Information Systems in Organisations - Speech or Presentation Example

CANBERA UNIVERSITY Information Systems in Organisations Table of Contents Part A 3 1 Main Business activities on the website 3 Figure 1.0: The Rich Picture of Celebrity X Cruises Company Website (http://www.celebritycruises.com). 6 Part B 7 2 Digital Commerce. 7 3 Discuss briefly how the business process has changed in the cruise lines with the advancements in the technology and computer based information system. 10 4 4. Enterprise Computing (CRM, ERP, EAI, SCM). 11 5 Information Security 12 6 6. A brief comparison between this website and the secondary website you have chosen. 14 7 Conclusions 15 8 References 15 Part A 1 Main Business activities on the website The (http://www.celebritycruises.com.au/) is a website belonging to the Celebrity Cruises Company. The company offers cruise services to clients across the world. Among the services offered by celebrity Cruises Company are destination services to countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Asia, Alaska, Bahamas, Bermuda, Caribbean, Hawaii, and Galapagos, among others. The company also offers various ship packages for its clients. Among the ship packages offers include Celebrity Solstice, Celebrity Millennium, Celebrity Reflection, Celebrity Silhouette, Celebrity Eclipse, Celebrity Equinox, Celebrity Infinity, Celebrity Summit, Celebrity Expedition, and Celebrity Edge. The Celebrity Cruise has also made it easy for its potential clients to access it services through the online portal on their website (http://www.celebritycruises.com.au/package-search/), where their clients can book their destinations in advance before they embark on their expeditions. The bookings are available on their online website through the online check-in Cruise Planner, Travel Documentations, Staggered Check-in Times, and Shore Executions services. And for the clients who do not have clear information how this Cruise Ship Company works, there is a FAQs and Before You Go sections in the website to offer help guide services. The company also offers on experiences once the clients are already onboard on the ship to their various destinations. These experiences include the Shore Executions, shops, entertainment, beverage packages, restaurant and cafes, top Chef at Sea, For Kids and Teens, Celebrity Activities, Celebrity wine experiences, Celebrity Exclusives, Special occasions, Isaac Takes On, Special Occasions, Staying in Touch, Staterooms, Canyon Ranch SpaClub, Casinos, and Lounges, Bars & Clubs. And for those who are already planning for the vacation with the Celebrity X Cruises can also use their website to find their cruise, ships, vacation packages, Cruise tours, new 2018/19 sailings, special occasions, group bookings, why cruise celebrity, special needs, and signature sailings. And for further assistance, the website provides their contact numbers where their clients can reach them directly for further queries and assistance. Business processes cover across various industries, and they are both vertical and horizontal which comprise of any type of business operation. And for the case of the Celebrity Cruises, it is mostly involved in Travel, entertainment, food and beverage services. In that regard, the major types of business process that plays the major role in selecting a particular business process management suite in at any given time will always be System-centric and Human-centric process. In the case of the Celebrity Cruises Company, both processes come into play because their business process involves both technology and human activities. Hence, some of the business process management systems (BPM) prevalent in the Celebrity Cruises comprise of the Travel (trip booking, agent billing) business process, and Finance (an invoicing process, a billing process, and a risk management process) business process. The following diagram illustrates a rich picture focusing on the human activity aspects on the Celebrity Cruises website and the concerns of the key stakeholders of the Celebrity Cruises Company. Celebrity Cruises Incorporation/ Company Celebrity Cruises Employees Celebrity Cruises Website Celebrity Cruise Ship Celebrity Cruise Ship Customers Figure 1.0: The Rich Picture of Celebrity X Cruises Company Website (http://www.celebritycruises.com). The diagram below also illustrates the business process using the Alter’s work system framework: Figure 2.0: Celebrity Cruises Business Processes Part B 2 Digital Commerce. The act of buying and selling processes obviously needs the physical buying and selling of products and services by customers. This process involves the physical presence of buyers at the selling point to purchase goods and services. Nevertheless, the way people do business changed with the establishment of the ecommerce business model. Hence, ecommerce is classified according to the transaction partners that are classified as Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Consumer (B2C), Business-to-Government (B2G), Consumer-to-Business (C2B), and Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) (Mohapatra, 2009). The Celebrity Cruises uses the Business-to-Customer (B2C) digital commerce business model in their business processes. This kind of model works through the company’s website. The website is designed in such a way the potential clients will first visit the organisation’s website online to have a look at the company’s information on the services and goods offered. This is because the company follows the B2C digital business model to enable them to directly sell their services and goods to their clients (Khosrow-Pour 2006). The clients will have the opportunity of choosing the kinds of services they want, and for this case, the clients choose destinations of the countries of their choice for their vacation. The website then sent that very information to their Celebrity Cruises Company through their website email services. The company then