ISDS 2001 Final Review Q Most important service of Harrah s Total Rewards program It provides a vast collection of high volume real time transaction data about its customers and their behaviors Q Harrah s business needs or problems Competition Low profits due to the downturn in the economy Loyalty program Q Harrah s solution Total Gold or Total Rewards a customer loyalty program Q False BPM is an enterprise wide strategy that helps to optimize local business performance Q BPM encompasses a core set of processes including financial and operational planning consolidation and reporting modeling analysis ad monitoring KPI s linked to organizational strategy Q BPM helps organizations translate a unified set of objectives into plans monitor execution and deliver critical insight to improve financial and operational performance Q BPM is an enterprise wide strategy that seeks to prevent organizations from optimizing local business at the expense of overall corporate performance Q An operational plan translates an organization s strategic objectives and goals into a set of well defined tactics and initiatives resources requirements and expected results for some future time period Q An operational plan is like a project plan that is designed to ensure that an organization s strategy is realized Q An effective performance measurement system should a Determine priorities and allocate resources based on those priorities b Align top level strategic objectives and bottom level initiatives c Identify opportunities in a timely fashion Q Good performance measures should Balance the needs of all stakeholders shareholders employees partners suppliers etc Start at the top and trickle down to the bottom Have targets that are based on research and reality rather than be arbitrary Q In the BPM cycle Plan stage has budgets forecasts models initiatives and targets Strategize stage has values goals objectives and incentives Monitor Analyze stage has performance dashboards reports and analytical tools Act Adjust stage must leaders interpret collaborate assess and track Q Balanced scorecard is the best known and most widely used performance measurement system Q Balanced scorecard has three non financial objectives 1 Customers 2 3 Learning and Growth Internal business process Q Performance scorecards are visual displays used to chart progress against strategic and tactical goals and targets Q Sigma is a Greek alphabet letter used by statisticians to measure the variability in a process Q What is true about Six Sigma a Six Sigma is ordinarily utilized in manufacturing service delivery management and other business activities that rely on eliminating defects waste and quality control problems b Six Sigma is a performance management methodology aimed at reducing the number of defects in a business process to as close to zero defects per million opportunities DPMO as possible c DMAIC is utilized in Six Sigma based data mining processes Q DMAIC is a closed loop business improvement model and NOT a financial investment model Q A basic task in the strategic planning process is to conduct an environmental scan which is a standard strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats SWOT assessment of the company Q Best practice organizations tend to utilize tactic centric operational planning which begins the operational planning process of defining the alternative tactics and initiatives that can be used to reach a particular target Q An organization s strategic objectives and key metrics should serve as top down drivers for the allocation of an organization s tangible and intangible assets Q Expedia com case study describes the Web based KPI scorecard system that offers insights into the steps this company took to implement its performance measurement system Q Casual Male Retail Group case study was about a company which began using an on demand BI tool from the vendor Oco which takes all of the company s data builds and maintains a DW offsite and creates responsive real time reporting dashboards that enable users to have information at their fingertips Q Coca Cola case study was about using RFID technology to track sales and customer taste preferences Q Parts of a cybernetic system are inputs standard and feedback channel Q An effective diagnostic control system encourages management by exception Q Starbucks Coffee should have used discovery driven planning which offers systematic ways to uncover problematic assumptions that otherwise remain unnoticed and unchallenged Q Hackett s benchmarking results indicate World class companies closely align strategic and tactical plans enabling functional areas to contribute more effectively to overall business goals Q False Developing an effective BI application is no longer complex Q Reasons why BI projects fail a Failure to recognize BI projects as enterprise wide business initiatives and that they differ from typical stand alone solutions b Lack of business sponsors with the ability to ensure funding c Lack of qualified and available staff Q Major objectives for BI software integration include a Increasing the capabilities of the BI applications b Enabling real time decision support c Enabling more powerful applications Q A multi tiered application architecture consists of Web browser Web server application server and database server Q One of the significant differences between Web 2 0 and the traditional Web is the greater collaboration among Internet users and other users content providers and enterprises of Web 2 0 Q MySpace Facebook Wikipedia and YouTube are examples of online social networks Q A primary reason why Facebook has expanded so rapidly is the network effect which refers to the principle that more users means more value Q The intention of virtual worlds is to achieve a feeling of telepresence and participation from a distance Q Which is NOT an advantage of using Second Life for decision support Pranksters and spam are filtered out Q Several factors keep virtual worlds from gaining widespread acceptance such as Requires downloading of a plug in Q Today collaboration on decisions involves non routine activities such as brainstorming discovering innovating creating and leading teams learning and relating Q The difference between active and passive RFID tags is active tags have a battery as their own power source and do not need a reader to energize them like passive tags do Q RFID tag data for products contain Manufacturer product and serial number Q Gillette has