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AN INTRODUCTION TO DIFFERENTIATED LEARNING TOOLS

Participants in flexible learning programs have limitations on the nature of the time they can spend on learning. Typically they are employed fully or partially, pursuing higher studies or have other social and familial responsibilities. Availability of time is a great constraint to these students.

To aid the participants, we have developed four unique learning tools as below:

Bullet Notes : Helps in introducing the important concepts in each unit

of curriculum, equip the student during preparation of examinations and

Case Studies : Illustrate the concepts through real life experiences

Workbook : Helps absorption of learning through questions based on real life nuggets

PEP Notes :Sharing notes of practices and experiences in the Industry will help the student to rightly perceive and get inspired to learn concepts at the cutting edge _{application level.}placementinterviews

Why are these needed?	· Adults learn differently from B. School or college going

	students who spend long hours at campus.
	· Enhancing analytical skills through application related learning
	kits trigger experiential learning
	· Availability of time is a challenge.
	· Career success increasingly depends on continuous learning
	and success

What_· makes it relevant?

How_· is it useful?

Where· does this lead to?

Easier to move ahead in the learning process.

Will facilitate the student to complete the program earlier than _otherwise.Helpsstay motivated and connected.

When_· is it useful?

Case Studies:

IT & Systems

The ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education (IFHE), Hyderabad, April, 2015. All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spread sheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise – without prior permission in writing from The ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education (IFHE), Hyderabad.

Ref. No. IT-CS-IFHE – 042015

For any clarification regarding this book, the students may please write to The ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education (IFHE), Hyderabad giving the above reference number of this book specifying chapter and page number.

While every possible care has been taken in type-setting and printing this book, The ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education (IFHE), Hyderabad welcomes suggestions from students for improvement in future editions.

CONTENTS

1	Computer Organization for Flipkart‟s Big Billion Sale	v
2	Microsoft‟s Operating System for Organizational Productivity	vi
3	Medicity Technology Platform enables Transfer of Information	vii
4	Organizing Spread sheets for Business Benefits	viii

Health Information Exchange: New Workflow at

	Winchester Highland Management	ix
6	The National Highways Authority of India – Modernized MIS	x
7	Validus Re‟ Successfully Tries Revolution Analytics for Risk Management	xi
8	Data Smart Culture at Seven-Eleven, Japan	xiii
9	Balluff GmbH Gains Benefits through Gigabit Network	xiv
10	NTT Docomo Accelerates M-Commerce in Japan	xv
11	Indian Railway Redesigns MIS to Achieve Bi-directional Facilities	xvii
12	Strategic Approach to Implement MIS in SoCtronics Technologies	xviii
13	E-Governance – Government of India initiatives for Income Tax Services	xix
14	Amazon Web Services‟ Strategies for Managing IT Globally	xx
15	The Case of FAO (Finance & Accounting Outsourcing) Industry	xxi
16	Facebook Innovates its Business Model	xxiii
17	Deployment of ERP based SCM Solution at TVS Logistics Services Ltd	xxiv
18	Effective Tracking of Core Operations using ERP by Brigg Equipment	xxv
19	Myntra.com Strategizes Brand Building through Social Media	xxvi
20	Amazon Extends Cloud Computing Features	xxvii
21	WhatsApp with Big Data Ethics and Responsibilities	xxviii
22	Microsoft Makes Office 365 Product Line Architecture	xxix
23	Uber‟s New Mobile App Feature	xxxi
24	Accomplishing Outcomes through Business Process Design: Maruti Model	xxxii

iii

Introduction to the Case Study

Participants in ICFAI University Programs are eager to apply theory into practice. They realize that application orientation can enhance their learning and subsequent usage of management precepts and practices. Picking out the principle behind real world events is critical to this learning.

To fulfil this objective the institution has introduced the Case Study methodology as a learning tool. A one page case is developed for learning a concept/topic from an illustration of a real world occurrence. The case illustrates a situation pertinent to an individual/a company/an industry or an economy in relation to a concept or issue covered in the curriculum. The illustration is specific to the point being discussed.

The case depicts the knowledge which can be applied as illustrated in the practice of the real world. These experiences can be distilled to look at a core principle at play by the participant. While there could be multiple principles at play, the illustration of each case helps in its better understanding of the concept at a very fundamental level.

The learning outcomes expected are:

Real world is illustrated and connected back to one concept/topic for better theoretical understanding.

Application based approach, which significantly enhances absorption and retention.

Exposure to specific business situations and developments improves perspective.

It may be used for Assessment.

	1		Computer Organization for Flipkart’s Big Billion Sale

Flipkart, an Indian online e-tailing company experienced over 1 billion hits during the flash sales of Xiomi phones in March 2014. Flipkart planned big billion sale on October 6, 2014. With this sale, on a single day they could make $100 million. However, there were setbacks to this story as well. On the day of big billion sale, in just minutes Flipkart received more than 1 billion hits over the Internet which led to trouble with a new software service developed and used by it. Customers started discussing about error messages on social media forums. The following diagram explains how the technology team at Flipkart planned, executed and learned their lessons from the problems it faced.

Plan for D-Day:-

2 Months ago

Plan for Failure

Have Contingency Plan

Scale up IT Infrastructure

4500 Servers Internal Cloud

Service Oriented Architecture

Develop New Services

·~~Flipkart Strengths:-~~

· 26 Million Customers

20 Million Products

How They Made IT

500 IT engineers worked round the clock on D-Day

One Team Keeping Live the application and other team finding root cause of failures

Separate team for digital security expecting Cyber attacks

Benefits:-

Rolled out new mobile applications on same day

Brand popularity went up

Permanently increased IT Infrastructure

Lessons Learned:-

Plan for failure

Software services are to be thoroughly tested

Have contingency plan
Provide better transparency

Manage customer expectations

Flipkart handled the situation by dedicating one team to continue the service offering and another team to do the bug fixes. The challenges faced include high speed, more than expected customer response, controlling mobile applications remotely and wrong estimation of increase in traffic.

„Organization of Computer Systems‟ in the form of internal cloud, increased storage (memory) capacity,database, service oriented architecture for applications and strong digital security can handle the sudden increase in e-tailing.

Discussion Questions:

Discuss what IT infrastructure supported the Flipkart‟s big billion sale.

(Hints: internal cloud with servers-digital security expecting Cyber-attacks-have new mobile apps)

How did Flipkart plan for its D-Day?

(Hints: one team for keeping apps live-backup team for troubleshooting-contingency plan)

Course Reference: Concept-Organization of Computer Systems/Unit 1-Computer Systems-An Overview/Subject-IT &Systems

Sources:

i. Jayadevan, P.K.,”How Flipkart‟s back room boys are powering the e–tailing behemoth‟s rapid growth”, The Economic Times, October 25, 2014.

Shukla, A., “The Tech Story Behind Flipkart‟s Big Billion Sale”, Economic Times CIO, October 13, 2014.

₂ Microsoft’s Operating System for Organizational Productivity

Shinola, a Detroit, Michigan, USA based consumer goods manufacturing start-up had 30 employees in 2012. Shinola‟s objective was to bring manufacturing expertise back to US. The company manufactured watches,

bicycles, bikes, leather goods and journals. Majority of Shinola employees worked on product assembly and very few required computers. However, the existing IT infrastructure included 3 Desktop PCs, and 1 portable computer with Windows 7 operating system. They also have 10 thin clients connecting to Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Access database for order maintenance, and Microsoft Excel 2010 for inventory tracking. By 2012, the organizational requirements had grown. The organization was looking to connect the business with customers and employees.

Application Requirements:-

A technology solution which supports mobility, point-of-sale presentations, and to demonstrate product line to potential customers.

Provide choice of products to customers using technology.
Start any organizational software application from anywhere using technology.
Top management should be able to connect to plant cameras from anywhere to monitor the work.
An operating system and security applications which are easy to install and support.

The organization should be able to send the component photographs to suppliers for procurement
Connect to an external drive for video or PPT presentations slides.

The management should provide automatic key access for the visitors at the entrance without going there.

Solution:-

Use Tablets with Windows 8 Pro operating system which has mobility and start applications from anywhere capabilities for organizational business purposes.
Windows 8 automatically connects to the wireless networks via domain join

Benefits:-

Windows 8 Pro provided enterprise wide capabilities with competitive advantage to organization.

Top Management used Tablets 60% of their work time with Windows 8 Pro Operating System.

A 30% increase in organizational productivity

The Windows 8 Pro interface did not require separate training for employees.

Mobility was the huge benefit. Applications were accessible from anywhere.

Using the Windows 8 Pro operating system, employees could connect to available Wi-Fi hot spot.

Organizational access doors could be locked/unlocked for vendors and new employees remotely.

„Microsoft Windows 8 Pro‟ operating system for Tablets has features such as mobility, Wi-Fi, rich easyto use interface, easy installation, efficient support and increases productivity. Using this type of operating system employees can start an application from anywhere and connect to other employees.

Discussion Questions:-

Discuss the additional features Microsoft Window 8 Pro operating system has over the other Microsoft operating systems.

