Information Technology
Essays

What is a Business Information System? A program involving a business information system would prepare the person who is studying the intricacies of the process to be able to oversee the efficient and proper manner in…

Geographic information systems called GIS in short, is a constituent of all the complex geographic information technologies that exist today. The Global Positioning System or GPS and remote sensing are all parts of the…

Due to the Internet, the health care information that is being passed along to consumers is changing greatly. This can be good or bad, depending on who is being asked the question and how the healthcare information is…

The business level or business unit strategy is mid-level between corporate strategy, dealing with general directions the company needs to evolve towards, and operational strategy. As such, it can be defined as dealing…

Information technology is growing rapidly, and it is also changing and evolving at a rapid rate. There used to be complex issues that were dealt with technologically, but there was little done to manage and organize…

This reference material provides insights into the history of IBM. The material describes how IBM emerged as a dominate company within the technology and computing industry. The document then showcases various contracts the company has entered into. A brief description of a cloud computing contract awarded to IBM follows. The description details various aspects of the contract including costs and nature of the overall objectives of the contract.

The study explores the impact of globalization on the United States national security. The paper identifies globalization as the interrelation of networks that binds people and corporate organizations around the world. While there are several benefits that the United States derives from the advent of globalization, there are still issues that serve as security threats to the United States. To safeguard the country national security, the paper suggests that the United States needs to maintain the stock of nuclear weapons to serve as deterrent. More importantly, the country needs to assist its citizen to improve their level of education level

Creating transformational change in companies by automating their most challenging processes, strategies and systems is what Cincom Systems excels at today. The company has five different product divisions, each selling enterprise software into various segments of the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) marketplace. Privately held with 700 employees employed across five continents, Cincom is also profitable and has had many customers on maintenance contracts for over two decades. The future of Cincom is predicated on how well strategic plans can be defined and executed with its major partners including IBM, Microsoft and SAP. Of these three, Microsoft offers the greatest potential for accelerating the product development plans of the Cincom Manufacturing Business Solution (CMBS) business unit. CMBS generates between $7M to $10M a year in revenue, both on maintenance contracts in addition to new software sales, and has created a line of CRM and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems that are designed for complex manufacturers. In order to stay competitive, Cincom must move these systems to the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, which is how they can be migrated quickly and easily to Cloud computing platforms Microsoft has including the well-known Azure platform. This migration from being purely a licensed application to being on the SaaS platform also needs to include greater support for analytics and business intelligence (BI) within the applications as well. With these new features, the CMBS enterprise suite would be able to generate 30 – 40% more sales. In addition, the costs of supporting customers would drastically be reduced as the SaaS platform would make it possible to streamline new product releases on a central application platform. At present Cincom CMBS struggles with getting its enterprise customers to upgrade their existing CRM and ERP systems as well. With a SaaS-based system the company could roll out entire versions without having to deal with timing and costly delay issues as customers procrastinate on releases. This approach will help to alleviate one of the greatest hidden costs of enterprise software development, having to support multiple versions of legacy applications (Lindley, Topping, Lindley, 2008). It is anticipated this strategy will save nearly $7M over the next five years in development costs alone. Moving to a SaaS-based CRM and ERP systems will also significantly open up the opportunity to integrate these systems to legacy applications customers have neglected to integrate with their existing on-premise applications. The greater the level of integration between legacy systems and CRM and ERP software suites, the higher the Return on Investment (ROI) and more effective analytics and financial reporting (Borch, Hartvigsen, 1991). Cincom sees the potential in their three year strategic plan to solve long-standing problems that their on-premise software strategies have slowed down sales of their highest-end and most profitable enterprise software. The intent of this analysis is to provide a description of the Cincom Manufacturing Business Solutions (CMBS) business unit, perform a SWOT analysis, define how the Web Services plan created with Microsoft will impact their business in the next three years and how this plan will be measured and analyzed for effectiveness.

The project has developed the LAN and WAN technology for Oak Creek Healthcare. To facilitate the timely completion of the project, the project owner assigned the project to Hostlinks Telecommunication which is IT service provider specialized in the IT project. The early project completion assists Oak Creek Corporation to enjoy several benefits. First, the project has assisted Oak Creek Healthcare to enjoy the benefits of latest and best technology which facilitates the company to achieve market competitive advantages. Moreover, the project has assisted Oak Creek to enjoy easy flow of communication between the two sites. The new technology has also made the company to deliver safe and quality healthcare because the company has been able to eliminate medical and drug errors within the clinical settings.

