5. What does IT governance cover? IT governance covers the efficient and effective use of IT in ensuring that an organization is able to meet its goals (Weill & Ross, 2004)
SAS is roughly double what a Microsoft SQL server would be but the overall better array of options and functions in addition to the fact that SAS can heavily be integrated and otherwise used with Microsoft products mitigates the concern of going with a solution that is not already in use (like Microsoft Office or Oracle Java and/or Database) (SAS, 2014). However, one source pegs the per user cost of SAS being $6,000 a head and that is rather high (Henschen, 2011)
Basically, they do not have a "cookie-cutter" solution that the force on everyone and this is as it should be. SAS is roughly double what a Microsoft SQL server would be but the overall better array of options and functions in addition to the fact that SAS can heavily be integrated and otherwise used with Microsoft products mitigates the concern of going with a solution that is not already in use (like Microsoft Office or Oracle Java and/or Database) (SAS, 2014)
This resulted in disconnected financial processes between accounting and sales which were run on two different platforms. The financial systems were grouped together with the resource planning system using Oracle (Boulton, 2003)
Another area to explore would be the expense associated with travel for business for a national or international organization. BI will assist in raising the ability to generate revenue through opportunities discovered in reporting and use of integrated business processes (Colby, 2008)
There are many systems or databases built in-house that store information and the knowledge already captured by companies is astounding. With so much more opportunity for data discovery which to digest once the different types of data are combined such as patient records and billing occurrences, patient services and patient satisfaction, accounting and training or human resources and personnel recruitment (King, 2009)
Business Intelligence Review Lessons Learned: BI Creates Less System Redundancy Provides Increased Responsiveness Improves Efficiency with More Accurate and Timely Access to records Produces Timely Reporting Affects Bottom Line with Reduced Human Resource Costs due to training or staffing IT professionals Reviewing Marshfield Clinic Lesson Learned for the Marshfield Clinic that has a staff of 6,500 and over 50 sites and 800+ medical professionals, it treats over a quarter of a million patients annually (Konitzer and Cummens,2011)
Cloud Computing Business Intelligence - Cloud Computing The emerging area of social marketing analytics which is today delivered on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or cloud platform (Lawrence, Melville, Perlich, Sindhwani, Meliksetian, Hsueh & Liu, 2010) is used for interpreting and analyzing all messages on social networks relating to a company or product (Raab, 2010)
The use of advanced unstructured content management techniques and systems including latent semantic indexing (LSI), semantic analysis, sentiment analysis are all used for interpreting and organizing unstructured content into models that can be used in decision-making (Tyagi, 2010). This new area of social marketing analytics for the first time gives companies the ability to quickly parse through unstructured content both internally and externally and gain new insights into how customers perceive their products and services (Tsai, 2009)
Evaluating Social Marketing BI Software The intent of using social marketing analytics software is to gain greater insights into the unstructured content that is growing exponentially on social networks. The use of advanced unstructured content management techniques and systems including latent semantic indexing (LSI), semantic analysis, sentiment analysis are all used for interpreting and organizing unstructured content into models that can be used in decision-making (Tyagi, 2010)
Given the nature of these new responsibilities, the staff members in the new team would not only be subjected to technical training, but also to managerial, and people skills training. This latter category of training programs would ensure that the staff members are best able to interact and communicate with the employees at the service providing company (American Society for Training and Development, 1998)
Globalization is generically understood as a mechanism which allows economic, political, technological and other values to transcend boundaries and impact the corresponding values in other global regions. The learner noted that process is often referred to as westernization or Americanization, with reference to the trend of the western and American values impacting the rest of the global community, and with little globalization being completed from the eastern hemisphere to the western one (Beck, Sznaider and Winter, 2003)
"Offshoring occurs when companies move processes and productive factors abroad, whether they are conducted by separately owned suppliers (offshore outsourcing) or by fully owned (captive) subsidiaries. Almost always work is moved to locations with lower costs" (Beutler, 2009)
The learner noted that the most relevant example in this sense is represented by the fact that globalization made possible the implementation of David Ricardo's theory of the comparative advantage. In other words, with the aid of globalization, economic agents became able to transcend boundaries and benefit from the comparative advantages of other countries (Goldstein, 2007)
Software At the level of the software, the company has traditionally used an in-house internet, or an intranet, defined as follows: "Intranets are in-house, platform-independent Web sites that serve the employees of the enterprise. Although intranet pages may provide links to the Internet, an intranet is not a site accessed by the general public" (Housel and Hom, 1999)
These developments -- integrated with the aid of updates -- are enormously beneficial for the firm as they generate efficiencies. Nevertheless, the learner has noted that they are also costly and can be difficult to purchase and use (Jaffe and Lerner, 2004)
Business Intelligence (BI) plan Business Intelligence Plan The international economic community is now focused on the financial crisis which commenced within the United States and soon spread out across the rest of the world. Additionally, recent emphasis is being placed on the riots in the Middle East and Africa, such as those in Egypt and Libya, which generate a primary impact materialized in an increase in the price of crude oil (Nunnally, 2011)
In this order of ideas, a new team would be formed and it would assess the legal, technical as well as moral dimensions of the outsourcing / offshoring process. The internal audit team would emphasize on the following: Full involvement in all stages of the outsourcing / offshoring process The management of knowledge and information The correlation of the organizational needs with the demands of the various categories of stakeholders (employees, customers, business partners, the general public and so on) The development and implementation of management plans related to outsourcing / offshoring The development and forwarding of suitable recommendations Efficient communications and ensuring that the it needs, as well as the needs and specifications of the outsourcing / offshoring process are adequately considered by the managerial team (Ray and Ramaswamy, 2007)
Additionally, the risks of espionage and information theft are not the single determinants of the need for knowledge acquiring. It has as such been learnt that the need for knowledge is also obvious at the simple operational level (Stamp, 2006)
In the case of offshoring however, the destination company is located in a different country, overseas. The lines below integrate the definitions of the two concepts: "Outsourcing is an activity where the supplier provides for the delivery of goods and/or services that would previously have been offered in-house by the buyer organization in a predetermined agreement" (Tho, 2005)