Week 12 - Clear

This week's content dealt with Information System Development. Within this topic, Change Management has been discussed, which I encountered in one of my prior courses "Management of Information Systems" at my home university "Maastricht University" already. I think this is a very interesting as well as highly important concept.

Change Management describes a process to coordinate and control the transitions of individuals, teams, and organizations from a current to a desired future state. You can look at it from two different points of view: on the one hand, there are the people, who implement the change, namely the managers. Their task is to effectively communicate the intent and necessity of the planned change and ensure, that processes, users and the organization in general, understands and implements the needed changes. On the other hand, there are the individuals, who receive the change and have to implement it and work with the changed processes, technologies, or the like. It is critical that they understand why the change is needed how it is being implemented, and in what way it affects their day-to-day operations.

The purpose of Change Management is to "have a systematic method of evaluating change requests, prioritizing, scheduling resources for implementation and the appropriate level of support".

I deem this concept as highly interesting and important in a world that is constantly changing and where technological advancements are being developed and applied in an incredibly high speed. Without effectively changing and adjusting to the rapid advancements in the business world today, companies risk loosing their competitive advantages in the sense that they become way less efficient than their competitors. Additionally, if the change is necessary to fulfill customer's needs and wants, they may loose any foothold in the market, which eventually results in the force to go out of business.

Sources: http://www.change-management.com/

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-change-management.htm

Week 11 - Clear

This week's topic dealt with databases and its management. Additionally we had to create a database on our own using Microsoft Access. In the chapter we had to prepare for this week, "data mining" was introduced. The book defines it as a "process to find patterns and relationships among data". I already encountered this concept several times in prior courses and think it is especially valuable, as well as important, to successfully compete in today's business environment.

Data mining is also known as "Knowledge-Discovery in Databases", since it employs algorithms to search large databases automatically to recognize patterns and connections among data points in these databases. These algorithms are based on statistical techniques and make it possible that we detect trends, relationships and the like, that we otherwise would not have detected, since the pool of data available to us is incredibly large and we could impossibly skim through all of it. Data mining is often utilized for a wide range of profiling practices, for example in marketing, where this process is commonly used to identify customers' current purchasing behavior and trends.

I consider this process very important in today's business environment because data mining is a powerful tool to more accurately forecast future sales and enables companies to be more responsive to its customers. Consequently, they can build a competitive advantage in their industry with the potential to become a sustainable one, if companies learn to utilize the data mining techniques effectively to build relationships with their customers.

Sources: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-data-mining.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_mining

Week 11 - Database Project

This week we had to create a database for a local gym with information about its members. This project was very value-adding to me since I learned the basic functions of Microsoft Access and how to individually create a database from scratch. Though I have never been in touch with this program, I now have the abilities to create tables; import and export data from different sources; perform different queries to display specific data I am interested in; create forms that conveniently show details about each member; and I can create reports, which display data according to different groups, sorted in a special way and the like. This makes me able to get the data I am interested in and view them in a way that is logical and structured to me. I am very sure that the knowledge I have acquired through this project will enhance my understanding of databases that are present in virtually every company today and make working with it easier for me in the future.

However, the steps I performed in this project were really basic. I think that this database needs to be a lot more comprehensive and more useful. MS Access offers the possibility to create relationships among different tables in the document, so that the maintenance would be even easier and consequently the validity of the data would be guaranteed. This would be important if the owner was to include the monthly membership fees in his database, to oversee the Members' IDs and who paid for them or who did not. This information could refer to another table that lists the Members' ID, as well as their addresses, so that the outstanding bills-reminder could then be sent to them. As I am really no expert in MS Access (yet), I can only vaguely suggest that there are many other improvements that could be made to this database, however, due to my limited knowledge I can not think of any other ones now.

Week 10 - Clear

This week's topic dealt with "Communication & Networks", which was especially interesting to me as I am a regular and convinced user of Skype. I am traveling a lot and during my 6 months stay in Australia it was unbelievable how complicated and expensive it was to call my family and friends back home. However, as soon as I returned to Germany (what a great timing...), I heard about this "Voice over IP" technology utilized by this program called "Skype". I downloaded Skype, started to use it, and I cannot imagine living without it anymore, to be honest. I used it during my studies in the Netherlands to stay in touch with my family and friends at home, to call my cousin, who lives in HongKong, and of course I frequently use it from the US to talk with my friends and relatives. And I can do this for free, if the persons I want to call have Skype and are online. If they also have a camera and a microphone, which are features of nearly every new computer or laptop, I can even see them when I call, because Skype also supports videoconferencing, which is really great. Additionally, I can also call landlines or mobile phones for very low costs using Skype, too. Another feature of Skype is, that I could request a Skype number, which is basically a regular landline number which friends etc. could call from their regular phones and then they would be connected to my computer or a mobile device, that is online at Skype. This is called "SkypeIn". All in all, Skype is a really great program, and as my grandma recently told me, it is way clearer than many other landline-phones and mobile devices.

As one can see, I know how to handle this program as I use it daily, and I am hence aware of the multiple advantages it provides. However, I researched a bit further because I was interested to find out, who actually invented Skype. As I found out, in 2003, it was developed in Europe, specifically in Luxembourg, by two Scandinavians: Niklas Zennström (Swedish) and Janus Friis (Danish). The name for the software program is derived from "Sky peer-to-peer", which was then abbreviated to "Skyper", but since no domain name with "Skyper" was available anymore, they dropped the last "r" and left was the name "Skype".

What was also interesting for me to know is how it is possible that this program can charge these really low prices (i.e. I call a regular landline in Germany for 1.7 Euro Cents). This happens, because the operators of Skype incur very low costs by operating on a peer-to-peer model instead of a usual client server model, which means that there is no centralized server but instead the user directories are stored on each user's computer.

All the features and benefits I listed above, make Skype a very important program for today's business world. I even had my final interview for my internship this summer over Skype and it would have not only been way more complicated to have this interview with only a regular landline, but also it would have been way more expensive. Thus, especially in this international business environment of the present, Skype provides significant cost saving opportunities and in my opinion it could also enhance understanding when communicating with business partners, as they can actually see you when talking, you can show them products or graphs or other things that may be important to your sale and so on.

Sources: http://about.skype.com/

http://www.skype.com/intl/en/allfeatures/onlinenumber/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype