Chapter 12 Case Study - Life on the Grid : iPhone Becomes iTrack

Question 1 : Why do cell phone manufacturers (Apple, Google, and Blackberry) want to track where their customers go?

Cell phone manufacturers want to track where their customers go because they want to allowed people to enable their mobile to give out details of their locations to trusted contacts. Google point out that users had to specifically choose to make their data available. Then, the Apple said users can check for themselves what location data the phone is retaining. The guardian has confirmed that 3G- enabled device including the iPad also retain the data and copy it to the owner’s computer.

If someone were to steal an iPhone and "jailbreak" it, giving them direct access to the files it contains, they could extract the location database directly. Alternatively, anyone with direct access to a user's computer could run the application and see a visualization of their movements. Encrypting data on the computer is one way to protect against it, though that still leaves the file on the phone. created a simple downloadable application to let Apple users check for themselves what location data the phone is retaining. The Guardian has confirmed that 3G-enabled devices including the iPad also retain the data and copy it to the owner's computer. 

Apple can legitimately claim that it has permission to collect the data: near the end of the 15,200-word terms and conditions for its iTunes program, used to synchronise with iPhones, iPods and iPads, is an 86-word paragraph about "location-based services". It says that Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services.Question 2 : Do you think cell phone customers should be able to turn tracking off? Should customers be informed when they are being tracked? Why or why not?

Turning the GPS off will turn off the tracking system, otherwise you've got no expectation of privacy, a federal magistrate said recently in a ruling. The ACLU calls the decision an "opinion straight from the Twilight Zone," as well as a violation of the Fourth Amendment's protections against illegal search-and-seizure. Data protection law only applies to information that qualifies as 'personal data'. The information these systems gather is unlikely to qualify as personal data when read on its own but could identify individuals when combined with information from other sources. However, if that company is able to combine that information with other information about that individual, via, for example, CCTV, Bluetooth locally-targeted advertising systems; Wi-Fi networks and Facebook location-login systems, this could constitute personal data. The company would then need to notify customers about the way in which and the purposes for which their personal data is being processed. Under current data protection rules processors of personal data must generally obtain "freely given, specific and informed" consent in order to do so.

Question 3 : Do you think cell phone tracking is a violation of a person’s privacy?

Yes, this is because data protection law only applies to information that qualifies as 'personal data'. The information these systems gather is unlikely to qualify as personal data when read on its own but could identify individuals when combined with information from other sources, according to Kathryn Wynn, an expert in data privacy at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com.

If the company is just tracking customers' movements on a single visit such as to a shopping centre and is not able to collect shopping habit information about individuals on a long term basis, it would appear that the information collected is more like geolocation data rather than technology. Under current data protection rules processors of personal data must generally obtain "freely given, specific and informed" consent in order to do so. 

Chapter 11 Case Study - DST Systems Scores with Scrum & Application Lifecycle Management

Question 1 : What were some of the problems with DST Systems’ old software development environment?

Some of the problems with DST Systems’ old software development environment were its processes often manual and time-consuming. The managers were unable to easily determine how resources were being allocated, which also the employees were working on certain projects and status of specific assets. Another problem was that the DST struggled to update its most important product, AWD in a timely fashion. Its development schedule was to release a new version once every two years. However, the competitors were releasing the versions faster.

Besides, the development group had used a mixture of tools processes and source code control systems without any unified repository for code or a standardized developer tool set. Different groups within the organization used very different tools for software development. Due to organization without used any unified repository, it was difficult to control. Hence, in our opinion, we think that DST must use new method and better than the old traditional.

Question 2 : How did Scrum development help solve some of those problems?

Scrum relies on self-organizing, cross-functional teams supported by a ScrumMaster and a product owner. The Scrum is exists software development tools and experienced strong results. Scrum development helped solve some of these problems by accelerating its software development cycle from 24 months to 6 months and developer productivity increased 20%. What the scrum development pretty much acted like was the coach for the team. This is how the Scrum development helped solve some of these problems.

