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Coupons Going Wireless, Essay Example

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Where should IT skills be taught; learned? Is there room for compromise? What should be the focus of Computer Science/Information Technology education and training?

The first factor is the knowledge barrier, as discussed before, lack of available support, consultants, customization and lack of business knowledge for aligning the application with business objectives. The second barrier is a lack of integration with the legacy software and hardware. Likewise, Forking is another barrier because open source software is coded by different groups of people and may not integrate with other open source software (Shelly & Frydenberg, 2010). Moreover, the technology associated with open source software is immature i.e. not tested nor does it have a successful history. However, in order to overcome these challenges, organizations must train their staff and hire third party support and maintenance services. Moreover, for eliminating integration issues with legacy systems, middleware can be used for supporting integration functions. Furthermore, for addressing forking, self-resolving capabilities with the aid of self-managed standards is required. In addition, to address software immaturity, organizations must follow open source software maturity models and white papers for proper evaluation.

Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of open source software. Discuss the ten things you can do (tomorrow) to improve business/IT convergence.

	An Open-Source Software	A Commercial Software
Comparitive Variables	Open Office	Microsoft Office 2010
Extent of Use	Recently celebrated its 100 millionth download since version 3.0	Microsoft’s 20-year old Office, in its latest beta incarnation
User’s Category	Smaller businesses with fewer tech assets	Big Commercial Organizations
Workplace Advantage	Being more usable on low-end workstations or mobile systems.
Latest Version	Open Office 3.2 was released offering a few more features	Microsoft’s Office 2010 suite was still in beta
User Interface	Open Office though with addition of new icons offers a simple interface	Office 2010 offers users a richly designed UI, with custom ribbon and smooth, efficient workspaces.
Ease of use of new versions	The simple design does not detract much from its earlier versions.	Everything remains within reach and does not dally too far from the familiar Microsoft layout. However, new online functions such as broadcast slideshow and so on sometimes need to be learned.
Some New Features	Open Office remains the basic, uncluttered suite of applications that it has always been. However, a noteworthy feature is Open Office’s subscription to the International Organization for Standardization, which ensures its ability to read and write in other formats. Naturally, this includes Microsoft’s.	Among some new functions, one can now edit media within Power Point and Word; Users are also able to export to PDF format, a feature previously unavailable. Other new features include the ‘Paste preview’ function and a much more polished version of its Web Apps service.
Dependence	Not as far reaching in its compatibility with other systems as the Microsoft has been.	If one is stuck away from the office, he or she can use any internet café to polish up that presentation or amend his/her spread sheet etc.
Ease of Installation	For the small business users, as the suite is readily available it can be installed very quickly on any broadband-enabled workstation. So being out of the office needn’t affect your productivity with either offering.(Open Office seems to have a heavier CPU though currently lighter on features	Comparatively requires a higher level of technical support to install the equipment.
Speed	Open Office is comparatively more agile than the Microsoft though lacks many of the bells and whistles of its counterpart	Operates well on lower-end hardware, with Microsoft’s Windows 7
System Requirements	Open Office marches ahead, demanding only 450MB of hard disk space over Microsoft Office’s 3GB. This could prove to be a telling factor in laptop and ultra-mobile installations.	Disc space much larger than the Open Office requirements.
Performance	Is comparatively much more slower than the Microsoft Office, though is said to be more stable and a mature suite of its applications	Experiments showed that Microsoft Office 2010 suite opened its applications in a much quicker time than the Open Office i.e. about one tenth of the time taken by the former.
Ease of Obtaining	It is easy to get hold of Open Office, provided one has a web connection.	Office 2010 is a slightly more mixed up affair, but yet not very complex. One obviously needs licenses and multi-user permits.

After discussing benefits for open source software, we will now discuss the barriers for organizations adopting open source software.

Discuss the IT products and services acquisition options? How are these performed at your place of business? If not at your place of business then note some that you have read about.

Google Docs is considered to be most widely used online tool for text editing, as it is a collaborative writing platform that utilize web 2.0 technologies (Feller, 2005). Google docs’ layouts are design for the easy usage. The interface present in any type of word processor includes tiny buttons that are meaningful and easily understandable. The large number of icons and symbols that are present in Google docs are used as the posting tools. In addition, it is very simple to use and understand front page of Google docs. There are different types of forms available that includes responses and Google results that can be emailed to anyone. Google will ask about the type of the document for example word document, presentation or spreadsheet if a new document is opened. Moreover, the documents are easily assembled into separate folders and can be restricted to specific users. The folders can be moved anywhere and can be prearranged according to the date or time.