(Hints: enterprise wide capabilities-no separate training-remote connectivity including Wi-Fi)

Do you think Microsoft OS contributes to organizational productivity? Discuss. (Hints: increased security-increased accessibility-advantage of mobility)

Course Reference: Concept-Microsoft Windows/Unit 2 -Operating Systems/Subject-IT &Systems

Sources:	Microsoft, “Shinola: Manufacturing Company Upgrades Operating System and Improves Productivity”,
i.
	Microsoft Case Study, www.microsoft.com, 2014.
ii.	*PRWeb, “eMazzanti Supports Shinola‟s Revitalization of US Manufacturing: Buys First Cruise Bikes*
	Made in Detroit”, www.mobilitytechzone.com, January 29, 2013.
	6

Medicity Technology Platform enables Transfer of

Information

Medicity Technology platform enables Ohio‟s 141 hospitals under Ohio Health Information Partnership (OHIP) spread across 77 counties of Ohio, to exchange patient health records online. With this, over 2,000 physicians were able to search and access patient records. Traditionally availability of lab records to physicians used to take somewhere between 24 hours to 30 days. The HIE (Health Information Exchange) at OHIP, known as CliniSync, was based on Medicity technology platform. The service providers started exchanging information with long term care facilities through e-mail technology. Hospitals, nurses, patients, physicians and others could exchange patient records electronically with one another using this platform.

Hospital	Insurance	Hospital	Clinic	Insurance	Patient
	Company			Company

Health Information Exchange

Patient

	Nurse	Doctor	Nurse
Doctor		Doctor

·~~Benefits:-~~

Improved healthcare

outcomes and reduced

healthcare costs Reduced individual customization and user
interface costs

Faster and Accurate Availability of Lab

Reports

Rural Awareness Availability of important

information

Timely follow ups Encouraging one-on-one outreach and education of

healthcare

Informed Patients

Doctor Communication Transfer of care
summaries

Increased efficiency of service providers

In future over 6,000 physicians would be able to exchange patient records online. The challenges in this transition included development of technology infrastructure to support different workflows, information exchange strategies, physician buy-in, coordination and improving the awareness of service offerings.

Medicity technology platform enabled stakeholders of OHIP to „transfer information‟ related to patient lab reports, clinical data and critical medication details. Through IT technology, networking and e-mail, information can be exchanged in seconds who used to take days earlier.

Discussion Questions:

1. Discuss how information exchange is possible between different service providers over the networks.

(Hints: technology platform-e-mail technology-information exchange thru workflows)

Discuss the benefits of health information exchange.

(Hints: reduced health services costs-availability of information-transfer of critical data)

Course Reference: Concept-Transfer of Information/Unit 3-Fundamentals of Information Systems/Subject-IT &Systems

Sources:

Medicity, “CliniSync Benefits with Clinical Data Exchange Capabilities”, www.medicity.com, 2014.
Medicity, “Ohio‟s CliniSync Health Information Exchange Connecting More than 100 Hospitals”, www.medicity.com, 2013.

	4		Organizing Spread sheets for Business Benefits

Dresdner Kleinwort, an investment bank with 3,000 investment bankers had benefited by organizing its spread sheets using technology platform known as Clusters even. Dresdner Kleinwort was an investment banking branch of Dresdner Bank AG. It had thousands of independent spread sheets. The applications of spread sheets at Dresdner include financial modelling, data analysis, financial reporting, results presentation, product control and financial accounting. The bank wanted to reduce its operational risk by organizing its spread sheets.

DresdnerRequirement:with^–

Dresdner would like to have control at cell

level. Without opening each spread sheet they would like to extract the business details, figures and history. Have central control of spread sheet applications.

Business Context:-

Dresdner would like

to control the processes. The spread sheet applications are user built having the traditional application risks. Applications do not allow executing

certain analysis exercises directly.

Approach:-

They selected a pilot set of spread sheets and prepared P&L

accounts. They executed a set of test

cases. They prioritized the spread sheets. They installed Clusters even on rest of the systems.

Solution:-

The systems are fully auditable now. They

comply to SOX

regulations. Each spread sheet has a fully auditable view. The systems are used in product control and

financial reporting

areas. Organizing

spread sheets provided control over

processes and

compliance to regulations.

Challenge:-

Change control process in spreadsheets.
They are prone to errors and can be corrupt.
They should adhere to Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) act
They should maintain version control
Maintain user developed applications

Benefits:-

-The benefits of spread sheets include adaptability, flexibility and sophistication.

Change control process is organized.
More time for profit oriented decision making
Business Control and Agility

the help of technology platform organized spread sheets to gain business benefits. They could now see the business history without opening the spread sheets.

„Spread sheets‟ are the personal productivity software. According to Forrester‟s research, 55% of the world‟s financial reporting is done using spread sheets. Even novice users can use spread sheets

for accounting, data analysis, mathematical and statistical calculations purposes.

Discussion Questions:-

What features of spread sheets are useful for financial reporting purpose? Please Discuss. (Hints: financial modelling-data analysis-mathematical and statistical functions)
How did Dresdner use spread sheets for its organizational benefits?

(Hints: profits and Loss A/Cs-set of test cases-product control and financial control areas)

Course Reference: Concept-Spread sheet Software/Unit 4-Personal Productivity Software/Subject-IT &Systems

Sources:

ClusterSeven, “Dresdner Kleinwort Increases Spread sheet Control and Boosts Best Practices withClusterSeven Technology”, www.clusterseven.com, 2013.

ClusterSeven, “Integrity for your Information Supply Chain”, Cluster Seven Whitepaper, 2013.

Health Information Exchange: New Workflow at

Winchester Highland Management

Patient safety and reducing costs are top priorities for healthcare organizations. Health Information Exchange (HIE) between different hospitals related to patient‟s medical history can help the healthcare

organizations in this direction. Health Information Exchange (HIE) is mobility of health related information

between hospitals and organizations in the community, region and country. It facilitates faster access to patient‟s clinical data for safe, efficient and effective treatment to the patient. The implementation of HIE

system is 80% relationships and 20% technology.

Winchester Hospital, located at Winchester, Massachusetts, USA had capacity of 229 beds with acute care inpatient and integrated homecare services. Winchester Highland Management was a joint venture between Winchester hospital and IPA (Independent Practice Association) having more than 380 physicians as of 2012. Its objective was to implement programs and projects which provide cost effective and quality healthcare services to the community. Health information exchange implementation involves the workflow system; in this case, involving healthcare organizations, hospitals, physicians, government, patients and community. The needed electronic documents were to be transferred between the concerned departments using networks with necessary approvals. Winchester Highland implemented a private HIE with workflows as shown below:

Winchester

_Hospital Objective:

Interoperability

between

Winchester and

IPA _IPA

Technology

Implementation

Governance

Structure of

project

~~Benefits:~~
·	Improved patient safety, experience
·	Improved provider productivity and
·	engagement
Improved effectiveness of care
·	Exchange of information between primary
·	care physicians and the specialists
Increase in growth of services

Winchester Highland Management‟s Private HIE exchanged information between its practices, hospitals andaffiliated IPA. Vendor partnership was also the part of workflow in this project. The challenges included managing care contracts, maintaining relationship between major stakeholders, leaders and participating organizations. There were signoffs at each level in the workflow. Workflow systems were traditionally used for organizational internal operational processes.

Workflow systems‟ are the early systems used for enterprise collaboration. The workflow systems in Winchester‟s Health Information Exchange (HIE) helped in developing cost effective solutions for

hospital stakeholders.

Discussion Questions:

What is workflow in an organization?

(Hints: electronic transfer of documents-using networks-approvals at each end point)

What did the company do to achieve interoperability between Winchester Hospital and IPA?

(Hints: devised governance structure for projects- technology platform-vendor partnership)

Course Reference: Concept- Workflow Systems/Unit 5- Enterprise Collaboration Systems/Subject-IT &Systems

Sources:

Walizer, D. and Puls, D., “Health Information Exchange (HIE): Connectivity Considerations Move to the Forefront”, Beacon Partners, www.beaconpartners.com, 2012.
“Winchester Hospital and Highland Management”, www.zurickdavis.com, 2015

₆ The National Highways Authority of India – Modernized MIS

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), a constituent body of Government of India, was established by an Act of Parliament, in 1988. It was responsible for the development, maintenance and management of National Highways in the country.

It had always been an impossible task for NHAI to monitor its road projects and to maintain its project management right on time due to communication delay. In 2013, NHAI planned to deploy a software solution for faster MIS using iPad/ tablet/ mobile phones such that requisite information / photos / videos from work site could be captured and disseminated to the right authority on time having a centralized control.

The MIS reporting solution established a centralized computer and server system, which was used for collection of various data from field units (PIUs) either using web application or mobile SMS, GPRS, or 3G.

