Affiliated institute
Abstract
The five major forces that could endanger a company's position in a given industry are risk of new applicants, snipping power of customers, snipping authority of suppliers, threat of substitute products and threat of established rivals. IT infrastructure of a company consists of the elements on which the agency's IT activities are dependent, so for the successful employment of IT, an agency should define, manage and implement these elements. ETL, standing for extraction transformation and loading of data is a database usage process. This process extracts data from the source systems, transforms into the appropriate form and loads into the end target.
MANAGEMENT
IT Infrastructure Management WK10 Revision Questions
1. List and describe Porter’s five major forces that could endanger a company’s position in a given industry: Illustrate how the use of IT could provide competitive advantage.
Answer: Porter’s five forces include:
a. Threat of new entrants
Existence of entry barriers
Brand Equity
Distribution access
Requirements of capital
Loyalty of customer to some brands
Industry profitability
b. Threat of substitute products
Depreciation in quality
Product differentiation level
Substitution ease
c. Bargaining power of customers
Volume of buyer
Bargaining leverage
Availability of buyer information
Substitute products availability
RFM Analysis
d. Bargaining power of suppliers
Supplier competition
Distribution channel strength
Presence of substitute inputs
Impact of inputs on cost
e. Threat of established rivals
Competition between offline and online companies
Advertising level
Powerful strategy of competition
IT needs to be standardized and shared. Technology should also become standardized. When the innovations occur in the infrastructure of any IT, the innovations also get shared. A possible way by which a resource provides competitive advantage is by creating a barrier to the existing competition.
Describe the relationship between IT infrastructure and data architecture.
Answer:
Information or Data Architecture is an approach or field to design understandable and clear communications.
It gives care to context, structure and presentation of information and data.
Examples include intranets and websites, including navigation and labelling schemes.
However, an information technology (IT) infrastructure is the foundation or base foundation for delivery of data or information to support management (an agency) and programs.
The infrastructure consists of the elements on which the agency's IT (information technology) activities are dependent. Therefore, an agency should define, implement, and manage these elements in their infrastructure so that they can employ IT successfully.
2. Discuss how IT supports supply-chains. Give some examples on how this is the case relating to a particular industry or organization.
Answer:
In today’s IT industries, the design, customer service, logistics’ integration and enhancement and manufacturing systems generally represent the biggest opportunity for their improvement.
The use of the modern tools and techniques in the database design like on-line access, EDI, JIT, Quick Response, RF, bar coding and integration of complete systems provide the internal efficiencies
It also improves the services available to the customer and the measurement of supplying vendors' performance.
The company Establish Inc. was revitalized by bringing the basic change in business practices along with some system upgrades.
Their practice of system design and integration lays a focus on the drivers of business, which also determines the system requirements, also emphasizing the perspective of the user at the same time.
Examples:
Surveys of user satisfaction
Systems gap analysis
Review of manufacturing and logistics planning
System design and analysis
Packaged software evaluation
Project facilitation and planning
3. What does the acronym ETL refer to in reference to Data management?
Answer: ETL refers to a database usage process also used in warehousing of data involving:
Extorting data from the external sources
Converting data to meet operational needs
Loading data to the end target i.e. a database
Extract
Extracting data from source systems is the first step of ETL process. This seems to be one of the most demanding step of ETL, correctly extracting the data will ensure how the processes following ETL will proceed. Parsing the extracted data is an inherent part of extraction. If data does not match the desired pattern, it can be rejected in part or entirely.
Transform
This stage applies functions or rules to the extorting data to derive data for consigning into the database. Some sources of data need very minute or may be no data manipulation.
Choosing only definite stakes to load
Translating coded values
Load
This phase loads data into its end target e.g. data warehouse. As this phase interacts with the database, the constraints that are defined in the schema of the database and the triggers activated on the data load start being applied e.g. uniqueness. This contributes to the overall quality of the ETL process.
References:
1. Porter E. Michael (2010) Porter’s Five Forces analysis, Retrieved from http://www.vectorstudy.com/management_theories/porters_five_forces.htm [Accessed 1/29/2012]
2. Siaw, I. and A. Yu. "An Analysis of the Impact of the Internet on Competition in the Banking Industry, Using Porter's Five Forces Model". International Journal of Management 21, no. 4 (2004, December): 514–524.
3. Mahon, J. F., and R.A. McGowan. "Modeling Industry Political Dynamics." Business and Society 37, no. 4 (1998, December): 390–413.
4. Porter’s 5- forces model (2012) Retrieved from http://www.enotes.com/porters-5-forces-model-reference/porters-5-forces-model [Accessed 1/29/2012]