Discuss Business Intelligence (BI) and the impact it will have business and data structures to include near term strategic goals.

A strategy must be defined for providing free meal coupons to the customers. Organizations are frequently implementing mobile media for promotional services via short message service. A Survey of 370 mobile phone users was conducted in Austria indicating that the attitude of the customers towards mobile coupons affects their intentions to redeem these coupons (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008). There must be a verification mechanism of these coupons. The mobile coupons should be associated with the unique ID for verification. The coupon should be in the form of text message otherwise the customer has to download it in the case of MMS. There are lots of spam text messages received by the customer; will they accept the coupons in the form of text messages which will give negative impact of the café? The frequency of transmitting the mobile coupons should be low to avoid this factor. Mc Donald has implemented the largest UK retail mobile marketing campaign (Thomas, 2002).

For detecting the cell phones and phone numbers with the help of the wireless network, marketing mobile coupons is not acceptable in this way. The Coupons will have Unique ID printed in the text message. Customers who are reluctant to send SMS to the system in order to receive a coupon are connecting their phone number to the unique ID. This offers a great prospect for gather information regarding customer activities. If the same number appears attached to multiple coupon unique IDs, then the customer is using the system to its full potential. If a new phone number penetrate in the system, it indicated the presence of a new customer or less likely old customer has a new phone number. A mobile coupon campaign has an established history for identifying customers who have not been in the organization for a long time.

The coupons are forwarded to other cell phones which allow the business organization to establish networks of customers. This information is precise and very effective for the organization to know the communities of people who frequent visit the business organization. The identification of customer who has forwarded on their coupon, allows the business organization to give reward to that customer for the referral.If unique IDs are connected with a data of sale record, then other items which the customer has purchased can be identified.

An employee is given the task to build the timesheet component of the Supply Chain Management system for the business organization. There are some vital elements which needs consideration. Before selecting vendors for the development of the organizations core business software, some questions are necessary.

What is the qualification of the employee
As compared to the revenue the business organization is generating, in-house development cost for software development is it the best option?
Employees past experience will also be considered. He has designed systems of similar capacity and function before?
Accountability is a very crucial factor as the café has not much to lose. If the employee develops a payroll system having bugs and deletes the records of the payroll of the employees and in the worst scenario the hard drive crashes including the database of all employees and customers. What is the backup procedure?

As compared to the above scenario, COTS product is available from a well-known reputable vendor with proper documentation and support. Documentation is the only essential element the organization possesses when a small system with no technical staff is implemented. The software house has self-service IVR and a 24 by 7 hours support center. The customization of the system makes it feasible for the organization in a long term perspective. The evaluation of COTS system needs to emphasize on the customization which will support the evolving business of the company.

A system which can take place in between these two is Microsoft access based system. A system based on Microsoft Access is not too complicated. There are wizards for creating each function making it easy as compared to other database systems. Developing a system based on Microsoft access, will also be a consideration as the staff adaptability of Microsoft access is relatively higher as compared to the in-house development system and the vendor based system.

It is not easy to evaluate the adaptability factor of the employees regarding the time keeping system. Those employees lacking experience with computers will find it difficult to deal with and can be stressed out. When the staff do not know how to navigate from field to field by using keyboard shortcuts, it is difficult to conclude the efficiency of the system rather than entering the data on paper.

The old employees will not be entertained by giving presentations of benefit on saving and entering data in the system which may force them to use the system. The factors related to cost savings and organized reports related to the business organization’s overall success, will encourage them more as compared to presentations and discussions. If the employees are encouraged, they might give their suggestions resulting in improving the overall system.

References

Dickinger, A., & Kleijnen, M. (2008). Coupons going wireless: Determinants of consumer intentions to redeem mobile coupons. Journal of Interactive Marketing (John Wiley & Sons), 22(3), 23-39. doi:10.1002/dir.20115

Feller, J. (2005). Perspectives on free and open source software MIT Press.

Shelly, G., & Frydenberg, M. (2010). Web 2.0: Concepts and applications Cengage Learning.

Thomas, D. (2002). McDonald’s takes the mobile plunge. Computer Weekly, , 10.