Introduction In the research information presented in this chapter, the author will map out issues with regard to mobile networks and their use in marketing in hotels. A literature review, research objectives, the research problem and research questions are listed as well as the research methodology and the directions for more research in application development are mapped out in detail. Chapter Two-Literature Review The Importance of Mobile Media in the Hospitality Industry Multiple mobile networks and mobile channels are becoming a way of life, wherever people go, including while they are on the move and staying in hotels. This is clearly a responsibility that is under the administrative purview of e-managers in hotels. In such a case, unclear strategies for channel usage, lack of expertise and technical challenges can hinder the effective deployment of this technology. In this vein, in a recent survey in the online magazine Gleanster found that 94% of their interviewed top performers view an "increase return on marketing investment" as the top reason to deploy mobile marketing ("How top performers," 2011). So, what is driving this reliance upon the technology? As usual, it is the consumer in an industry and the hotel industry is no different in this respect. Hoteliers are therefore required to respond to it since the mobile has become an important travel planning and booking channel for 67% percent of travelers and 77% of frequent business travelers who use their devices locally. This is important because hotel consumers demand instant, real time access where ever they are in order to further refine the trip. Further, the trend is to more connectivity with more hoteliers fitting mobile sites into their budget planning (37.5% in 2011 vs 25.9% in 2010) and mobile booking engines (37.5% in 2011 vs. 22.4% in 2010) (Starkov, 2011) . Certainly, hospitality marketers have a major issue in connectivity of their channels with these phone applications, regardless of technology upgrades in terms of the hotel applications and the phone software. New technology is of course the key. This is particularly the case with smartphones which will cover 50% of the U.S adult population by 2012 (ibid.). Applications on cell phones are becoming very important in this mix. Of the smartphones that Americans have, the largest market is Android OS with 36%, followed by Apple iOS 26% and RIM Blackberry OS 23% (Getting started —, 2011, 3). All of the technology is wonderful, however, the key questions that marketers in the hospitality industry need to know how to apply mobile marketing, what the benefits of mobile marketing are for hotels and what the issues are that need to be considered in the application of mobile marketing in hotels. As mentioned above, connectivity with the customer's phone application is critical. So as not to be caught up too much in specific technological niches in this short essay. However, it is critical to also retain some kind of access point, especially for hoteliers with small budgets who are being priced out of the mobile marketing market. Indeed, as we see in the Starkov piece, 38.4% of hoteliers in 2011 vs. 32.8% in 2010 planned no mobile marketing at all. Starkov even went so far as to suggest that hotels do not require a mobile application if they are single-property, independent hotel (Starkov, 2011, 2). However, while the new gadgets causing a hospitality revolution, the bits of interacting everything together competently is central to the equation, regardless of hotel size. This is where social media comes to play and customer tweets fly around the world in order to gauge the direction of our research study. According to travel blogger Clay Shirky who maintains that media is now digital and is moving to the Internet, instantly becoming a universally available, interactive environment where everyone is a participant, creating their own channels, media, messages and processes that deliver the travel information ("The future of," 2012). Social media has been extensively studied of late at the early stages and a recent study published in January 2011 examined Facebook and Twitter in a study of Italian tourism websites. The relationship of the social media was analyzed with regard to total visits and the performance of those online social networks as referrals were also studied. The study showed a clear correlation between social media and travel websites visits (Milano, Baggio & Piattelli, 2011). Much of the above applications will be increasingly powered by extensive web analytics such as Google Analytics to make sure that the hotel is being found and how to track. This would also help in tracking which hotel websites are being visited and when (Measuring the success, 2011, 1). Briefly also, we should consider the phenomenon of Google Maps and Google Earth which are empowering tourists to interactively exchange information about each regarding travel. Of course, the beauty of these applications are that they are completely compatible with the Google Android Smartphone ("Android market: ," 2011). Chapter Three-Research Methodology Problem Statement The main objective or purpose of the research is to find applications, benefits and issues to be considered during the implementation process of the mobile marketing in hotels. Central to this effort is how to make mobile marketing work in hotels, particularly small ones, which were the focus of this studies research methodology. As emphasized above, many small hotels have neglected mobile marketing altogether. For this reason, there is a pressing need for research into the ways that small hotels can effectively use mobile marketing in their promotion efforts and how to increase customer connectivity and the ability to find the hotel on the web and to interact with the sales and marketing staff dynamically in order to capture customer brand name loyalty and to leverage more market share. In the past development, mobile phone applications were based simply upon search on a map on the mobile terminal device display. Application technology development methodology allowed simple adaptation and implementation with via cooperation with the operators of mobile phone systems. Customers are demanding additional functionality users regarding tourist resources, information to the users about other local objects and activities, including the ability to completely personalize the applications by users (Perakovic, Jovovic & Forenbacher, 2010, 66). It is safe to say that hotels use mobile marketing as a communication tool in order to inform customers about new events and specials and to increase traffic to their Internet website through booking functions inside the application. An interesting area where there is room for further research is tied in with social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook that seem at least at first glance are more effective. Social media seems to be a leveler of the marketing playing field for small hospitals. This is potentially has exciting potential in combination with Google Maps and Google earth because it is directly compatible with the Android smartphone. They could provide the extra, dynamic and customizable features that customers would want and would attract them to stay at small hotels. As mentioned above, there is a direct social media cbetween social media use by hotel guests and the travel websites they visited (Milano, Baggio & Piattelli, 2011). Research Questions How do hotels apply mobile marketing? What are the benefits of mobile marketing for hotels? What are the issues to be considered the in application of mobile marketing in hotels? Foundational Issues In the explanation of these research objectives, it needs to be stated that the objective is to explore the ways hotels apply and benefit from mobile marketing from the various applications and also to find out the issues that need to be considered during implementation the implementation of mobile marketing. The author has chosen case study methods as the research methodology to do this job. For this purpose, data collection was performed in 6 small hotels (5 of them being 4 star, with one of them being a 5 star hotel). Analysis of the data was done by within-case and cross-case analysis with regard to the mobile marketing applications. Within-case analysis allows researcher to analyze the interview data from hotels against the previous research or literature, boiling down a large amount of data into readily digestible and easily understood segments. Afterwards cross-case analysis is implemented to compare all cases to each other in order to find common patterns or themes, which also makes it easier to conclude the research. In general, case study methodology requires multiple sources of data. In the case of this study, the observation of mobile application, Internet website and mobile website of interviewed hotels was central to the research. Some hotels also provided the author with some artifacts that are also considered as sources of data (such as a flier and chocolate bar which had QR code on them). Conclusion In this chapter, the author has mapped out issues with regard to mobile networks and their use in marketing in hotels. A literature review, research objectives, the research problem and research questions were listed as well as the research methodology and the direction for more research was mapped out in detail.