Information System Strategy of HTC Computer Manufacturing Company - Case Study Example

INFORMATION SYSTEM STRATEGY [HTC] Student Name: Student P number: Module: Module code: Submission deadline: Contents INFORMATION SYSTEM STRATEGY [HTC] 1 Contents 2 INTRODUCTION 3 ANALYSIS OF BUSINESS CHALLENGES USING THE MANAGEMENT, ORGANIZATION AND TECHNOLOGY MODEL 4 2.1 BUSINESS CHALLENGES 4 2.1.1 MANAGEMENT 5 2.1.2 ORGANIZATION 6 2.1.3 TECHNOLOGY 7 2.3 IT INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT REQUIREMENTS 9 2.4 GRAPHICAL SUMMARY 11 CROWDSOURCING 11 3.1 BACKGROUND 11 3.2 USE OF CROWDSOURCING 12 3.3 BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES AND BENEFITS OF CROWDSOURCING 14 3.4 PROBLEMS AND DRAWBACKS OF CROWDSOURCING 15 CONCLUSIONS: KEY FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 16 REFERENCES 17 JOURNAL 19 INTRODUCTION As a member of the OHA (open handset alliance), HTC corporation is among the leading developers of smartphones in this era. The corporation is Taiwanese based with its headquarters in Taoyuan city in Taiwan. Primarily as a smartphone manufacturer, with its products running on Microsoft windows mobile OS, HTC broadened its ways and began making smartphones that ran on the android OS. As of the moment, HTC Corporation makes tablet-pcs and smartphones and the os in use in their devices range from the new windows phone os and the android os. According to HTC, their sole values are centered on three aspects, which are; honor, excellence, and commitment. HTC emphasizes that its goals is to strengthen business relationships through original software solutions and innovative design strategies. These goals are preceded by their motivation to address all administration and communication needs of professional organizations. The use of refined branding initiatives alongside instinctual internet platforms is at the core of delivering their vision above (HTC). As a corporation, HTC are committed to making of all their products, hardware or software products in a responsible manner. Furthermore, HTC’s corporate responsibly extends to respecting environment, people, and communities in which it operates on. As for their global responsibility, HTC advocates for conducive, yet rewarding working environments for all its employees worldwide. Secondly, HTC advocates for minimizing all negative impacts toward the environment as they bring their product to the people irrespective of who and where they are. HTC’s Mission statement, vision, corporate responsibility, and goals are vital for not only expanding their market share but also sustaining their relationship with their business allies. As a manufacturer of high-end smartphones and tablets, HTC is dependent on other corporation to deliver quality devises to its customers. Among the major allies are the developers of its devises operating systems. HTC devises run on either Android OS or Windows phone OS. This implies that all manufacturing and production is dependent on their relation with Microsoft, for the Windows phone OS and Google (Android Inc.) for the Android OS. The homepage URL for HTC Corporation is http://www.HTC.com (HTC). ANALYSIS OF BUSINESS CHALLENGES USING THE MANAGEMENT, ORGANIZATION AND TECHNOLOGY MODEL 2.1 BUSINESS CHALLENGES HTC Corporation is in the technology sector and this is a challenging field. As technology advances on a daily basis, it is paramount for HTC to keep up. Since HTC’s primary objective is to deliver quality and reliable high-end devices, the smartphones and tablets for this case, it is vital that they, HTC be informed of the latest technology available out there. In addition, HTC should also be informed of what their customers and end users of devises similar to theirs want. Technology has gone to great length in ensuring efficiency and effectiveness of how well things can be accomplished. Ideally, in the communication industry, cellular technology is in the forefront when communication is concerned. This has brought about major competition from other players in the manufacturing of cellular devices. Smartphones are in the forefront as far as cellular devices are concerned. Over the years, individuals have replaced their normal cellphones with smartphones thanks to their capabilities. As Laudon & Laudon stated, information is amount the most vital asset to all if not many organization. However, with current information technology, information is in plenty and in most cases; this can overwhelm the individuals and organization. Laudon & Laudon advocate for the use of information systems to gather, process and make sense out of information before disseminating or storing the findings. Ideally, HTC is not different from any other organization and management, organization, and technology are the key elements to success of HTC at top flight. Still on Laudon & Laudon, the three elements that provide the overview of business challenges for most if not all organizations are management, technology, and organization (InformationWeek 2008). 