The Information Age and IoT Impact

The Information Age

• The Information age is a period of time where vast amounts of facts are readily available to anyone who can utilize a computer.

Competing in the Information Age

• The influence of information technology on the global business environment is comparable to the impact of the printing press on publishing and productivity.

Connected Devices Driving the Fourth Industrial Revolution

• The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of devices that connect to the internet to collect and share data, enhancing performance without human intervention. Some examples include smart home devices and connected vehicles.
• Machine-to-Machine (M2M) refers to the interaction of two or more connected devices via wireless or wired connections. They share data and perform analytics without human intervention, for example in industrial automation with smart meters.

Core Drivers of the Information Age

• Data: Raw facts that describe the characteristics of an event or object.
  • Big Data: Encompasses large volumes of structured and unstructured data, characterized by:
    • Variety: Different forms of structured and unstructured data such as spreadsheets, documents, emails, videos, photos, voices and PDFs.
    • Veracity: Data uncertainty, including biases, noise, and abnormalities. For example, fake accounts, spam, and misinformation on social media platforms.
    • Volume: The scale of data. For instance, e-commerce companies process millions of transactions daily which may include customer ID, product ID, price, quantity, shipping, and billing information.
    • Velocity: The analysis of streaming data as it travels around the internet, like financial trading firms making investment decisions based on real-time data (stock prices, trading volumes, and news headlines).

Structured Data

• Structured data has a defined length, type, and format, including numbers, dates, or strings (e.g. Customer Address format).
  • Machine-generated structured data: Created by a machine without human intervention, such as smart meters automatically recording electricity, gas, or water consumption.
  • Human-generated structured data: Data that humans create while interacting with computers, like filling out online surveys with multiple-choice questions or rating scales.

Information

• Information is data converted into a meaningful and useful context.
• A variable represents a data characteristic that changes or varies over time.

Report

• Report: A document that presents data organized in a table, matrix, or graphical format to aid users in understanding information.
  • Dynamic report: Changes automatically during creation.
  • Static report: Created once using data that doesn't change.

Business Intelligence

• Business Intelligence: Information collected from multiple sources like suppliers, customers, competitors, partners, and industries to analyze patterns, trends, and relationships for strategic decision-making.

Business Analytics

• Business Analytics: The scientific process of transforming data into information to facilitate data-driven business decisions.
  • Descriptive Analytics: Describes historical performance (e.g. A clothing store analyzes sales data to understand seasonal trends and customer preferences).
  • Diagnostic Analytics: Examines data to understand why something happened (e.g. A restaurant analyzes feedback to understand why customer visits dropped).
  • Predictive Analytics: Uses past data to predict future trends and identify behavioral patterns (e.g. An online retailer uses past purchase data to predict product demand during holidays).
  • Prescriptive Analytics: Creates models to recommend the best course of action (e.g. A logistics company uses data to optimize delivery routes).

The MIS Solution

• Democratization: Making something accessible to everyone.
• Data Democratization: Enables everyone to collect, analyze, and access data.
• Successful companies integrate the operations of all departments via cross-functional operations and systems.

Systems Thinking

• Systems Thinking: A way of monitoring the entire system by viewing multiple inputs being processed or transformed to produce outputs while continually gathering feedback on each part.

Management Information Systems (MIS)

• Management Information Systems (MIS): A business function, like accounting and human resources, which moves information about people, products, and processes across the company to facilitate decision-making and problem-solving. The MIS department gathers, stores, cleans, and analyzes data from all transaction processing systems.

MIS Department Roles and Responsibilities

• Chief Information Officer (CIO): Oversees information and ensures MIS aligns with business goals and objectives.
• Chief Data Officer (CDO): Determines the types of information that the organization will capture, retain, analyze, and share.
• Chief Technology Officer (CTO): Ensures the throughput, speed, accuracy, availability, and reliability of information.

Identifying Competitive Advantages

• Competitive advantage: Occurs when customers value an organization's product or service more than similar offerings from competitors.
• First-mover advantage: Achieved by being the first to market with a competitive advantage, leading to market share, brand recognition, and customer loyalty.

SWOT Analysis

• SWOT analysis: Evaluates an organization's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats to identify significant influences that work for or against business strategies.

The Five Forces Model

• The Five Forces Model: Evaluates the attractiveness of an industry by considering five forces:
  • Buyer Power (Customer Power): The ability of buyers to influence the price of an item, including the impact of switching costs and loyalty programs.
  • Supplier Power: The suppliers' ability to influence the prices they charge for supplies, impacted by the supply chain.
  • Threat of Substitute Products or Services: High when many alternatives exist and low when there are few alternatives.
  • Threat of New Entrants: High when new competitors can easily enter a market and low when significant entry barriers exist.
  • Competitive Rivalry: The intensity among current rivals in the industry.

Explore the transformative effects of the Information Age, focusing on the Internet of Things (IoT) and the role of information technology in business. This quiz covers the significance of data, smart devices, and machine-to-machine communication as key components driving the Fourth Industrial Revolution.