Question 3 : What other adjustments did DST make to use Scrum more effectively in its software projects? What people, organization, and technology issues had to be addressed?

The other adjustments DST was able to make to use Scrum more effectively in its software projects were by setting up a project evaluation team to identify the right development environment. Another key adjustment was DST's adoption of CollabNet's products. This adjustment allowed DST to complete all of their work within the ALM platform. The management issue being addressed was production being slowed down. The organization issue was the lack of organization so processes were breaking down. Finally, the technology issue being addressed was the problem occurring with the software so production was taking a major hit.

For the part of management, organization and technology issues had to be addressed, Jerry Tubbs, the systems development manager at DST systems, says DST was successful in attempts to revamp the software group because some factors.

1.  Looked for simplicity rather than complicated

2.  Much cheaper than some of the alternatives

3. Involved developers in the decision making process to ensure that change to be greeted enthusiastically

4. Allow for the developers to adopt ALM software on their own.

The company was successful because they selected the right development framework as well as the right software to make that change a reality and skillfully managed the change process.

Chapter 10 Case Study - Albassami’s Job Is Not Feasible Without IT

Question 1 : What systems are described here? What valuable information do they provide?

The system described here is the shipping information system. The system provide  a lot of important information like all the sender information such as the sent car, the truck number, the sender and receiving branches, and it also sends an SMS to the clients acknowledging the arrival of the car. Besides, the system also records the client’s data, and holds maintenance information. Linking the data of vehicle maintenance centers with the transportation service helps to enhance company performance and achieve better customer service. The system also enables standard reports to be provided to top management and head sectors about the productivity of each branch, resulting in accurate identification of needs for different regions 

and thus proper budget allocation. In addition, the system allowed a better audit on all drivers’ behavior by using the output of the vehicles’ tracking information.   

Question 2 : What values did the IT/ IS investments add to Albassami?

In Albassami, the company used the system that based on clustered Dell servers running Windows 2003 and connected to over 270 Windows XP clients. The database management system, used as the backbone of the system, is Sybase Adaptive server, whereas clients use SQL Anywhere. There is replication between the server at headquarters and the clients’ branches. Throughout the replication, branches’ data is sent to the server and aggregated to create the most updated database version, and then sent back to the branches. This means every branch has the most recent version of the client list, trucks’ availability, and new shipping contracts so that any customer is able to deal with any branch at any time.

Question 3 : How did implementing the Shipping Information System address the business needs and information requirements of Albassami?

Implementing the shipping information system address the business needs and information requirements of Albassami is the recipient branch will create a receipt entry on the system upon arrival of the truck and then and Short Messaging Service communication (SMS) is created and sent to the customer, who will then go to the destination branch to receive the car. 

In addition, Albassami maintains all the sender information such as the sent car, the truck number, the sender and receiving branches, and it also sends an SMS to the client acknowledging the arrival of the car. The system also records the client’s data, and holds maintenance information. Linking the data of vehicle maintenance centers with the transportation service helps to enhance company performance and achieve better customer service. 

The system also enables standard reports to be provided to top management and head sectors about the productivity of each branch, resulting in accurate identification of needs for different regions and thus proper budget allocation. In addition, the system allowed a better audit on all drivers behavior by using the output of the vehicles tracking information. Proper performance monitoring resulted in adequate employee’s appraisals and consequently loyal staff.

Chapter 9 Case Study - Social Commerce Creates New Customer Relationships

Question 1 : Assess the people, organization, and technology issues for using social media to engage with customers.

As the social media such as Facebook, Twitter has become powerful tools for companies of all shapes and size to engage with customers. They can inform the customers about their latest update in order to keep good relationship between them.