	Display System		Computer	PIU	–
			Mobile	reporting
MIS			Network	through
		web	or
reports	to
		Mobile
Ministry	/
		device
NHAI
			(iPad	/
officers	CPIS SERVER	Internet
Tablet	/

				Phone)
	Desktop or	RIS SERVER	CENTRAL SERVER
	Mobile

Organization’s Gain: NHAI after establishing this E-MIS system gained the following advantages:

Rapid dissemination of information
Early control over the project
Flawless implementation of the project

Potential reduction in information cost

This helped NHAI in monitoring more than one project at a time with much better execution and control. At the same time, the information flow became multi-dimensional by reporting to more than one authority at a time using, laptops, mobile, iPad, etc.

MIS is an important process in an industrial establishment. Adaptation of ‟e-MIS‟ by National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) immensely expedited the information exchange providing benefits in terms of better control and reduction in information cost.

Discussion Questions:

Discuss the problems that led to the use of e-MIS by National Highway Authority of India.

(Hints: monitoring road projects-completing projects on time and on budget-lack of centralized control)

Discuss the tangible and intangible advantages gained by NHAI by adopting e-MIS.

(Hints: photos and videos transmission using I-pad/tablet/mobiles-project control-reduced

project costs)

Course Reference: Concept–E-MIS/Unit-6Management Information Systems / Subject – IT & Systems.

Sources:

“I–Pad/Tablet/ Mobile based MIS Reporting System for NHAI”, www.cnet-india.com, August 2013.
Sople, V.V. and Gupta, Dipankar, “MIS Implementation at Construction Project”, Indore Management

Journal, 2015.

Simovic, V. and MatijaVargaPredragOreški, ” An information System Management Model”, ,MIS, Vol. 7, 24January 2012

7		Validus Re’ Successfully Tries Revolution Analytics for Risk

	Management

After experiencing various statistical analysis programming languages, finally the Revolution Analytics (RA) has emerged as one of the strongest languages for business analytics applications. The problems it can solve are complex data analysis, big data management, and obtaining business intelligence.

Validus Re‟ or Validus Reinsurance Ltd., USA was a multinational company whose underwritingphilosophy was to maximize its return on equity subject to prudent risk constraints on the amount of capital it exposed to loss events. Reinsurance was a highly complex business due to the detailed data analysis needed to underwrite a broad variety of risks, subject to a broad array of risk perils including weather and other elements, such as – fire, financial volatility or man-made action such as terrorism. These risk perils were found to vary in both severity and frequency.

In the year 2012, the company had a task of designing its risk management strategy but experienced severe challenges regarding using inputs from multiple applications and third party data sources. Validus Re‟s Actuarial Group was required to develop customized economic capital modelling and risk measurement and management applications to support sound financial and pricing decisions.

The company evaluated MS Excel but it was not capable of handling big data. Moreover its simulation was much slower. SAS was found to be a weaker language in business analytics. The SPSS programming tool was found to be efficient only in handling small data sets. Many other tools and languages were not capable of handling all the problems. Finally, Revolution Analytics (RA) software was evaluated which successfully passed critical tests. It was found to be faster, capable of handling big data, and suitable for business analytics.

Revolution R Enterprise was used to develop open, high-performance custom correlation and simulation

models that included any and all data required for the analysis. These were used for ad hoc analysis as well as systematically, driving the decision logic implemented in the company‟s production system.

Objective:

Seamless analysis

Strategy:

Utilizing

Approach:

of business data

statistical analytics

Analysis using R

Outcome:

Data

Analytics

and

Business intelligence

The company used Revolution R Enterprise, based on the open source statistical programming language, to bring together output from internal sources as well as from third parties such as RMS to model risk for the entire company.

Results: The Company collected following facts out of testing Revolution R software under various testconditions:

It was capable of developing high performance custom correlation models.
Simulation models could be designed that included any magnitude of data required for analysis.
The simulation time was nearly 30 times faster than Excel and other languages.
Best suited for critical business analytics.
Suitable to handle big data sets without resulting in any halting situation or erroneous outcome.

The USA based Validus Reinsurance, Ltd. used „Revolution R programming language ‟for its Risk Modelling and management, and succeeded in getting quick satisfactory results from business analytics.

Discussion Questions:

Discuss the challenges faced by Validus Reinsurance Ltd.

(Hints: financial volatility-managing risk-reduced return on equity)

Discuss the complexities of business of the company for which it adopted the programming language “R”..

(Hints: business data analysis-to develop correlation models-handling big data)

Course Reference: Concept–Business modelling using programming language “R”/Unit-7 Program Design &Programming Languages / Subject – IT & Systems.

Sources:

“Validus Re Uses Revolution R Enterprise for Risk Management”, www.rackcdn.com, December 12, 2012.

Ramanathan , M., “Leading Research Center Speeds up Analysis and Simplifies Complex Analysis on Very

Large Data Sets”, Data Intensive Discovery Initiative (DI2), 2012.

American Century Investments revolutionizes their investment analytics platform”, www.revolutionanalytics.com, 2013

8	Data Smart Culture at Seven-Eleven, Japan

Managing large data requires data smart culture in an organization. Dealing with big data requires data smart culture at all levels in the organization. With data doubling every two years, having more data need not be a good thing. It brings in significant baggage and creates unwise expenses. Large volumes of data create reputation risk and security concerns for an organization. Seven-Eleven, Japan, a retail store chain, developed data smart culture. Seven-Eleven had more stores in Japan than any other country in the world. It had 17,009 (31% of its global) stores located in Japan with around 2,246 Seven-Eleven stores in Tokyo alone in 2015. The aesthetics of Seven-Eleven Japan stores were different from other stores offering large collection of products and services. Seven-Eleven was a profit making chain in Japan for more than 30 years. Seven-Eleven, Japan, had given decision making authority to operational level clerks in the retail stores. The clerks decided what goods and products were to be kept in the shelves of the store. This was creating huge inventory turns for the organization. There were 70% new products in the stores every year. Seven-Eleven had a data smart culture with distributed decision making authority and evidence based management. Organizational key practices resulted into data smart culture, which in turn derived benefits as shown below.

			~~Key Benefits~~
~~Key Practices~~		·	Improved	Supply–
·	Use Scorecards		·	Chain Management
·	Single Source	Data Smart	Improved	Inventory
·	of Truth	Culture	·	Levels
Owning of
	Distributed	Decision
·	Business Rules
Employee		·	Making
	Engagement		Effective Operational
				Decisions

For data smart culture, Seven-Eleven followed evidence based management and employees intelligently handled the data. They followed a disciplined culture. However, decision- making authority was distributed to different levels in the organization. Data smart culture needs to be inculcated in organization for effective decision making. The source of data should be trustworthy. There should be process adherence and compliance to rules and regulations. There should be sensitivity towards data and data loss. Data security should be the priority in organization.

Data Smart Culture: Employees may provide mediocre data initially. However, over a period of time, theyprovide useful information. Everyone in the organization should know, what is expected from each one of them. Organizations have to take ownership for their business rules. With these practices, the organizations can begin to have a smart data culture in the organization. At Seven-Eleven, data decision making process was not centralized. Instead, it was pushed to the ranks to make the organization smarter.

„Managing large data‟ involves data oriented culture in the organization related to multiple aspects.

Seven-Eleven managed their large data effectively.

Discussion Questions:

What are the benefits of data based decision making at Seven-Eleven?

(Hints: improved supply-chain management-distributed decision-making-improved inventory levels)

What practices can make an organization smarter? Discuss.

(Hints: timely availability of information-follow business rules-sensitivity to data)

Course Reference: Concept- Managing Data/Unit 8- Database Management/Subject-IT &Systems

Sources:

Fitzgerald, M., “Turning Big Data into Smart Data”, MIT Sloan Management Review, December 2, 2013.
Nadig, A., ”The Case for Smart Data: When Big Data isn‟t Enough”, October 7, 2014.

9	Balluff GmbH Gains Benefits through Gigabit Network

Managing and transacting huge data through a network needs sufficient transaction speed. As the amount of data doubled every year in many big companies, it needed sufficient network speed for data transaction from one to another site. Slower transaction rate caused delay and involved a high cost of transaction. The German company, Balluff GmbH based near Stuttgart, installed Gigabit (40 Gbit) fiber optic network in the year 2013. This was done to improve network speed and availability, lower its operational cost, and allow more flexibility in configuration and management. It replaced its age-old Local Area (LAN) Network infrastructure – an outdated Ethernet network.

The company connected all of its workstations, printers and telephones via 48-port Networks switches. A total of 45 units were networked throughout the campus, enabling connection of the terminals via Gigabit Ethernet (40 Gbit) while at the same time delivering power to the individual telephone handsets too.

Benefits:

– Improved network

performance

– Lower operational cost

– Flexibility in configuration and management

– Better work load

management

– Network availability

– Flexible routing between the switches

Renewing Ethernet LAN posed a number of challenges in aspects such as speed, cost, flexibility, configuration facility, management of the entire affairs including in providing power to the LAN phones. Normally, replacement of entire Local Area Network (LAN) in a production environment can be a difficult undertaking. Therefore, during its implementation phase, special attention was required to achieve Network Load Balancing (NLB) for the Microsoft Windows servers.

Result: The benefits included high performance and flexibility, lesser space needed along with lesser powerconsumption. The network became faster and also provided rapid and flexible routing between the switches and servers along with end-to-end Gbit connection of all the LAN terminal devices with optional power supply.. In a nutshell, increase in effective network productivity is a gained advantage.

Gigabit network being fiber supported provided a „high speed solution of data‟ transaction that potentially downsized the cost by saving time. Balluff GmbH gained advantages in terms of cost reduction, faster data transaction, and much more.

Discussion Questions:

Discuss the common problems associated with Ethernet based Local Area Networks, and how can it be sorted out by installing Gigabit network.

(Hints: slower transfer rate-high cost of transaction-benefit with Gigabit lower operational cost)

Discuss the problems faced by Balluff GmbH and how it was sorted out.

(Hints: higher operational costs-inflexible network configurations-sorted with Gigabit network)

Course Reference: Concept–High speed transfer of data/Unit-9 Computer Networks/ Subject – IT & Systems.

Sources:

“Balluff GmbH enjoys major benefits through a new 40 Gbit backbone”, IBM,.May, 2013

“Bonar updates its data centers to improve business continuity (IBM Business Partner DHDS designs andinstalls new network backbone based on IBM technology)”, IBM. February, 2014

“Sarenet transforms its third-party IT and cloud services (IBM business partner Antisa SA provides new infrastructure and network solution)”, IBM, .2013

10 NTT Docomo Accelerates M-Commerce in Japan

Modern mobile business technologies with e-business models and Internet are leading to growth of m-commerce globally. According to a research carried out by The Boston Consulting Group, mobile markets were growing in different ways in different regions with lots of innovation. Mobile impact had grown faster than the speed of its policy makers. 80% of the world population had mobiles by 2013 in G-20 countries. Internet Economy was expected to be $4.2 trillion by 2016 and its contribution to GDP at 5.3%. By 2013, 2/3^rd of 1 billion users of Facebook were using mobile phones to access Facebook and 60% of Twitter users watched tweets using mobile phones.

Collaborative Model: Collaborative model was used by NTT Docomo in Japan. It was based onpartnerships, acquisitions and alliances with other players in the industry. NTT Docomo was a mobile phone operator with more than 60 million customers in Japan and provided services such as phone, video phone, internet, mail, SMS and short mail. Docomo, a cellular operator, was a spun off from Nippon Telephone and Telegraph in 1991.

NTT Docomo in Japan collaborated with Microsoft to push LTE (Long Term Evolution) Windows 8 tablets to businesses in Japan. It collaborated with China‟s China Mobile Communications Corporation and South

Korean KT Corporation in providing international roaming, enterprise services, common platforms, network technologies, smartphones and LTE. It also collaborated with IBM and Intel to develop “Trusted Mobile Platform Specification” which enhances the security of the mobile devices. It partnered with Google to

provide Gmail, Google Maps and in developing mobile apps.

Microsoft			China	Mobile	Communications
·LTE Windows 8 Tablets	·	Corporation			KT Corporation, S.Korea

International Roaming	Common Platforms, Enterprise Services,

			·	Network Technologies, Smartphones, LTE

					NTT Docomo
·	IBM	Intel				Google
Trusted Mobile Platform Specification			·	Gmail, Google Maps, Mobile Apps

In Japan, NTT Docomo created a collaborative model, which enabled the vertical integration of services to its customers. McDonald‟s delivered coupons on to mobile phones in Japan. Vertical integration is nothing but acquiring diversified features and facilities related to the organization‟s business vertical from partners. Docomo with its “i–mode” ecosystem provided consumers with mobile internet, e-mail, streaming video and

mobile payment services. KDDI and Softbank Mobile Corporation are its competitors in mobile payments area in Japan. Docomo had more than 500,000 customers for its mobile payment services in 2013. It mastered the technological innovations, understood the market dynamics and realized the opportunities to reach the masses in Japan. M-Commerce accounted for 1/5^th of the B2C e-commerce in Japan.

„M–Commerce‟ stands for Mobile Commerce. In m-commerce, consumers make transactions usingcell phones, smartphones, tablets, and other wireless devices. NTT Docomo contributed to Japanese mobile commerce industry with vertical integration and collaborative approaches.

Discussion Questions:

What is M-Commerce? Discuss its features.

(Hints: transactions using smartphones/tabs/wireless -bank transactions using mobile-anywhere anytime)

In what areas NTT Docomo collaborated with other players in the industry? (Hints: international roaming-mobile Apps-common technology platforms)

Course Reference: Concept-Mobile Commerce Systems/Unit 10- Telecommunication Networks/Subject-IT & Systems

Sources:

Dean, D., Louison, M., Shoji, H., Sowmyanarayanan, S., and Subramanian, A. (2013), “Through the Mobile Looking Glass: The Transformative Potential of Mobile Technologies”, Whitepaper of The Boston Consulting

Group, April 15, 2013.

“About Docomo”, www.nttdocomo.co.jp, March 16, 2015.

11		Indian Railway Redesigns MIS to Achieve Bi-directional

	Facilities

Indian Railway (IR) is one of the largest organizations in the country. In the year 2011 it was the fourth largest travel network in the world earning $477 million with over 1.4 million employees. It was the eighth largest employer in the world. Its website IRCTC was the largest E-Commerce website in India. In 2014–

2015 Indian Railways had revenues of US$26 billion which consisted of US$17 billion from freight and US$6.3 billion from passenger‟s tickets.

IR wanted to reduce the problems customers encountered in booking ticket, provide faster ticketing, ticket cancellation, enquiry of train routes and timings, etc Thus, it established computerized information system so that the passengers could have flexibility and either avail these facilities visiting the railway counters or even through the IRCTC website. But later on it realized that the slowness and sub-optimal-working of the website was hindering the enhancement of the services.

IR updated its IRCTC portal in the year 2009 to have ease of ticketing and communication, thereby providing multiple facilities like – ticket booking, cancellation, return of booking amount, hotel booking, booking for visiting tourist destinations, etc. After updating of the information system, the website recorded an average booking of 44 million e-tickets per day.


					Problem:
					–	Delay in ticketing
			Railway		–	Delay in information.
Railway
Information		Facilities		Advantages Gained:
		–	Faster ticketing


					–	Faster Cancellation / return

	Passenger		of cancellation amount
					–	Faster availability of
						facilities
					–	Faster information

It had further improved its ticketing portal by August 14, 2014, and the new generation e-ticketing system Generated 7,200 tickets a minute compared to earlier capacity of 2,000 tickets. The new system was expected to handle about 120,000 sessions and 200,000 queries at the same time compared to the earlier capacity of 40,000.

Organization’s Gain: The Company after implementation of management information system gained thefollowing advantages:

Reduced Passenger Service time

Faster information dissemination
Increased performance

Continuous increase in revenue

Proper planning and „design of MIS‟ is necessary to ensure that the information system works properly. The Indian Railways, by implementing the accurate planning and design of Public MIS has overcome the problems faced by both the railway and the customer to a considerable extent. .

Discussion Questions:

What was the need of Indian Railway to enhance the information system? Discuss.

(Hints: problems with ticket booking-slow and sub-optimal website-delay in information)

Explain the customer‟s benefits as well as the benefits to the Indian Railway due to change in

MIS system.

(Hints: fast ticketing-access to information-quick returns for cancelled tickets)

Course Reference: Concept–MIS Redesigning /Unit-11 MIS Planning & Design / Subject – IT & Systems.

Sources:

Holman, R.“Management Information Systems in Indian Railways – A Case Study”, www.moneynewsnow.com, August 14, 2014.
“Next Generation Railway Ticketing”, Business Standard, August 14, 2014.
”Next Generation e-Ticketing”, www.cris.org.in, August 2014.

12		Strategic Approach to Implement MIS in SoCtronics

	Technologies

M/S SoCtronics Technologies, India is involved in design & manufacturing of process equipment such as Pressure Vessels, Heat Exchangers, Agitators, Boilers, Dryers, Storage Tanks & Reactors etc. for large scale chemical, power plants, food processing, biotechnology & petroleum industry.

The company started exploring computerization in the late eighties and early nineties mainly for design of process equipment. Their design teams looked for some commercial applications and also explored development of computer applications using various languages. The executive team realized that quicker design solutions and most optimized designs could save efforts and cost of overall project.

With the view to expedite internal departmental information exchange and coordination for seamless operation, the company realized that faster dissemination of information was the only way to play vital role in the same. However, the biggest challenge before the organization was lack of proper coordination among various departments for faster and accurate operations. Thus, the company identified a core team of eight members, one being at a very senior level who could study the problems and recommend proper action to the management.

2. Organizing

1. Problem

3. Submission

Problem:

Groups to study and

Lack of inter-departmental

Identification

suggest solution

of Reports

coordination.

4. Approval of Reports

5. Designing

Advantages Gained:

Action Plan

–

Proper and quick

coordination

–

Accuracy in operations

6. Implementation

The group studied flaws in inter-departmental coordination and came out with an inference that due to improper implementation of information exchange the coordination problem was prevailing. Thus, the study groups unanimously recommended the implementation of Management Information System (MIS) across all the groups in the organization in favour of taking decisions quickly.