2.1.1 MANAGEMENT HTC is a multinational corporation. It is without a doubt that managing of a multi international firm is challenging. The focus is al all company resources and assets. Management is to ensure smooth running of all business operations. As for HTC, its business operations begin from their suppliers, manufacturing, marketing, and human resource management to mention, but a few. In these operations, communication is vital. Since HTC is a multinational Corporation and technology is at the core of its business, ensuring proper and reliable means of acquiring, processing, disseminating, and storing of information are in place. Ideally, most information systems can be utilized to handle the above-mentioned challenges. Other than Information systems, additional systems, such as decision support systems can be incorporated by HTC to aid in the organizational decision making processes. Transaction processing systems manage all their transactions alongside Marketing Information systems that handle and drive the marketing department of all HTC’s products. Finally, yet importantly, Enterprise Resource Planning is a vital system for HTC. They, HTC, employ an ERP that oversees the flow of information and communication between their business processes. The ERP is used for business functions within the organization as well as outside connections with stakeholders of HTC (Quinn & Bederson 2011). 2.1.2 ORGANIZATION Organization is close to management from a business perspective. However, organization mostly entails the structural format of management in a given organizations. According to HTC’s website, they adapt the pyramid organizational structure. This structure tends to dictate how work is disseminated throughout HTC Corp. the high level executives are at the top of the pyramid. The middle level management and lastly the lower level of the pyramid conclude the structure respectively. As for HTC’s case, they adapt the functional organization structure. HTC is subdivided into various departments ranging from marketing, sales, engineering, and finance to mention but a few. Among the major benefits of this structure is that it sub divides the corporation staff in terms of their expertise. In addition, the employees are easier to oversee considering they are grouped. The pyramid structure also advocates the bottom-up approach in decision-making. This is vital for HTC considering that most of their departments should coordinate to meet their customers’ expectation in the products, hardware, and software they produce. Finally, yet importantly, the functional organizational structure offers HTC Corporation a more geographical orientated structure ideal to meet its customers’ expectations. As previously stated, HTC Corporation is an international organization with its products users scattered globally. Ideally, over the global span, user expectations and preference change. For instance, the functional organization structure emphasis on market research to help make ideal products suitable for users on a global scale (Heer & Bostock 2010). 2.1.3 TECHNOLOGY Smartphones and tablets are all about technology. Day in day out new technology that can be incorporated in these high-end devices pops out. Ideally, not all technology should be incorporated, nonetheless, HTC Corporation should always carry explicit research about what to adopt in their hardware and software products. By so doing, HTC Corporation can keep up with other firms that are in the smartphone and tablets manufacturing field. In addition, various regions have various Information technology infrastructure. Considering that HTC is a multinational Corporation, they, HTC, should have these limitations in their products and targeted customers (Heer & Agrawala, 2008). 2.2 INFORMATION SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Management of information is the primary objective of all information systems. On the other hand, Information Technology, are all the infrastructures that support the communication of all information. As pointed above, information is among the most vital assets of any organization including HTC Corporation. The information system pointed above; enterprise resource planning, transaction processing systems, decisions support systems, and marketing information systems are the core systems adopted by HTC Corporation. In addition, there are additional systems that complement the above mentioned information systems. Similar information systems differ from vendors and or developers. Furthermore, the platform in which these systems run on can differ depending on the hardware and logical architecture of the platform. Nonetheless, protocols implemented on these systems are similar. Bottom line, most information systems need a platform that can host them. An inquest to HTC on which platform they systems run on was not successful, as the information could not be shared. However, most of the platforms are either Linux based or windows based. Windows platforms are the majority platform in major organizations especially in departments that deal with information processing. Other than the platform, information systems need data storage infrastructure. These falls both on hardware and software infrastructure. Database management systems offer the platform for storage and management of stored information or data of an organization. Ideally, data and information are the top most vital resources for information systems. All information and data has to be stored for future use. In addition, the data should be stored securely to uphold its quality. Database management systems are ideal to manage, store and help in the management of these data. Even though. Communication is vital for all organization. Considering that HTC Corporation is a multinational Corporation, communication is integral in their daily business processes. Information Communication Infrastructure (ICT) forms the backbone for all communication in most organization. Both GSM services and the internet are the most commonly used media of communication in HTC Corporation. However, for information systems, the internet, most precisely the internet protocol TCP/IP offers the means for communication between these systems. For remotely accessed systems, the TCP/IP protocol is used to interconnect terminal access points to these systems and their databases. Finally, yet importantly, all information systems need security features to safe guard their functionalities and resources. These security features are best implemented by use of third party software and related technology. Despite database management systems offering some security features to safe guard data and information stored in them, additional security is needed. Primarily, safeguarding information systems against malware is best suited for third party security software. Furthermore, the security software extends protection to a network levels by deploying firewalls to monitor and filter network activities. 2.3 IT INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT REQUIREMENTS Before any investment especially in information technology, it is vital for any organization to have into considerations a number of aspects such as; The organization should perform an analysis in what they would wish to achieve with the proposed information technology would achieve. This will aid in ensuring that an appropriate budget is drawn. In addition, a better understanding of the organizations and their need for the information technology infrastructure will help in determining how best the infrastructure can be laid out to utilize available infrastructure. In addition, it is vital for all information infrastructure to be scalable to allow for growth in case the organization needs to expand in the near future. Adequate initial cost to cater for all the purchase of the IT infrastructure needed. Information technology infrastructure comprises of both hardware and software components. In addition, the organization might need to outsource additional services such as internet connections from suitable internet service providers. All these initial expenditure should be anticipated to minimize drawbacks in the investment project. Skilled personnel are also needed to not only install but also to train other users on how the new infrastructure works or how it should be used. Skilled personnel are needed to set up the infrastructure and install all components. Here after, they, the skilled personnel need to configure and test the installed systems to ensure that they work as expected. Finally, yet importantly, all expected end users should be given an orientation of the system if not training to equip them with knowledge of how best to utilize the IT infrastructure. Maintenance of all information technology infrastructure should be considered. Overtime, the information infrastructure should be checked for errors and be upgraded where needed. This ensures that the entire functionalities of the IT infrastructure are working as expected 2.4 GRAPHICAL SUMMARY CROWDSOURCING 3.1 BACKGROUND Crowdsourcing is a technique in which various type of information is obtained from a large group of individuals without the use of convectional means. Ideally, needed services, concepts, ideas, or contents are obtained via solicitation from an online group. It is commonly used in the solicitation of resources such as funds or subdivision of tedious work. In native explanation, an organization or a corporation takes a problem and publishes the problem online. Individuals or groups try to solve the problem or give ideas around the problem. Hereafter, the organizations selects the best ideas and rewards the contributors whose ideas were selected as best. The reward, in form of a bounty is given as a token of appreciation; however, the organization geos ahead, produces the idea in mass quantity, and sells the idea (ITPRC.com 2004). Crowdsourcing takes the work from traditional problem solving technique in which a team is given a problem to solve. In most cases, these are problems in which need crowd wisdom to solve. Crowd wisdom is believed to be a powerful tool when it comes to solving both simple and complex problems. Ideally, individuals are presented with a problem in which they post their ideas on how best to solve the problems. This helps other individuals see what their counterparts perceive the same problem at hand (Whitman & Mattord 2009). This helps expound the perception of the problem to all participants. Furthermore, individuals can group up and brainstorm on various solution around the problem. Crowdsourcing is mostly for the general and no discrimination of expertise is enforced. This means that individuals of different expertise and knowledge can freely partake in the problem solving exercise. In most cases, a prize is usually set for any potential winner whose his, her, or their solution(s) is picked as the most ideal. The benefits of crowdsourcing are best complemented by crowd wisdom. Individuals partaking in the crowdsourcing often do it out of freewill. Pressure is to deliver or produce the best solution as opposed to traditional problem solving methodologies (Ipeirotis, 2010). 