dispatches the services/goods to their clients according to their needs as illustrated in the figure below. Celebrity Cruises has invested into the sales and marketing powerhouse that integrates eCommerce, entertainment, food and beverages sales among other company assets in such a way that cannot be unmatched by some of its competitors (Pager 2011). Figure 3.0: Celebrity Cruises digital eCommerce business model. And since the Celebrity Cruises has got its largest presence on online platform, it would be wiser for the company to invest in Mobile Commerce as its number one digital commerce strategy. The company can generate multi-channel offerings that would allow its clients to consistently explore their brands irrespective of their shopping and payment methods (Hayden and Webster, 2014). If the company integrate across channels, they would experience the sale of their products through divergent channels and that are adequately differentiated to account for price differences. Mobile commerce is rapidly growing at a high rate and if the company lacks a robust mobile commerce platform, they will experience a drastic drop off in revenue on the preceding years. Therefore, the company needs to offer real-time mobile-accessible services such as click-to-call, product information, delivery status, and maps (Tassabehji 2003). This could be affected by developing mobile app that performs everything that is performed by their traditional website that only works well with the normal personal computers (PCs), and laptops. Smart phones allow individuals to share almost the entire aspects of their lives through emails, text messages, and calls. So Celebrity Cruises needs to parse, collect, and analyse new data so as to achieve the full potentials of the mobile commerce and mobile marketing strategies. The company will be able capitalise on the big data opportunity made possible by mobile device uses in the following three key ways: 1. Improve on the operational efficiency and reduce costs. 2. Contextual and personalisation content and media experience 3. Improve on the media performance and marketing spend And as the volumes of the digital touch points and media channels continue to escalate, data will seemingly come from everywhere. Besides, a large population own Smartphone’s, so it would be easy for many people to access the Celebrity Cruises websites through their devices and give the company a large audience and digital presence in the long run and help increase their revenue. This is because the commerce implications surrounding the leveraged insights and data can be enormous when a brand commences to see the cross-media view of connections between newspaper impressions, mobile coupons, and print advertisements among other media channels (Alpcan and Başar 2010). And this comes as result of the mobile ability presented that influences all these factors that are connected and come together and transact across the entire Celebrity Cruises business channels (Hayden and Webster, 2014). The mobile commerce strategy will hence facilitate a more instant system for converting sales through any of these media channels if it is subjected to an integrated and centralised data. However, as much as the mobile commerce might be of benefit of the current modern organisations in the modern world, the strategy also comes with a set of its own challenges. This is prevalent in the fact that mobile phones/ smart phones have evolved into ‘all-in-one’ device and it is threatening to replace numerous existing devices. Hayden and Webster (2014) are suggesting that while companies are designing their long-term mobile strategies, they should keep check on the raid technological changes and the dynamic online security challenges. The organisations should also consider the software solutions that they adopt for their use as far as online business is concerned. The following diagram illustrates the business process for the Celebrity Cruises Company: Yes Customer pays for the vacation Travel arrangements Figure 4.0: Celebrity Cruises business process. 3 Discuss briefly how the business process has changed in the cruise lines with the advancements in the technology and computer based information system. The cruise ship industry has not been left behind by the latest technology craze and that has been brought about by the recent and continued advancement of the technological changes. This is because the new multimedia sphere has permitted the cruise ship industry with critical physical cues in the information stream, and also introducing the physical reality in the goods, and services as well as the world of electronics communications besides the traditional telecommunications networks that has for a very long time permitted the business world to cross barriers linked with time and distance (Evans 2015). Besides the benefits experienced due to the technological growth advancements, some of the challenges that have developed through this phenomenon are the fact that these cruise companies might be finding it difficult to sustain strong corporate networks that continues to provide them with live links throughout their entire organisations. Constant communication increases the levels of value of the customer services for any kind of business. Hence, it would be prudent for the Celebrity Cruises management be in a position of communicating with their office administration informing them of the ongoing requirements for the Ship’s mechanical support, personnel, food, and beverages, and other issues that impacts on the customers ship experiences while onboard. The advancement in technology has also triggered the Ship line industry to seek for technological innovations that might ease their business processes. A case in example is some ship line companies have advanced their point of sale (POS) terminals that displays the preference of data and history of their clients (Evans 2015). There is also an opportunity to advance in the cruise-ship