Organization’s Gain: The company after implementation of management information system gained thefollowing advantages:

Proper and on-time coordination among various groups
Accuracy at work
Increased performance
Reduction in product rejection

Implementation of „MIS‟ is mandatory in industrial ambience for faster operations and performance. SoCtronic was suffering from the same problem which it overcame by implementing strategic MIS for proper coordination among various groups in the organization, and overall performance.

Discussion Questions:

Explain the problems of SoCtronic Company that caused delay in coordination among various groups.

(Hints: slower dissemination of information-slower and inaccurate operations-slow designs)

Discuss the gains of SoCtronic after implementation of MIS in the organization.

(Hints: improved coordination across departments-accurate operations-reduced product rejections)

Course Reference: Concept–MIS /Unit-12MIS Implementation & Maintenance / Subject – IT & Systems.

Sources:

i. Kuppiliand, M.K. and Aryasri, A.R., “Strategic Approach for Successful Implementation of Management Information System for Manufacturing Industry”, CPMR-IJT, Vol. 2, No.1, June 2012.

Sople,V.V. and Gupta, D., “MIS implementation at Construction Project”, Indore Management Journal, 2015.

Ginzberg, M..J., ”Early diagnosis of MIS implementation failures”, , Management Science, Vol. 27, No. 4,

2012.

13		E-Governance – Government of India initiatives for Income

	Tax Services

The Income Tax Department in India is the apex authority for collecting direct taxes for the government and it operates as an enforcement agency for the same. The department had one of the biggest challenges in setting up systems that respect the loyal taxpayer since all the way they had to wait in the queue to submit their tax documents for a longer period of time leaving their other important jobs. Owing to a large number of tax payees, it was not possible for the IT department to quickly dispose off all the cases amounting to an average of 250 to 400 tax form submissions at a counter each day. Therefore, to honour the value of their time and dignity, the department wanted to provide the tax payee easy facility that minimized their valuable time and did not interfere with their other works. Other challenges included difficulties in standardizing office layout to align it with new technology and new process for receiving the forms and faster disposals of service requests.

The department could overcome issues through extensive consultations with taxpayers, tax professionals and industry associations. The other issue regarding huge number of returns filing and longer time required to submit the form had also been solved by providing easy taxpaying using e-filing of the personal tax and establishing e-Governance. The facility for E-filing of tax returns had not only made it convenient for tax payers to file tax returns anytime anywhere, it had also reduced receiving time of refunds if due, and also eliminated the need to get someone to help moving files by providing a bribe. The technology initiatives coupled with considering taxpayers as customers who deserve quality services had made all the difference between automation and e-governance.

It has worked in both the directions, that is, to process the refund request faster as well as to get the refund

within shorter period of time applying standard practices of governance. The key to establish this process was the gap between department‟s request processing time and applicant‟s waiting time to get the

repayment. The department applied technology to enhance internal efficiency of the department. by converting the standard practices of governance into its electronic counterpart, known as e-Governance practice. The e-Governance initiatives emerged in the form of e-filing portal and Aykar Seva Kendras (ASK) which contributed in the move towards non-adversarial tax administration and provided quality services to tax payers.

	e-tax Portal		Challenges

	Income Tax		–	Setting up system to
			respect taxpayer
	Filing
		–	Fast receiving &

	Refund			disposal of service
			requests
	Claim
		Achievements
Tax Payee		Income Tax
	–	Faster customer
(Customer)		Dept. (ITD)
Aykar Seva		service
	–
	Kendra (ASK)		Ease to taxpayer
		–	Good Governance
		Response

Organization’s Achievements: The overall governance of Income Tax Department (ITD) improved and thesatisfaction level among the customers increased significantly.

By applying ‘e-Governance‟ Income Tax department achieved success in satisfying their customer in terms of faster income tax filing as well as return.

Discussion Questions:

Explain the challenges faced by income Tax Department in course of improving their services. (Hints: delays service requests-customer experience-processing refunds)

Discuss the advantages gained by applying e-Governance services through e-tax portal and ASKs.

(Hints: good project governance-better customer experience-faster customer service)

Course Reference: Concept– E-Governance /Unit-13Management of MIS / Subject – IT & Systems.

Sources:

i.. Bajaj , S. and Dhundia, H., “Transforming Taxpayer Services through e-filing of Income Tax Returns”, ,Case Studies of National e-Governance Division, 2013.

ii. “Report on e-Governance” ,Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, Ministry of

Personnel,Public Grievances and Pensions, Government of India, 2010.

iii. “Report on Business Process Re-engineering for e-Governance Projects”, Government of India, November 19, 2012.

14 Amazon Web Services’ Strategies for Managing IT Globally

Changing business models and strategies for managing IT globally helped many firms retain customers and grow business. Amazon Web Services (AWS) had 8,000 customers. It was one of the world‟s biggest cloud

services providers. It had 42 edge locations across the world. Edge locations are points having servers in the content delivery network. It launched edge locations in Mumbai and Chennai in India with physical servers and services. AWS users delivered content faster to their customers. It reduced the number of nodes the data had to touch when traversing from one point to other point.

AWS Business Model
v	Users paid for what they used
v	No long term contracts
v	No minimum usage requirements
v	Concentrated on customer retention
v	Concentrated on revenue growth

~~AWS Advantages of Having Servers at Edge~~
v	Avoided long delivery routes
v	Optimized Routes
v	Avoided trouble spots
v	Compressed content
v	Replicated the data packets
v	Frequently used data was kept in Edges

Following Organizations used AWS Services in India

Eros International Media, a motion picture production and distribution company
RedBus, bus ticket booking platform
Playblazer, a games company
MPS, a publishing services company
Vserv.mobi, Mobile Ads company

Zovi, a design and manufactures apparel
Classle, an online social learning platform

Global IT strategies influenced global product strategy, global product marketing, global product development, and 24/7 support to customer. Usually these strategies are framed by CEO, CTO and CIO. The Amazon Web Services business model and strategies impacted its business growth as shown below:

Business Model

Technological

Change /

Upgradation

Customer Retention

Business Growth

„Strategies for managing IT globally‟ include global delivery models, onsite-offshore models, near-shoremodels and geographically distributed product design and development. AWS provided IT systems anywhere anytime, reduced IT investment costs, provided return on investment of IT and evaluated MIS implementations as part of its global IT management strategies. AWS also opened the door for Internet of Things.

Discussion Questions:

Discuss the Amazon Web Services (AWS) business model.

(Hints: pay for use-concentration on customer retention-no long term contracts)

What are the different global IT strategies of Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

(Hints: edge locations across the world-avoid long delivery networks-compressed content)

Course Reference: Concept-Strategies for managing IT globally/Unit 14-Global IT Management/Subject-IT & Systems Sources:

John, S., “Amazon enables faster content delivery for Indian Customers”, The Times of India, July 29, 2013.

. “AWS opens door to a wider array of Internet of Things”, www.thinkstrategies.com, May 17, 2014.

15		The Case of FAO (Finance & Accounting Outsourcing)

	Industry

Outsourcing of financial and accounting systems has grown steadily. IT Enabled Services became industry specific. They enhanced back office systems to lower costs and better efficiency. FAO (Finance and Accounting Outsourcing) was about outsourcing transactional F&A activities, operational analytics and industry specific tools and assets to 3^rd party. Goods manufacturing and services organizations adopted FAO for cost savings and efficiency gains. FAO solutions became more and more industry specific from horizontal corporate F&A processes such as accounts payable, accounts receivable and general ledger. For example, WNS was an FAO provider in India.

Growth of FAO Industry ·~~(2012)~~

25 FAO providers had signed 800 multi-process

FAO contracts as of 2012. FAO growth rate was stabilizing at 10% annually from earlier

double digit growth rates Scope enhancements/extensions/ renewals account for 60%-70% of market
growth

US based large goods manufacturers were the biggest customers of FAO.

Drivers of FAO Industry ·~~Specificity~~

Increasing Client,

Market and Service

Provider maturity Push – Pull effect in

FAO market Increased Client
Sophistication Increasing competition among FAO providers for differentiation

With this customers were moving towards Procure-to-

Pay (P2P) instead of

standalone payable

capability, Order-to-Cash (O2C) instead of receivables

Advantages of Industry

·~~Specific FAO~~

Operational F&A beyond

corporate F&A Improved Organizational
overall Cash flow Reduced Complexity and

Transition Times Can have access to predefined and preconfigured industry
specific assets

Gives access to industry specific domain expertise

FAO providers were acquiring People, Process and Technology resources in this direction

1^st Generation FAO Contracts		2^ndGeneration FAO Contracts

Traditional FAO		Industry Specific FAO

Horizontal Corporate Finance & Accounting		In addition to Corporate F&A processes,
processes		operational F&A processes

CFO/Finance Controller involved		In addition to CFO/Finance Controller, Business
		Unit heads are also involved

Main value Addition: Centralization and Process		InadditiontoProcessefficiencyand
Efficiency		centralization, analytics, domain expertise, tools
		and technologies

Same across industries		Specific to goods manufactures (P2P) and
		Specific to Services provider (O2C)

Overall Objective was reducing direct costs		Here overall objective was creating business
		impact

	21

Best practices in implementing industry specific FAO include: observe industry specificity required, build a cost plus business case, involve business heads right from beginning, select FAO provider based on industry expertise, implement outcome based pricing model and have phased adaptation process instead of all at one go.

