Digital Business: Key Concepts

Digital Business Concepts

• Digital Darwinism means organizations that cannot adapt to new demands in the information age are doomed.
• Disruptive technology introduces new ways of doing things that initially don't meet existing customer needs.
• Sustaining technology involves improved products eager customers are willing to buy.
• The innovator's dilemma refers to how incumbents use disruptive technologies without damaging relationships with existing customers, partners, and stakeholders.

Internet and WWW

• The internet is a network connecting computers globally.
• It requires organizations to adapt to changing markets, economic environments, and technologies.
• Initially, the Internet was developed for emergency military communication by the Department of Defense.
• The World Wide Web (WWW) provides access to internet information through documents, graphics, audio, and video files using HTML.
• HTML (hypertext markup language) is the special formatting language for these files.
• A web browser allows users to access the WWW.
• Hypertext transport protocol is the internet protocol browsers use with URLs to request and display web pages.
• URL stands for universal resource locator.
• Growth of the WWW was due to the microcomputer revolution, networking advancements, easy-to-use browser software, speed, convenience, low email costs, and flexible web pages.
• Web 1.0 acted as a catalyst for e-business during the WWW's early years of operation (1991-2003).
• E-business encompasses e-commerce and all activities related to internal/external business operations.
• E-commerce involves buying and selling goods and services online.
• Paradigm Shift describes a new, transformative form of business that reshapes company and organizational behavior.

E-Business Advantages

• Expanding global reach grows the number of people a firm communicates with worldwide.
• Information richness is the depth and breadth of detail in communicated information.
• Opening new markets involves mass customization through tailoring products to customer specifications.
• Personalization involves crafting offers based on customer likes and dislikes.
• Disintermediation sells directly to customers online, cutting out intermediaries.
• Intermediaries are agents, software, or businesses facilitating transactions between buyers and sellers.
• A heat map is a 2D data representation expressing values as colors.
• Interactivity measures advertising effectiveness by interactions, including time spent, pages viewed, and repeat visits.
• Stickiness refers to the amount of time spent on a site or app.
• Viral marketing induces users to pass marketing messages to grow the message's visibility.
• Clickstream is the exact path a visitor takes through a website.
• Clickstream analytics collects, analyzes, and reports aggregate data on website visitor behavior.
• Website traffic analytics uses clickstream data to assess site efficiency at the operational level.
• Website e-business analytics uses clickstream data to determine the effectiveness of the site as a channel-to-market.
• Showrooming occurs when customers browse in physical stores but buy the product online for less.
• An e-business model details how a company creates, delivers, and generates internet revenues.
• Brick-and-mortar businesses operate with physical presence only.
• Click-and-mortar businesses operate with both physical and online presences.
• Pure-play (virtual) businesses operate purely online.
• Search engine ranking evaluates variables used to determine where a URL appears in search results.
• Optimization improves URL attractiveness to search engines for higher ranking.
• Organic search results are unpaid entries based on content.
• Paid search results are links a company paid to display.
• An affiliate program allows businesses to generate commissions or referral fees when a customer clicks a link to anothers web page.
• Click fraud artificially inflates traffic statistics for online ads.
• Hitbots create the illusion of high link clicks without generating real profit.

Web 2.0

• Web 2.0 is the next generation of internet use with more mature, distinct communications characterized by collaboration, sharing, and content being free.
• Direct-to-consumer model where companies build, market, sell, and ship their own products.
• Advantages for customer experience, data collection, and reduced costs.
• An open system consists of nonproprietary hardware and software based on known standards.
• Third parties use open systems to create add-on products that can be integrated.
• Source code involves instructions written by a programmer for computer software.
• Open-source software has source code available for third parties to review and modify.
• Closed-source software is proprietary software licensed under exclusive copyright.
• Native advertising attempts to gain attention by providing content in the user's experience.
• A reputation system allows buyers to post feedback on sellers.
• Knowledge management systems capture, organize, and disseminate knowledge, which falls into explicit or tacit categories.
• Explicit knowledge is documented and codified, while tacit knowledge resides in people's heads.
• Crowdsourcing harnesses the wisdom of the crowd.
• Crowdfunding raises money through small contributions from many people.
• Asynchronous communication is when messages and responses do not occur at the same time.
• Synchronous communication occurs in real-time.
• Business 2.0 is all about social networking, connecting people by profile information.
• Social networking involves expanding business contacts through a personal network.
• Social networking analysis maps group contacts to identify who knows each other and who works together.
• Misinformation is false information presented as fact without deceitful intent, while disinformation is false information presented intentionally to deceive.
• Fake news stories are widely shared to promote or discredit a public figure, political movement, or company.

Web 3.0

• The deep web is a large part of the internet not accessible to conventional search engines.
• The dark web is intentionally hidden from search engines, masking IP addresses and requiring a special web browser.

Data, Information, and Business Intelligence

• Data has levels, formats, and granularities.
• Transactional data facilitates daily operations
• Analytical data supports managerial tasks.
• Timeliness of data is situation-dependent.
• Real-time data is immediate and up-to-date.
• Data inconsistency results when the same element has different values.
• Data integrity issues occur when systems produce incorrect, inconsistent, or duplicate data.
• Data quality characteristics include accuracy, completeness, consistency, timeliness, and uniqueness.
• Low-quality data comes from customers intentionally entering inaccurate information, differing entry standards, operational errors, and third party inaccuracies.
• Businesses can be affected by low quality data through an inability to accurately track customers and poor marketing.
• Good data improves decision-making and may impact an organization's bottom line.
• A data steward ensures data policies and procedures are implemented.
• Governance refers to the overall management of data security.
• Master data management gathers data, ensuring uniformity, accuracy, consistency, and completeness.
• Data validation includes tests evaluating compliance with data governance policies.
• Storing data is done in databases, which maintain data about inventory, transactions, people, and warehouses.
• Database management systems (DBMS) create, read, update, and delete relational database data.
• A data element is the smallest or basic unit of data
• A data model is logical data structures that detail the relationships among data
• Metadata are details of the data
• A data dictionary compiles metadata about data elements in the data model.
• An entity is a person place thing transaction or event about which data are stored
• An attribute (field, column) is a data element associated with an entity.
• A record is a collection of related data elements.
• Keys identify entities (tables).
• A primary key uniquely identifies a given entity in a table.
• A foreign key is a primary key from one table that appears as an attribute in another table to act as a logical relationship between tables.
• Increased flexibility, scalability, performance, data integrity, and data security are the advantages of using databases.
• Data integrity measures data quality.
• Integrity constraints are rules ensuring data quality.
• Access levels determine who has data access, whereas access control determines the type of user access.
• Data redundancy is the duplication of data in multiple places.

Business Intelligence

• Access to organizational data can be difficult if the data is unstructured and there is too much information and not enough insights.
• Business intelligence enables users to receive reliable, consistent, understandable, and easily manipulated data.
• Data warehouses extend data transformation into information and support decision-making.
• Data warehouses aggregate data throughout an organization for decision-making purposes.
• Extracting, transformation, and loading (ETL) is the process that extracts, transforms, and loads data into a data warehouse.
• A data mart contains a subset of data warehouse data.
• A data cube represents multi-dimensional data.
• A data lake is a storage repository holding raw data until needed.
• Data cleansing weeds out and fixes inconsistent, incorrect, or incomplete data.
• Cleansing or scrubbing fixes dirty, erroneous, or flawed data.
• Data visualization technologies allow users to "see" or visualize in order to transform data into a business perspective.
• Data Visualization tools move beyond excel graphs and charts to support analytical techniques.
• Business intelligence dashboards track corporate metrics and include controls to manipulate data for analysis.
• Distributed computing processes and manages algorithms across many machines.
• A ledger records classified and summarized transactional data.
• Blockchain consists of permanent and tamper-proof blocks of data.
• Proof of work defines a resource intensive calculation, called mining, that needs to be performed in order to create a distributed ledger or blockchain.
• The primary goals are to verify the legitimacy of a transaction while avoiding the so-called double spending and to create new digital currencies by rewarding miners for doing the previous task.
• A blockchain is formed by linking blocks containing a hash, previous hash, and data.
• The genesis block is the first block created in the blockchain.
• A hash is a function converting letters and numbers into an encrypted output of a fixed length.
• Proof of stake validates transactions without computing power.
• Immutability and digital trust are blockchain advantages.

MIS Infrastructures

• MIS infrastructure includes plans to build, deploy, use, and share data, processes, and MIS assets.
• MIS infrastructure contains hardware, software, networks, clients, and servers and supports operations.
• A backup is the exact copy of a system's information
• Recovery is the ability to restore a system.
• A disaster recovery plan recovers information or IT systems after catastrophes.
• A business continuity plan recovers and restores interrupted critical functions after disasters.

Agile MIS Infrastructure

• Emergency Preparedness ensures a company is ready to respond.
• A business impact analysis identifies critical business functions.
• Hot sites and cold sites are different types of recovery locations.
• Agile MIS infrastructure supports change.
• Characteristics of Agile MIS infrastructure: Accessibility, availability, maintainability, portability, reliability, vulnerability, and scalability.
• Scalability is how well a system adapts to increased demands.
• Performance is how fast a system performs.
• Capacity planning determines environmental infrastructure requirements.
• Usability refers to how easy a system is to learn and use.
• Serviceability refers to how quickly a 3rd party can change a system.
• Sustainable MIS Infrastructure supports the environment.
• Moore's Law states computer chip doubled every 18 months.
• Expansion of business tech leads to increased e-waste and energy consumption.
• A grid computing collection uses computers to solve common problems.
• Virtualized computing allows for creating multiple virtual machines on one computer.
• Data centers house virtualized MIS.
• Sustainable data centers chose geographical locations, reduces carbon emissions, and reduce required floor space.

Cloud Computing

• In cloud computing, multi-tenancy is a system instance serving multiple customers.
• Single Tenancy refers to each tenant having to maintain an individual system.
• A cloud fabric is a software that enables cloud computing.
• Broad network access allows all devices to access data and applications.
• Rapid elasticity quickly increases or decreases computing capacity.
• Private, public, and hybrid are the various cloud types.

Network Basics

• A telecommunication system transmits data over networks.
• Networks are created linking multiple devices.
• Local, metropolitan and wide area networks are the the three types of networks.
• Networks are differentiated by architecture, which includes peer to peer/ client service.
• Clients request information from servers in order to respond to other requests.
• A network operating system steers information between computer, and manages security.
• Packet switching occurs when a computer sends a message that is divided into smaller parts, called packets.
• A router examines each packet and decides how to send the packet.
• Topology refers to the configuration of network components.
• Wireless is a type of media.
• Protocols are standards specifying data formats and transmission rules.
• The OSI Model enables diverse communication models to converse using standard protocols.
• Transmission control Protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP) provides technical foundation for the public internet as well as for large numbers of private network.
• Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) uses TCP/IP tech to transmit voice calls.
• Wired and wireless are the two media that can be used to transmit network signals.
• E-business networks provide for the transparent exchange of information with transparency, reliability, secure exchange, and scalability.
• They also act as integrators for digital and traditional businesses.