As example, location-based businesses can tell their current location to the customers via Twitter or Facebook and also appointment-based businesses can easily tweet or post cancellation and unexpected opening. Larger companies run sweepstakes, promotion and advertisements that capitalize on the social media features in order to achieve greater visibility.

Instead, they have an opportunity to shape the perception of their brands and to solidify relationships with their customers. One of the popular brands products; Levi’s has used Facebook and Twitter to allow consumers to socialize and share their purchases to friends.

The all-purpose retailer Best Buy use social media to answer user question and respond to complaints. Best Buy’s social media followers who generate feedback on social networks and related sites, and these data gathered are converted into useful information. The company uses that information to gauge the success of promotions and the impact of advertising campaigns. Rosetta Stone has used Facebook’s targeting capabilities to determine which types of people responds to the various ads it has created. 

Question 2 : What are the advantages and disadvantages of using social media for advertising, brand building, market research, and customer service?

There are a lot of advantages that will benefits all that are using social media for advertising, brand building, market research, and customer service for their companies. As using the social media such an efficient way to engage with the customers, the advantages of it hugely affected the productivity and performance of a particular company.

On top of that, the social media features of Facebook ads, the ability “Like” a brand, send a virtual gift, answer a poll question, or instantly stream information to your news feed and this will leads to achieve greater visibility. In addition, Facebook allow advertisers to use features “Like” posts by customer’s purchases and share with their friends. This will benefit the advertiser to improve their firm to gain more buyer or customers of their products. Moreover, by serving Facebook ads only to the group of people to whom they were most attractive, Rosetta Stone experienced a tripling in advertisement performance.

Twitter has developed many offerings to interested advertisers, like Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends. These features give advertisers the ability to have their tweets displayed more prominently when Twitter users search for certain keywords. The use of Twitter as intermediaries is to interest customers. A person that is in charge to handle company’s account Twitter is responsible for responding to queries and engaging in conversations about the brand or their product. So then, the good relationship between the company and customers can be build and this will leads to a better performance and reputation of the company.

Nevertheless, there are several disadvantages of using the social media. As the sharing information among the consumers or customers is unlimited, there are a few bad impacts that will affect them. Information with no limit will lead to cause of infringement of private information among individuals. So then, the problem of securing one’s information cannot be preventing. This will cause the danger of one’s personal information and security of themselves.

As like what Starbucks learned, the social media can be unpredictable and not always beneficial. The campaign that had been runs by Starbucks is backfired. At the urging of anti-Starbucks protesters, users flooded Starbuck’s Twitter feed with pictures of employees and protesters holding signs criticizing Starbuck’s labor practices. Because of this problem, Starbucks faced a big problem that must be solving in order to bring back their good names.

Question 3 : Should all companies use Facebook and Twitter for customer service and advertising? Why or why not? What kinds of companies are best suited to use these platforms?

In this globalization era, sharing information is spread all over the world with no limit. This phenomenon is spreading and all people are trying to be in the same level among others to achieve successful. So the use of social media likes Facebook and Twitter for customer service and advertising are very important for any kinds of company. All companies should use social media as a tool to improve their company's performance and productivity instead of to make possible of company’s performance and smoothing the works of promoting progress. Therefore, the company is a step forward to be the best organization to promote and make their product as one of the mostly chose by consumers in other words, as a ‘product champion’.

There are a few kinds of companies are best suited to use these platforms such as the company are selling mass product. As example, company of shoes is very important to use social media to improve their communication between the customers. Social media likes Facebook and Twitter are usable for the company to deliver their product information to customer faster. Feedback or respond from customers is one of the methods for the company to gather data about their product’s response and if there is any possible solutions are needed based on what the customer complaints. Thus, this problem could be overcome and the performance of the company can be improved. Besides that, social media is use to link the customer and the company to know what best practice are important for the firm to increase the connectivity.

Chapter 8 Case Study - Customer Relationship Management Heads to the Cloud

Question 1 : What type of companies are most likely to adopt cloud-based CRM software services? Why? What companies might not be well suited for this type of software?