3.2 USE OF CROWDSOURCING As mentioned above, crowdsourcing involves solicitation of solutions to problems from online communities. Some businesses have been formed and are faring well thanks to crowdsourcing. An example of such a company is Threadless.com. Threadless is a web based T-shirt company. Ideally, Threadless host an online forum in which individuals participate in an ongoing online competition. Enthusiasts design t-shirts, the best of designs are picked, and t-shirts for those designs are used to make t-shirts. Ideally, anyone can join Threadless if the users have a valid email address. Upon registering, they, the users can start submitting their t-shirts design and based on polarity, the best designs are selected (Bonaccorsi & Rossi, 2004). Ideally, the use of crowdsourcing is dependent on the organization and the type of crowdsourcing. There is crowd-voting, and this involves the solicitation of information and most importantly participants’ opinion. Web applications collect user opinions and judgment on various topics. A good example if crowd-voting is adopted by Threadless. Apart from designing, users can see other designs and they vote for the best designs. Hereafter, designs with most votes are selected for production of the t-shirts (Gallaugher, 2011). Secondly, crowdsourcing creative work that entails graphic designing, illustrations writing and or architecture. Language and related data and information gathering is another type of crowdsourcing. It is without doubt that language is a very vast field to cover and exhaust. A practical example is Oxford dictionary. The English version of the Oxford dictionary used postage and paper in the past and currently oxford has web applications that involve collection of proverbs and compilation of dictionary (Oz 2009). Crowd searching is a type of crowdsourcing and its only difference from microwork is that it is strictly free. Individuals post items and people who are lost. In addition, individuals with lost and found objects post them online for others to find. Finally, yet importantly is crowd-funding as a type of crowdsourcing. Ideally, it is the acquisitions of funds from an online community to attain a targeted monetary goal. Multitude of individual contribute small amount of money as they try to attain the monetary goal. This is among the most common and practiced type of crowdsourcing. Most common in natural tragedies in which a large number of individuals are affected. Online accounts are set and willing donors can donate funds to the account. The collected funds are used to aid the targeted individuals who were affected by the recent tragedy. In other cases, individuals looking for handouts to raise capital to start small business can crowd-fund their business as well. 3.3 BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES AND BENEFITS OF CROWDSOURCING Quality: A lot of criticism circulates the question as to whether in which crowdsourcing brings about quality in terms of ideas or solutions collected. The criticism is because the participants can be of any expertise irrespective of the problem at hand. Bottom-line is, with crowdsourcing, quality is never guaranteed. However, quality solutions can be obtained or derived from the vast ideas and or solutions presented. Enjoyment-Based: Individuals who partake in the crowdsourcing practices mostly do it at their free will. The thrill that one is competing against an unknown number of participants adds to the thrill. In addition, when a participants’ solution is chosen as the ideal solution, the sense of victory can be overwhelming. Winners or rather participants who stand out in crowdsourcing often gain recognition for their efforts. For the crowdsourcers organization, the reward can come as a prize for the chosen participants. Participants do gain certain skills and experience from their participation and this can count as a plus (Oz 2009). Community-Based-Motivation: these are the collective achievement and accomplishment toward the participants as a whole. The participants get a sense of social contact and community identification Free: Among the common advantage of crowdsourcing is the fact that it is mostly free. Most of the participants are enthusiast and self-motivated. Any additional payoffs that 3.4 PROBLEMS AND DRAWBACKS OF CROWDSOURCING Cost: Crowdsourcing involves both time and energy resources that can be spent elsewhere in the organizations. In addition, organizations that do not have an independent platform will have to develop an online platform to host the crowdsourcing and this piles up to more costs toward the organization (Lance Whitney 2010). Time Consuming: Creating and maintaining an online crowdsourcing community is not an easy task. It takes time and resources that could otherwise be utilized elsewhere. Furthermore, the timeframe of results dependent on crowdsourcing cannot be estimated. This makes crowdsourcing not ideal for time dependent projects. Intellectual property: despite this drawback being dependent on the initiative at hand, it is safe to say that ideas presented will always remain Intellectual Property of the participants. However, this can be solved by the use of well-detailed terms and conditions. However, this cannot be utterly full proof as the participants might overlook the terms and conditions. Quality: In crowdsourcing, there is no guarantee that the ideas and or end product will deliver what it is intended to do or solve the problem at hand. Furthermore, the ideas or solutions presented might be many and the time needed to revise and pick the ideal solution is time cost to the