„Financial accounting systems‟ maintain the books of accounts on costs, investments, purchases, sales,commissions, taxes, salaries, wages, incentives, and advances of the organization. FAO industry has moved its value chain from horizontal F & A services to vertical industry specific services.

Discussion Questions:

Distinguish between traditional FAO and industry specific FAO.

(Hints: Horizontal vs. Vertical F&A services-CFO vs. CFO+SBU-reduce direct costs vs. create business impact)

Discuss the drivers of industry specific FAO.

(Hints: increase market and client maturity-Push-Pull Effect-increased competition among FAO

providers)

Course Reference: Concept-Financial Accounting Systems / Unit 15-MIS in Specialized Areas / Subject-IT & Systems Sources:

Gupta, S., “The Rise of Industry-Specific F&A Outsourcing (FAO) Solutions: Focus on FAO in Retail and

Airlines”, Everest Group Research, July 2013

Gupta, S., Khandelwal, V., and Menghvani, V.,“Finance and Accounting Outsourcing (FAO) – Annual Report 2013: Increasing Market Maturity Driving Cost+ Value Proposition, Everest Group Research, April 20, 2013.

16 Facebook Innovates its Business Model

Facebook acquired Whatsapp in 2014 for $19 billion. It could have purchased Sony for this money. Facebook gained many benefits with this acquisition. Earlier in 2012, it had acquired Instagram for $1 billion to get into mobile photographers market.

One of the important aspects of the Facebook business model was that everybody could become a friend with everybody else over the social networking site. The objective of Facebook was to become the leader in social networking domain. Facebook found that teens were shifting from Facebook to Twitter to Whatsapp. It innovated its e-business model with these acquisitions to cater better to the teenage segment apart from using big data and increasing global reach.

WhatsApp, in the past five years, had acquired ten times the number of users that Twitter and Skype had acquired in their 10 years of operations. 70% of WhatsApp users were online every day in 2014 exchanging messages on their platform. WhatsApp had zero advertising commitment. It charged yearly $0.99 after first year of usage. Facebook Messenger was then widely used in US for sending messages. Whereas, WhatsApp was more popular in India and South America. To capture more market, Facebook innovated its business model. The benefits for Facebook with the acquisitions were as follows:

Facebook Business Model and Benefits:

Captured Shifting Teens	Innovated Business Models:		Reached Global Users:
· Facebook was worried	·	Facebook did not have		·	Mobile usage picked
	subscription based			up in Asia, Africa and
about losing Teens		business model, which		·	South America.
	·	WhatsApp had.		Facebook wanted to
	Facebook wanted to			capture both global and
		innovate into WhatsApp		·	mobile users.
	·	business model;		The shift was towards
	WhatsApp did not exploit			mobility across the
		user data			world

Benefits:
·	Facebook got advantage over Google and other competitors with WhatsApp acquisition.
·	With this acquisition the global telecom industry in which SMS services were estimated

at $100 billion was at stake.

Organizations need to innovate their business models to pre-empt competitors. The governments also used electronic channels to communicate with consumers and businesses. These increased the access, customer support and sales for organizations. They transformed traditional business models with continuous customer and user interaction.

„E–business models‟ are the business models which use media such as Internet, e-mail, Fax, telephone andweb conferencing. These models operate in areas such as business-to-consumer, consumer-to-business, business-to-business and consumer-to-consumer. Facebook innovated its e-business model with acquisition while aiming for the emerging markets.

Discussion Questions:

How did Facebook innovate its business model?

(Hints: no subscription based model-do not exploit user data-innovate into WhatsApp business model)

How did Facebook increase its user base? Discuss.

(Hints: captured shifting teens-revised business models-shift to emerging markets)

Course Reference: Concept- E-Business Models /Unit 16- Basics of E-Business and Enterprise ApplicationIntegration/Subject-IT & Systems

Sources:

Girotra, K. and Netessine, S. (2014), “What‟s Facebook up to?”, INSEAD Blog, www.insead.edu, February 21,

2014.

“What‟s Wrong with Facebook Business Model and Innovation Strategy”, Forbes, February 23, 2014.

17		Deployment of ERP based SCM Solution at TVS Logistics

	Services Ltd

Supply Chain Management (SCM) deals with the flow of products and information between supply chain members’ and the organization concerned. Information Technology based SCM helps to restructure the entire distribution set up to achieve higher service levels with lower inventory, thereby improving overall efficiency.

Implementing a successful Supply Chain Management solution takes an integrated effort of both IT enabled Solution provider and Corporate Business house. TVS Logistics Services Ltd. (TVSLSL) an ISO Certified company which specialized in providing Warehousing, Distribution, Transportation, Managing services to

automobile manufacturing sector, and Ramco Systems a software solution provider developed and deployed ERP based SCM Solutions to overcome operation problems at TVS Logistics.

At TVSLSL due to requirement of large volume of spares, handling logistics was very complex at each manufacturing facility. Some of the major problems were due to improper maintenance of stock and lack of ability to monitor transit delays. The following diagram illustrates how implementing state of art intergraded ERP based SCM solution helped overcome some of the major hurdles at TVS Logistics Services Ltd.

Need of Integrated IT Solution:-

Stock-outs leading to disruption of production

Multiple suppliers‟ management at point of service was difficult to manage

* Achieving

transparency and

efficiency in SCM operation with in – house application not viable

Volume of spares required was large and dynamically changing

TVSLSL Size of Operations:-*140 locations

*Global Joint Ventures in US,

UK, Thailand, Spain and

Germany

Ramco Systems Contribution

*Implementation of

Transportation Management,

Warehousing Operations, Procurement, Sales & Financials Services

*Providing integrated SCM tools for domestic transportation,

international transport,

warehousing and material handling

*Process Re-Engineering, Customization and Employee Training

Benefits Achieved:-*Improved accessibility and reduced transit delays *Reduced overall costs*Timely follow ups

*Real-time information access to stake holders *Integration of processes under one platform for better accuracy and transparency

Value added Services:-

*Integrated with GPRS,Biometrics, PDAs & Mobile Solutions

*Web Portal availability for

Customers with 24*7 availability of information

TVS Logistics Services Ltd. (TVSLSL) shifted to IT enabled customized solutions to enhance its logistic operational capabilities with high transparency, scalability and scope of accessibility. To make things better the new system was GRS enabled with Mobile applications which was not possible with the earlier system.

When an ERP based „Supply Chain Management‟ solution is implemented across the organization as in TVSLSL, it gives high degree of transparency, accessibility and accuracy. It becomes efficient, secure and easy to manage when integrated with a centralized database , improving the overall operations.

Discussion Questions:

Discuss any five major technologies to implement above discussed SCM System.

(Hints: SAP/Ramco/Oracle/Siebel/PeopleSoft-automate business processes-automate SCM processes)

How did ERP help TVS in their supply chain management? Discuss.

(Hints: multiple supplier management-reduced operational costs-information accessibility)

Course Reference: Concept-Supply Chain Management/Unit 17- Supply Chain Management and E- Bussiness/Course-IT & Systems

Sources: i. Ramco , “TVS Logistics: IT enables three–fold expansion in five years”, Whitepaper of Ramco Systems, 2015.

TVS, “TVS Logistics Services Ltd: About Us”, www.tvslsl.com, March 2015.

18		Effective Tracking of Core Operations using ERP by Brigg

	Equipment

Brigg Equipment Inc. and its subsidiaries were known to be the leading providers and renters of material handling equipments at various locations like USA, UK, and Mexico. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, the company was the largest dealer of Yale and Hyster fork lifters in North America.

Brigg Equipment Inc. relied on its basic business model “legacy dealer business system” for a stretch of 25 years. Later on it realized that while tracking the core operations the solution had limitations with its technology platform. Having rounds of discussions at length the management decided to implement ERP solution in the year November 2013 to find a way out of their problems. Finally they teamed up with Ultra Consultants to help them in selecting the right ERP system.

ERP Selection Process of Ultra Consultant

Documentation of Brigg‟s	Isolation of initial	Planning future state
current state of business		targeted areas for	of the business
processes		improvements	processes
Solution Designing	Prototyping – long-term test of
		required ERP modules
	Implementing ERP
	(Project management, Quality
assurance, and Process redesign)

By implementing the right modules of ERP, the company was able to streamline their problems and to find appropriate solutions in terms of much better operation management, and efficient tracking of the core operations. By implementation of better management solution, the company was able to effectively reduce its operational costs without unwanted limitations getting imposed on its technology platform.

Conclusion: The Company gained better control over tracking the core operations. Thereby, the entirebusiness system of the organization came to the main stream and the companies were able to enhance its profitability by potentially reducing the losses caused by the limitations of its technology platform while tracking the core operation.

„ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)‟ provided a holistic solution to the Brigg Equipment Inc. interms of efficient core operation tracking. Selection of right ERP modules as done by Ultra Consultants resulted in further cost efficient control over entire management of the operations.

Discussion Questions:

Explain the effect of ERP module selection and solution design as done in the case of Brigg Equipment Inc.

(Hints: Prototyping-enabled business process redesign-track core operations)

Discuss the problems of Brigg Equipment Inc. and how the solution was found.

(Hints: unable to track core operations-limited technology platform capabilities-ERP is the solution)

Course Reference: Concept–Implementation of ERP/Unit-18Enterprise Resource Planning / Subject – IT & Systems.

Sources:

“Brigg Equipments”, Ultra Consultants, USA, September, 2013.
Bergmann and Hillebrand, “Industry Engineered to Order precision perforated plates”, Ultra Consultants,

USA, April 2014.

“Radio Flyer Equipment Manufacturer”, Ultra Consultants, USA, June 2014.

19		Myntra.com Strategizes Brand Building through Social

	Media

Myntra.com, one of the leading Indian e-commerce platforms, dealt with fashion and lifestyle products. It was started by a group of IIT / IIM graduates in 2007 and was headquartered in Bangalore. The company was funded by top tier Venture Capital funds, e.g., Tiger Global, Indo US, IDG & Accel Partners. Indian online retail companies earned revenues of around $2.24 billion in the financial year that ended on March 31, 2013. It was expected to triple by 2016.

In the year 2014, Myntra strategized to collect valuable inputs to restructure its business along with potentially enhancing the client base within a shorter period of time. They started online contests using social media in two different phases. The contest series garnered a lot of interest among youngsters and the client list tripled within a very short period.

The first phase was organized on March 26, 2014. To participate in this phase of contest people had to follow Myntra.com on Twitter and then answer all the questions with the hashtag #MyntraTreasureHunt. The second phase commenced on March 27, 2014 at midnight on Twitter account @myntra and closed on the next day. The participants were asked to first become a registered member of Myntra.com, then only were they allowed to participate in the contest.

Objective: Brand Promotion &increasing client base

Strategy:

Social Media

Utilizing

Approach:

Contest

Online

Outcome: Brand

promoted

and

client base enhanced

Benefits: The Company gathered a lot of valuable business inputs out of the contest to further restructuretheir business.

Freebies and Discounts worked on Social Media – Giveaway (discounts) motivated audience toparticipate

Collaboration worked for Brand Building – Due to collaboration with brands, not only were thecampaigns trending on Twitter but the brands were trending as well. The brand establishing exercise was found to be most effective for the following three brands –Myntra Treasure Hunt, Arrow Winter, and Being Human. The other brands also received a boost.

Plan in-advance – Always plan even the smallest detail, and whenever a campaign is launched onreal-time there must be a contingency plan.

Increase your customer base – Myntra increased its effective customer base, with their contestguidelines. Audiences happily obliged. For the First Phase of contest the participants had to follow them on Twitter to be a part of the contest. And for the Second Phase of contest, users were asked to register themselves on Myntra.com and then be part of the contest. This helped Myntra in pushing their future campaigns seamlessly.

Audiences Attention – It has always been every marketer‟s concern to grab their audience‟s attention and make them notice the brand. Myntra did it successfully within two days of its campaign. Myntra presented the audience with unique content and surprise which caught their attention.

„e-Business‟ has begun to exploit social media as strategic tool to establish their brand as well as toattract the future customer. Myntra.com was successful in getting both their objectives fulfilled, that is, branding itself and gaining potential customers at faster pace

Discussion Questions:

Explain the effect of organizing events by e-Business companies using social media.

(Hints: valuable business inputs-increased customer base-collaborative brand building)

Discuss the campaign strategized by Myntra.com and the end benefits gained.

(Hints: online contests-brand building-increased customer base)

Course Reference: Concept–E-Business and social media/Unit-19CRM and E-Business / Subject – IT & Systems.

Sources:

i. “5 Social Media lessons to learn from @Myntra‟s Treasure Hunt Campaign”, www.digitalinsights.in, March. 2014.

Adams, A., “Five ways-social-media-will-increase-your-ecommerce-business” , www.toptenreviews.com, 2015.
” The Role of Social Media Networking in E-Commerce Web Development”, www.vendorseek.com, 2014

	20	Amazon Extends Cloud Computing Features

Amazon.com,	Inc. wasanAmerican electronic commerce companywithheadquartersin

Seattle, Washington. It was the largest Internet-based retailer in the US. Amazon had separate retail websites for US, UK & Ireland, France, Canada, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, India and Mexico. Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified, selling DVDs, VHSs, CDs, video and MP3 downloads/streaming, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewelry. It was also a major provider of cloud computing services.

Amazon.com with the help of AWS cloud computing become an important technology provider to other organizations. Amazon provided cloud services at competitive prices. Amazon Web Services already provided cloud computing services for customers including the Central Intelligence Agency and Netflix.

_F Goal:

Amazon trying to become an

important technology

provider to other

_F organizations,

Its aspirations were just as

big as those of Microsoft,

IBM and Google.

_F Solution:-

Hundreds of thousands of customers

have joined the Amazon Web Services

community and use AWS solutions to

build their businesses

Cloud computing platform provides the client flexibility to build its application,

their way, regardless of their situation or _F industry

It can save time, money, and manage the client‟s infrastructure, without

compromising scalability, security.

F	Objectives:-
AWS Cloud Computing would like to pro
	simple way to access servers, storage, dat

and application services over the Internet. Would like to maintain the network-conne hardware required for these application se via a web application.

_F Benefits:-

Trade capital expense for variable

expense

Benefit from massive economies

of scale

Stop guessing capacity

Increase speed and agility

Stop spending money on running

and maintaining data centers Go global in minutes

The challenges they faced include logging challenges, quality of service guarantees, and attraction to hackers, data ownership issues and dependence on secure hypervisors.

„Cloud Computing‟, by definition, refers to an on-demand delivery of IT resources and applications viathe Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Discussion Questions:

What are the features and functionality of cloud computing?

(Hints: application services over Internet-Hardware services over Web-Work anytime anywhere)

What are the benefits of Amazon web services cloud?

(Hints: capital expense vs. variable expense-economy of scale-increased speed and agility)

Course Reference:-Cloud features and functionality/unit 20-cloud computing/ Subject- IT & Systems Source:

Hardy, Q., “Amazon Moves to Extend Cloud–Computing Dominance”, Live Mint, November 18, 2014.
“What is Cloud Computing?”,www.amazon.com , 2015.
Dyess, C., “Cloud News Recap: July 15, 2014”, www.eucalyptus.com, July 15, 2014.

21 WhatsApp with Big Data Ethics and Responsibilities

WhatsApp, Inc. was founded in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum. It was taken over by Facebook for US$19 billion. WhatsApp was the most globally popular messaging app with more than 700 million active users till January 2015. WhatsApp Messenger was an instant messaging app for Smartphone that operated under a subscription business model. In addition to text messaging, WhatsApp could be used to send images, video, and audio media messages. WhatsApp had also started rolling out the much awaited voice calling feature. Locations could also be shared through the use of integrated mapping features.

Issues:

Collection of big data and

processing Share data with

confidence and safety

Speedy processing of data

Accuracy of data

Overcome ethical issues

Save data from hackers

Increase the active users Financial data sharing issues

Challenges:

_F Handling Ethical issues _F Privacy

_F confidentiality

_F Transparency

_F Identity

_F Data hackers

_F Processing complex data Implementing new functions

Solution:

WhatsApp does not retain

delivered messages

The only records of those messages are stored in the sender and the recipient‟s

mobile devices Data has never been collected and stored by
WhatsApp

WhatsApp is not recording the exact usage

F WhatsApp’s Approach

_F Made individual customer‟s phone number as an identification code

_F Implemented end-to-end encryption, an upgrade to its privacy protections

Integrated the open-source software Text secure, into the most popular messaging app in the world, F where people exchange billions of messages a day

Messages will now travel all the way to the recipients‟ device before being decrypted, rather than merely being encrypted between the user‟s device and WhatsApp server

WhatsApp had 30 billion messages being sent every day and 833,000 active users per day. It added about 25 million new users every month. With the help of big data, it stored more than 700 million active users‟ data and process data with speed, confidentiality, accuracy and transparency of data. WhatsApp followed legal and ethical guidelines. It gained benefits by implementing big data such as increased speed of delivery, increased accuracy and increased new user registrations.

„Big Data‟ is nothing but the huge volume of complex, structured and unstructured data collected overtime. Big data is analyzed for organizational business and market intelligence. WhatsApp used big data in an ethical and responsible way.

Discussion Questions:

What is big data in relation to WhatsApp?

(Hints: millions of active users-instant messaging-confidentiality of data)

What are challenges faced by WhatsApp in implementing big data?

(Hints: data hackers-privacy, identity and transparency-processing complex data)

Course Reference:-Big Data/Unit 21-Business Intelligence and Big data/ Subject- IT & Systems Source:

King, J.H., “What’s Up With Big Data Ethics?”, Forbes, March 28, 2014.
“WhatsApp”, www..wikipedia.org, February 11, 2015.