dining management systems. This is prevalent due to the fact that the complexity of the upper-tier cruise lines has more often tried to increase the satisfaction of their ever increasing passengers. And so it is evident that advancement of information technology (ICT) , such as the development of networks, personal computers (PCs), mobile phone applications, digital communications, satellite, tablets, laptops, and the internet – plus the advancement of application software’s has immensely contributed to the revolution on which cruise ship lines conduct their business operations. These technological advancements have brought about technological effects and changes on cruise ship business operations such as: Operating processes Products and services Transport and distribution Information and communications These technological advancements have also seen the cruise ship lines adopting technological innovations by updating their ships with the cutting edge features, and also implementing the latest gadgets into their services. Hence, some of the latest technological innovations that have been adapted by the modern cruise ships include (Gambio 2012): Facial recognition technology, celebrity cruises-interactive menus on iPads, operation improvements, carnival cruise lines-EA sports bar, celebrity cruises-luxury ‘Smart Glass’ Shower’, carnival cruise lines-5D theatre, royal Caribbean international-wayfinder, among other technological advancements. 4 4. Enterprise Computing (CRM, ERP, EAI, SCM). Enterprise computing refers to a collection of various business software solutions to the common business issues such as the streamlining processes and resource management. And these tools also happen to be a collection of information technology tools that supports company businesses in their back office support and production operations. Most businesses currently depends on these enterprise IT computing tools products to help them sustain their market share, avoid business risks, and establish business growth prospects (Papathanassis et al. 2012). Some of the commonly used enterprise IT computing tools by various organisations such as the Celebrity Cruises in the operations of their businesses includes the Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERPs), Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRMs), Integrated Supply Chain Management Systems (ISCMs), and product Lifecycle Management Systems (PLMs). In that regard, the Celebrity Cruises currently use both the Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRMs), and the Integrated Supply Chain Management Systems (ISCMs) in their business operations. The CRM helps the cruise ship company in collecting data from social media interactions, from transactions, among other feedback mechanisms. It also helps the company in engaging with their clients because satisfied customers help in business growth (Business Research Guide, 2017). When the company collects data through their sales manager, brand managers, and market research analysts from its clients, they use these data to suggest product modifications, packaging, price strategy guides and establish new markets for their products. Additionally, the ISCMs also help the cruise ship company supply chain managers with the much required information to monitor product inventory levels, track shipments and order supplies (Giachetti 2010). And when the ISCMs ICT Computing tools are integrated with the CRMs ICT tools, the supply chain managers finds it easy in using them to offer their clients with the most accurate information regarding the product quality and shipped orders concerns. 5 Information Security Computer networks consist of a group of interconnected computing devices which agree on a collection of common communication protocols. Hence, networks continue to evolve and diversify at a great speed. And one of the most popular applications on the internet known as the World Wide Web (www) or the web commenced a system of interlinked static documents that can be accessed through websites, and the Celebrity Cruises website being one of them. Celebrity Cruises websites acts as the link between travelling clients that consists of both tourists and business people and the Celebrity cruises Company. This means that the Celebrity Cruises website is constantly busy around the clock. This phenomenon then also exposes the website to various security risks and threats. These risks can be termed as various attacks on the website’s network security such as trying to compromise on the integrity, availability, confidentiality, or trying to get control of the Celebrity Cruises computers and communication networks. These threats are usually posed by malicious party who tries to illegally access the company corporate secrets, sensitive information and valuable data, and also sometimes try to bring down the company’s website and render it non-operational (Bidgoli 2006). Either the internal or external attackers usually perform such kind of attacks by learning the Internet protocol (IP) address and the operating systems of the target company servers or the architecture of the victim company’s internet. The loss of these kinds of company data can prove to be very expensive for the company in terms of their reputation and finances. The most common attacks are the ones that threaten the company database integrity (Alpcan and Başar 2010). This can be done by simply embedding backdoors to a system for later use and also defacing the website as a whole. Most of these attacks are also done using malicious software’s or malwares such as Trojans, viruses, and worms by either internal or external attackers without the knowledge of owners. The installed malwares that act as botnets on the target computers can then be used by these attackers to steal company sensitive information or even send spam (unwanted email messages). The below table shows some of the common website security threats and attacks: Security