The types of companies that adopt cloud-base CRM software service is small businesses that find the on demand model especially appealing because there are no large up-front hardware and software investments or lengthy implementation on corporate computer system. Saleforce’s e-mail and Web-to-lead capabilities helped company quadruple new sales leads.

A task feature automatically generate specific task based on the type of lead and the stage in the sales process. The system automates customer service functions including order confirmation, follow up customer satisfaction surveys and shipping notification. Cloud base software service also appeals to large companies. The system with automated reports and dashboards monitoring key performance indicators, sales calls, and sales volume. 

CRM software service also help to create more successful marketing campaign. Not all companies experience gains of that magnitude and cloud computing does have drawback. Companies that manage their CRM apps with a cloud infrastructure have no guarantees that their data will be available at all time, or even that the provider will still exist in the future.

Question 2 : What are the advantages and disadvantages of using cloud-based enterprise applications?

Advantages	Disadvantages
Cost Efficiency This is the biggest advantage of cloud computing, achieved by the elimination of the investment in stand-alone software or servers. By leveraging cloud’s capabilities, companies can save on licensing fees and at the same time eliminate overhead charges such as the cost of data storage, software updates, management.	Security and privacy in the Cloud Security is the biggest concern when it comes to cloud computing. By leveraging a remote cloud based infrastructure, a company essentially gives away private data and information, things that might be sensitive and confidential. It is then up to the cloud service provider to manage, protect and retain them, thus the provider’s reliability is very critical.
Backup and Recovery The process of backing up and recovering data is simplified since those now reside on the cloud and not on a physical device. The various cloud providers offer reliable and flexible backup/recovery solutions. In some cases, the cloud itself is used solely as a backup repository of the data located in local computers.	Limited control and flexibility Since the applications and services run on remote, third party virtual environments, companies and users have limited control over the function and execution of the hardware and software. Moreover, since remote software is being used, it usually lacks the features of an application running locally.
Increased Storage Capacity The cloud can accommodate and store much more data compared to a personal computer and in a way offers almost unlimited storage capacity. It eliminates worries about running out of storage space and at the same time It spares businesses the need to upgrade their computer hardware, further reducing the overall IT cost	Increased Vulnerability Related to the security and privacy mentioned before, note that cloud based solutions are exposed on the public internet and are thus a more vulnerable target for malicious users and hackers. Nothing on the Internet is completely secure and even the biggest players suffer from serious attacks and security breaches. Due to the interdependency of the system, If there is a compromise one one of the machines that data is stored, there might be a leakage of personal information to the world.
	Dependency and vendor lock-in One of the major disadvantages of cloud computing is the implicit dependency on the provider. This is what the industry calls “vendor lock-in” since it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to migrate from a provider once you have rolled with him. If a user wishes to switch to some other provider, then it can be really painful and cumbersome to transfer huge data from the old provider to the new one. This is another reason why you should carefully and thoroughly contemplate all options when picking a vendor.

Question 3 : What people, organization and technology issues should be addressed in deciding whether to use a conventional CRM system versus a cloud-based version?

People will provide firm wide information to support decision making. They also will enable rapid responses to customer requests for information or products. Besides, removing hardware and its complications are companies not suited for ERP and CRM. People also can made large investments on traditional and customized solutions that already work. 

In an organization, the Human-Resource Optimization will act as while traditional ERP and CRM solutions demand for technical staff, cloud-based solutions allows to optimize HR to focus on operation. In technology for security: using the web as infrastructure, cloud-based ERP and CRM solutions have difficulties in offering security-comfort to companies that own sensible data. Besides, Seeks to cut cost Companies That Use Cloud Based ERP and CRM Services: it enables them to achieve operational excellence and customer intimacy.  It releases them from infrastructural maintenance and its respective fixed (servers, storage, networking components) and operational costs