Assignment: Microblogs like Twitter
Assignment: Microblogs like Twitter
Competitive Challenges Competitors come from both expected and unexpected places. General managers are in the best position to see the emerging threats and utilize IS effectively to combat ever‐changing competitive challenges. Further, general man- agers are often called on to demonstrate a clear understanding of how their own technology programs and products
5 Jeremy King, “Why Every Company Is a Tech Company” (November 21, 2013), http://www.walmartlabs.com/2013/11/21/why‐every‐company‐is‐a‐ tech‐company‐by‐jeremy‐king‐cto‐of‐walmartlabs (accessed August 18, 2015).
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5What If a Manager Doesn’t Participate?
compare with those of their competitors. A deep understanding of the capabilities of the organization coupled with existing IS can create competitive advantages and change the competitive landscape for the entire industry.
Customer Pull With the emergence of social networks like Facebook, microblogs like Twitter, and other Web applications like Yelp, businesses have had to redesign their existing business models to account for the change in power now wielded by customers and others in their communities. Social media and other web apps have given powerful voices to customers and communities, and businesses must listen. Redesigning the customer experience when inter- acting with a company is paramount for many managers and the key driver is IS. Social IT enables new and often deeper relationships with a large number of customers, and companies are learning how to integrate and leverage this capability into existing and new business models.
Data‐Driven Decision Making Managers are increasingly using evidence‐based management to make decisions based on data gathered from experiments, internal files, and other relevant sources. Data‐driven decision making, based on new techniques for analytics, data management, and business intelligence, has taken on increased importance. Social media have cre- ated a rich stream of real‐time data that gives managers increased insights to the impact of decisions much faster than traditional systems. Mid‐course corrections are much easier to make. Predictive and prescriptive analytics give suggestions that are eerily close to what happens. Big data stores can be mined for insights that were unavailable with traditional IS, creating competitive advantage for companies with the right tools and techniques.
Securing Key Assets As the use of the Internet grows, so does the opportunity for new and unforeseen threats to company assets. Taking measures to ensure the security of these assets is increasingly important. But decisions about security measures also impact the way IS can be used. It’s possible to put so much security around IT assets that they are locked down in a manner that gets in the way of business. At the same time, too little security opens up the possibility of theft, hacking, phishing, and other Web‐based mischief that can disrupt business. Managers must be involved in decisions about risk and security to ensure that business operations are in sync with the resulting security measures.
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