service Sample threats and attacks Integrity Compromises data, alters websites, implant Trojans and backdoors. Control Partial control of systems, e.g. root access, and user accounts. Confidentiality Unauthorised access, stealing corporate secrets, information theft, and identity theft. availability Denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Table 1.01: Common security threats and attacks on computer systems and websites. Other security threats caused by either internal or external attackers with malicious intentions include compromising the controls and availability of company networks. The distributed launch of the denial-of-services (DoS) attacks cordinations that compromise the online services availabilities are actualised by botnest crated by these attackers through malwares (Alpcan and Başar 2010). Most of these DoS attackers are usually motivated by commercial interest, e.g. secretly sponsored companies who accrue profits from service distributions of their competitors (Bidgoli 2006). Besides, for the larger systems such as servers’ attacks and partial control gains, malwares are usually deployed. The attackers eventually use the existing or secret accounts of the attacked systems to control the Victim Company’s under attack systems behaviours. However, irrespective of all these security threats and attacks, all is not lost because there are preventive measures than can be adopted by the Celebrity Cruises Company to mitigate such attacks and threats on their websites and data systems. The numerous defence mechanisms that have been developed and are available for network security include the use of antivirus software’s, firewalls, and intrusion detective systems (Alpcan and Başar 2010). It is also prudent to observe certain security controls such as changing of passwords after every three months. Celebrity Cruises should also invest in educating their employees and business partners on the risks linked to email attachments, and the use of the same antivirus software throughout the organisations should be avoided. Passwords should also not contain obvious characters such as date of birth that make them easy to guess for the attackers. Network access should also be removed immediately in the case where one of the employees is terminated. It is also recommended for the company to remove unused network services because it is significant for internet related control for systems distributions. And most importantly, (Bidgoli 2006) recommends that a periodic review of the organisation’s assets and risks should be conducted so as to determine the current effectiveness of security solutions. 6 6. A brief comparison between this website and the secondary website you have chosen. The Celebrity Cruises and the Princes Cruise are operated on the same business process. The business processes shared by these two companies include the Travel (trip booking, agent billing) business process, and Finance (an invoicing process, a billing process, and a risk management process) business processes. The two companies also offer their products in same way. This is because they also use the same digital commerce models and business process, qnd electronic commerce strategies. 7 Conclusions This report focused on the business activities, business process, the human activities and the main activities of the Celebrity cruises website. It also focused on the Information Technology aspects such as the digital commerce models, digital commerce strategies, the enterprise computing and information security of the Celebrity Cruises website. It is evident that the security of the website is crucial for the company to continue to stay afloat in the Ship Cruising business industry. More stringent security measures as illustrated in the report should be put into place and be made a routine exercise so to safeguard the company data, and sensitive information systems. Moreover, the security of the passengers and company employees should also be observed while onboard of the ship. Besides, the enterprise computing tools such as CRM and ISCM should also be improved so as to realise growth and productivity of the organisation. The company’s business process should also be improved and made efficient so that customer satisfaction is realised. In conclusion, it was also established that the two websites, Celebrity Cruises and Princes Cruises operates on the way. 8 References Pager, S.A 2011, beyond culture vs. commerce: decentralizing cultural protection to promote diversity through trade. Browser Download This Paper. Mohapatra, S 2009, Business process automation, PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd. Khosrow-Pour, M ed., 2006, Encyclopedia of e-commerce, e-government, and mobile commerce, IGI Global. Tassabehji, R 2003, Applying E-commerce in Business, Sage. Hayden, T. and Webster, T 2014, The mobile commerce revolution: business success in a wireless world, Que Publishing. Gambino, A 2012, Technology Innovation in the Cruise Industry, Business 2 Community, viewed, 7 April 2017, < http://www.business2community.com/travel-leisure/technology-innovation-in-the-cruise-industry-0265040#HZsfgdTYbw1ms1CK.97> Evans, N 2015, Strategic management for tourism, hospitality and events, Routledge, London. Business research Guide 2017, What is Enterprise Computing? viewed, 7 April 2017, < http://www.businessresearchguide.com/faq/what-is-enterprise-computing/> Papathanassis, A., Breitner, MH., Schoen, C., and Gur, N (eds) 2012, Cruise Management: Information and Decision Support Systems, Springer, Germany. Giachetti, R. E 2010, Design of Enterprise Systems: Theory, Architecture, and Methods, Tailor & Francis Group, New York. Bidgoli, H 2006, Handbook of Information Security, Information Warfare, Social, Legal, and International Issues and Security Foundations, (Vol. 2), John Wiley & Sons. Alpcan, T. and Başar, T 2010, Network security: A decision and game-theoretic approach, Cambridge University Press. Read More