CMIS 526 Final Exam

What does it mean to make the business case? - Answer- Making the case is a process of identifying, quantifying, and presenting the value provided by a system. How does a manager make a business case? - Answer- Managers have to build a strong, integrated set of arguments and evidence to prove that an investment is adding value to the organization or its constituents. How is the business case used for a proposed system? How is the business case used for an existing system? - Answer- The business case will be used to determine whether the new system is a "go" or "no-go." It will be used to determine whether the company will continue to fund the system for an existing system. What is the main business can objective? - Answer- The goal is to ensure that the investment adds value, that it helps the firm achieve its strategy, and competitive advantage over its rival and that money is being spend wisely. While it is easy to quantify the costs associated with developing an information system, it is often difficult to quantify tangible productivity gains from its use. Why? - Answer- This is because information systems may have increased productivity but other forces may have simultaneously worked to reduce it; the end results being difficult to identify. Government regulations, more complex tax codes, stricter financial reporting requirements, etc. can all have major impacts on a firm's productivity. It is true that information systems introduced with the best intentions may have had unintended consequences. What is an example of this? - Answer- Many companies give employees access to e-mail and the Internet. Now employees are spending excessive amounts of time surfing the web, reading junk mail, posting on social media, etc. This wastes billions of dollars lost in productivity each year. What are some of the reasons that have been given for the apparent productivity paradox? - Answer- measurement, time lags, redistribution, and mismanagement Productivity Paradox: Describe measurement issues. - Answer- Firms may be measuring the wrong things. Often, the biggest increases in productivity result from increased effectiveness, but many business metrics focus on efficiency. An example of this is online banking. How much has online banking contributed to banking productivity? Traditional statistics might look at the adoption rate of the service but this may not work well because some older customers may not want to bank online so a reduction in the number of traditional branches good threaten a potentially large number of very good customers while at the same time inflating the percentage of online banking users.