organization (Oz 2009). Quality of users: Some participants can opt to cheat their way around to derive a solution to the problem at hand. By so doing, they, the cheaters will present the solution as their own. Finally, yet importantly is the manner in which information is presented in crowdsourcing. Sensitive and strategic information is not ideal to make it available to the public. This limits the extent to which crowdsourcing can be used (Oz 2009). CONCLUSIONS: KEY FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Ideally, HTC is on the right path to uphold its status among the giants in smartphone and tablets. However, HTC should also reconsider their targeted market. Most of the third world countries are currently adapting to smartphones if not tablets. However, most of HTC’s products are high-end devises thus making their costs high. This limits the market for HTC devises to only those who can afford the high-end expensive devises. HTC should consider making affordable devises for those with low budgets to spend. This increases their market share and offers more ground for customer loyalty. Furthermore, HTC can adopt crowdsourcing in an aim to gather more information about how ell to improve their products and the corporation as whole. REFERENCES "About HTC". HTC Corporation. (accessed 13 May 2013) "HTC company profile". PhoneDog. (accessed 14 May 2013) "HTC Investor Relations - About HTC". HTC (accessed 13 May 2013) Bonaccorsi, A. & Rossi, C. (2004). ‘Altruistic Individuals, Selfish Firms? The Structure of Motivation in Open Source Software’, URL (accessed 14 May 2013): http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_1/bonaccorsi/index.html. Gallaugher, John. (2011).Information Systems: A Manager's Guide to Harnessing Technology: Flat World Knowledge. Heer, J., & Agrawala, M. (2008). Design considerations for collaborative visual analytics. Information Visualization Heer, J., and Bostock, M. (2010). Crowdsourcing graphical perception: Using mechanical turk to assess visualization design. In Proc. CHI. InformationWeek. (2008). Manhasset, NY: CMP Publications. Ipeirotis, P. (2010). Demographics of mechanical turk. New York University, Tech. Rep ITPRC.com. (2004). About the ITPRC. Retrieved from http://www.itprc.com/about.htm James-Enger, K. (2008). Ready, aim, specialize!: Create your own writing specialty and make more money!. Oak Park, Ill: Marion Street Press. Lance Whitney (2010). "HTC opening R&D office to focus on wireless tech". CNET News. (accessed 14 May 2013). Oz, Effy. (2009).Management Information Systems. Boston, Mass: Thomson/ Course Technology. Quinn, A. J., and Bederson, B. B. (2011). Human Computation: A Survey and Taxonomy of a Growing Field. In Proc. CHI. Whitman, M. E., & Mattord, H. J. (2009). Principles of information security. Boston, Mass: Thomson Course Technology. JOURNAL 13th May 2013 I revised the assignment thoroughly and researched on an ideal company to research about. After searching the internet and consulting my peers, I settled for HTC Corporation. I visit www.HTC.com for an overview of the corporation. This was at 3:45pm. 13th May 2013 Had already selected HTC Corporation as the organization of study and logged into their website, www.HTC.com. I contacted their support team with a list on basic questions explaining on the assignment at hand and asked them to advise me on where I can get detailed information about the assignment. This was at 4:22pm 13th May 2013 I was ready to write the background information of HTC and for that, I accessed the HTC Corporation website, www.HTC.com/au/about. This gave me an insight of how to relate the background information and structure it well in my assignment. This was at 6:01pm 13th May 2013 I had almost completed the first part of the assignment. However, I searched for numerous sources online to further my research about what I had already written about HTC. Ideally there was not much to find. This was at 9:39 pm. 14th May 2013 I attempted to call HTC customer care and try to inquire more about the organization to conclude my research. The customer cares were reluctant to answer my questions. After this I concluded the HTC part of the assignment and resorted to tackle the Part 2 of the assignment. This was at 2:12pm 14th May 2013 I read the recommended textbook by Laudon & Laudon on the topic of Analysis of business challenges. I tried researching for additional books or articles that the two might have wrote or published. I managed to find a small publication about Management of Information Systems that was helpful throughout the assignment. This was at 3:40pm 14th May 2013 Having concluded my research on the analysis of business challenges and documenting my findings, I embarked on a small research to see hoe HTC and other related Corporations deal with such issues. Here after I embarked on the third part of the assignment. This was at 5:50pm 14th May 2013 I returned to the recommended textbook and read on crowdsourcing and all that Laudon & Laudon had to say about it. This prompted me to research more on the internet as I realized there was more to crowdsourcing and I wanted to be thorough. My research led me to several online files and websites that I used and quoted in my assignment. This was at 8:16pm 15th May 2013 I had concluded my assignment and compiled them in the appropriate report format. I revised the assignment to ensure I had not skipped anything. This was at 10:10am. Read More