Pentland, A.S., “With Big Data Comes Big Responsibility”, Harvard Business Review, November, 2014.

22 Microsoft Makes Office 365 Product Line Architecture

Microsoft Corporation was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975. It was an American multinational

corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers and services. Microsoft‟s best known

software products were the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office suite, Internet Explorer web browser, Windows Azure cloud product and Office365. The product line architecture of Microsoft Office 365 is shown below:

_@ Features:

he Office 365 service consists of a

number of products and services.

ll of Office 365’s components can be managed and configured through an

online portal

sers can be added manually, imported

from a CSV file

usiness and enterprise-oriented plans for Office 365 offer access to cloud-hosted versions of Office’s server platforms on a software as a service basis, including Exchange, SharePoint, and the browser-based

Office Web Apps suite

_@ Approaches:

Office 365 is subscription based with different subscription levels,

depending on need of customers There are no direct migrating tools. Migration is not a simple

process

Successfully introduce new

features

Identify and address any causes of

resistance

Created a planning roadmap Encouraged user adoption

_@ Functionality

Office 365 Includes access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access for home/non-

commercial

Aimed at mainstream consumers and families; same as Personal, but for use on

up to five devices by up to five users Offers access to hosted Exchange,

SharePoint, services only

Offers desktop apps for both Mac and PCs

for up to five computers per users. Aimed at businesses with 10-300

employees.

Use in enterprise environments. Offers access to all Office applications, Lync services, plus enterprise-specific legal

compliance features and support

Challenges:

_@ The Hard Cost on premises

_@ Migrating from existing content

_@ Backup and restore

_@ Office 365 security

_@ Overcoming low bandwidth

Limitations of Exchange Online

Product Line Architecture of Microsoft office suite of products was based on Windows platform. It is on top of its core components such as COM and OLE. It included packages such as MS Office, MS Excel, MS Projects etc. Office 365 was the brand name used by Microsoft for a group of software plus services subscriptions that provided productivity software and related services to its subscribers. Facing growing competition from Google’s similar service Google Apps, Microsoft designed the Office 365 platform to “together” its existing online Exchange Server, SharePoint and Lync Plans. Microsoft expanded the Office

365 service with new plans, such as Small Business Premium, Midsize Premium, and Pro Plus. Microsoft announced that Office 365 subscribers would receive “unlimited” OneDrive storage.

„Product Line architecture‟: Product line is a series of related products with common components.Product line can be developed in many ways: revolutionary development of products line from scratch, evolutionary development of product line from scratch and evolving existing products into a product line. Microsoft office 365 integrated a group of software plus services subscriptions that provides productivity software and related services to its subscribers.

Discussion Questions:

What is Product line architecture? Explain

(Hints: Base technology platform-common components-Revolutionary vs. Evolutionary)

How is Microsoft implementing product line architecture in Office 365?

(Hints: component management thru online-number of products and services-increased

automation)

Course Reference:-Product Line Architecture /Unit 22-Current Trends in Software Design And Architecture/ Subject-IT & Systems

Source:

i. Keizer, G., “Microsoft unveils de–cluttering option for Office 365 mailboxes”, Computer World, November

18, 2014.

ii. “Office 365”, www..wikipedia.org, February 1, 2015.

iii. Bradley, T., “Why Office 365 is a better deal than Office 2013”, PC World, January 31, 2013.

23 Uber’s New Mobile App Feature

Uber was founded as “UberCab” by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp in 2009. Uber was an app-based transportation network and taxi company. The service was available in 53 countries and more than 200 cities worldwide. It was valued at more than US$40 billion in 2014. The company used a smart phone application to receive ride requests and then sent these trip requests to their drivers.

§		Features
Operated in 200 cities
§	Low price service
§	Send Status
§	Mobile app based booking
§	Safety of customers
§	All luxury cars available on hire
§	All Vehicles are connected with GPRS system
§
Punctual and comfortable
§
Pay direct to company not to drivers by using
	cards

Approaches

§	Challenges
Low price service operations
§	Tracking and ensuring customer safety
§	Huge fund needed for app maintenance
§	High funding for maintaining luxury cars like
§	BMW, Audi etc
Local transport authority regulation
§	Licensed driver and back ground verification
§	of drivers
Fighting against ban in some	countries
§
Allegation of rape cases by drivers in India
	and other countries

„Send Status‟ feature added to Uber app

Urgently break down pick up

In Uber app „SOS‟ button introduced to call local police directly

Offered discount for regular Uber users

Payment can be made direct through credit card or debit card without

paying to drivers

Pricing may be on speed and distance or speed and time depending on traffic

Based on the experience, Uber introduced new features „Send Status „where passengers could share details about driver and the vehicle and its location with their family members and friends. „SOS‟ button was also

added to call the local police directly. Uber claimed to have made background verification of all drivers in India after the allegation against one of its drivers. The app feature was made available in several cities.

„Mobile technology‟ brings the advantages such as mobility and flexibility. Many types of mobileoperating systems (OS) are available for smart phones, including: Android, BlackBerry OS, webOS, iOS,

Symbian, Windows Mobile. Apps are developed for mobile operating systems. Uber App introduced new feature of „Send Status‟ for safety and security.

Discussion Questions:

What are the advantages of mobile technologies? Explain.

(Hints: faster information sharing-increased security-accessibility to information)

What is the feature enabled in Uber App? Explain.

(Hints: „Send Status‟-shares information with friends and relatives-increased safety and security)

Course Reference:-Advantages of Mobile Technologies/Unit 23-Mobile and Social Technologies/ Subject- IT & Systems Source:

i.,“Uber introduces India–specific safety features in taxi app”, Live Mint, February 11, 2015.

ii. BS Reporter, “Uber introduces India-specific safety features”, Business Standard, February 12,2015.

iii. “Uber Gets Serious About Passenger Safety In India, Introduces Panic Button”, Forbes, February 12,2015.

iv.”Uber enforces comprehensive background check on drivers in India”, www.thenextweb.com, February 03, 2015.

Accomplishing Outcomes through Business Process Design:

24	Maruti Model

Maruti Udyog Limited was established in February 1981. Actual production commenced only in 1983. It started with Maruti 800, based on the Suzuki Alto kei car. At the time it was the only modern car available in India. Originally, 74% of the company was owned by the Indian government, and 26% by Suzuki of Japan. As of May 2007, the government of India sold its complete share to Indian financial institutions and no longer held any stake in Maruti Udyog.

Maruti Suzuki had two manufacturing facilities in India – Gurgaon and Manesar. Both manufacturing facilities had a combined production capacity of 17,00,000 vehicles annually. Models of Maruti were Maruti Alto 800, Alto K10, Ritz, Celerio, A-Star, Swift, Wagon R, Zen, swift DZire, Ciaz, Kizashi and SX4, Eeco, Omni, Ertiga and Grand Vitara. As a part of its expansion plan and to design and develop, launch new models of quality cars, Maruti Suzuki had reengineered many of its business processes. The goals of Maruti Suzuki and the processes used to achieve them are shown below:

F	Goals
Technological Innovation
F	Sensitivity to Customer Needs
F	New Products entering into New Customer Segments
F	Increasing R&D Initiatives
F	Target to sell 2 million cars in a globally competitive market
F	Enhanced customer expectations

F	Action Plan	F	Product Design
Raw Materials
Developed design centre
F	Technology	F	Expansion of plant over
F	Funds		600 acres
F	Infrastructure	F
Training to engineers

_F Assembling

Annual capacity of 800,000 units

at Manesar

Diesel engine plant in Gurgaon, with an annual capacity of 900,000

F	Warehouse and supply
No of Sales outlets: 1310
F	No of Maruti true value outlets: 600
F	Over 1,000Maruti Mobile Support (MMS) vehicles were operating across the country
F	Over 3000 service stations across India

F	Outcomes
Technology improved
F	New products lunched
F	R & D process enhanced
F	Improved services ofMarutiTrue Value

Initially Maruti Suzuki had only Hindustan Ambassador and Premier Padmini as rivals in India. But in the new millennium world class car makers had entered into Indian market. Maruti introduced more models, low priceed, Alternate fuel technology and improved customer reliability.

Business „Process design‟ is sequence of activities or tasks executed in order to deliver value to eitherinternal or external customer. Maruti Suzuki business process design led to increased production and latest design.

Discussion Questions:

What is Business process design? Explain

(Hints: identifying sequence of activities-customer service processes design-using workflows among SBUs)

2) How did Maruti Suzuki implement business process design?

(Hints: increased infrastructure-used technology-customer centred design)

Course Reference:-Process Design /Unit 24-IT and Business Process Management/ Subject- IT & Systems Source:

i. Mukherjee,S., “Maruti to set up research and development centre at Rohtak”, Business Standard, August 26,2013.

Philip, L.,“Why global carmakers are moving R&D work to India”, The Economic Times, September 11,

2014.

iii. PTI, “Maruti Suzuki to set up R&D centre at Rohtak”, Live Mint, April 12, 2012.

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