Just as offices, telephones, filing
cabinets, and efficient tall buildings with elevators were once the foundations
of business in the twentieth century, information technology is a foundation
for business in the twenty-first century.
There
is a growing interdependence between a firm’s ability to use information
technology and its ability to implement corporate strategies and achieve
corporate goals. What a business would like to do in five years often depends
on what its systems will be able to do. Increasing market share, becoming the
high-quality or low-cost producer, developing new products, and increasing
employee productivity depend more and more on the kinds and quality of
information systems in the organisation. The more you understand about this relationship,
the more valuable you will be as a manager.
All this and more is covered in extensive
detail on LBTC’s Advanced Management Information
System course.
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