Essentials of Management Information Systems - Example

Essentials of Management Information Systems Name Institution Date Executive Summary Social networking has changed communications in many areas, business involved. In future, communication through social network has the likelihood of sweeping the workplace, since the future generation demands that the superiority and flexibility available for individual communications corresponds communication within a business setting. Implementing social networking technology with a company comes with several benefits for companies, for instance, improved innovation, increased engagement in addition to superior decision-making. Nonetheless, prior to realizing these benefits, organizational management should fully understand the size of the relevant group and its requirements. Consequently, it should match these with the most effective tools available in order to gain from social networking. Effective and efficient implementation of social networking technology in an organization provides a fundamental competitive advantage for businesses since they compete within the international marketplace for clients and workers. More so, there is a probability that a wait-and-see stratagem or a fast follower approach might not work as expected because of cultural change needed to facilitate open communication will take a bit longer as compared to implementation of social networking technology. Therefore, businesses building up a head start currently in social networking have the likelihood of being more successful. Essentials of Management Information Systems Future Business Use of Social Networking Introduction Social Networking Technologies consist of several web-based applications that facilitate the development of online communities through fostering and enabling communication, partnership, interaction as well as information sharing. Accordingi social network site refers to web-based services that enable people to create a public or semi-public profile in a bounded system, provide the listing of users sharing the connection and view and navigate their connections lists in the system. In addition, social networking technologies include other features of exchanging information for instance, blogging, and wikis in addition to media sharing tools. Social networking technologies offer an integrated mechanism of developing and deploying social network sites. Social networking technology facilitates fundamental social networking but mostly it includes further tools for supporting a broader range of social communications. For a business to be able to support social networking, it should invest in social networking technologies in order to create its own, proprietary and private, social network sites, instead of utilizing publicly available, complementary social networksii. Social Networking A social network consist of units referred to as nodes and the nodes come together via appreciation or approval of their connections, for instance knowledge, status, friendship or any other similarity. The common aspects bringing them together are called “ties”. Therefore, social networks are nodes toed together within one setup and locality. In general, effective social networks are developed around a focused tie. Based on six degrees of separation concept, social networking sets up interrelated internetiii communities that facilitate connection of people. Such people then invite their contacts to join a given social network and the process continuesiv. For businesses, internal social networks can be very advantageous if they are created and managed appropriately. Social networks can increase organizational morale, boost membership, offer less costly marketing and advertising and also reinforce relations between members who otherwise may not associate or gain access to one another. In addition, in terms of marketing, brand and image control, fast communication to people as well as surveying are some of further extremely essential benefitsv. Through social networking, people are able to connect at low cost and this is a benefit to businesses who are seeking to increase their contact bases. Social networks normally regularly act as a customer relationship management tool for organizations selling products and services. Additionally, organizations can also utilize social networks in adverts through banners and text adverts. Because businesses are run globally, social networking simplifies connection throughout the world. Examples of social networking being utilized for business purposes include LinkedIn.com and Youngblackprofessionals.org. LinkedIn.com connects professionals and it has more than 100 million users within more than 200 nations while Youngblackprofessionals.org is also similar to LinkedIn.com but targets professional minoritiesvi. Social networking is also used inform physical spaces available to members of a social network, for instance Hub Culture, an invitation-only social network for businesspersons, and has pavilions within big cities like London. The physical presence of the social network enables members to network and connect within both the real and virtual world and this increases business value. Basically, applications for networking sites have expanded toward businesses and brands are developing their own networking sites; this is referred to as brand networking. This implies that a brand can establish and develop its consumer relationship through connecting their customers to the brand image on a platform that offers them comparative content, aspects of participation as well as a score system. Generally, brand networking is an emerging way of capitalizing on social trends as a marketing toolvii. Social networking facilitates an entirely networked business setting and this allows improved access to customer profiles and preferences and this leads into a stronger capacity of delivering individualized products that customers need. By using social networking, businesses can have more data and resources consumption patterns and this will result to more effective utilization of scarce resources. This is because suppliers of specific products can be accessed directly and this will result into stronger supply chain as well as better management of supplier relationship. Consequently, this will lead to a more competitive pricing, increased flexibility in addition to reduced inventory capital. When data generated at the individual level data as well as social relationships can be gathered and analyzed together with other pertinent datasetsviii. This is beneficial to the customers since the consumers are more directed, personal and it also comes with economical benefits. Just like social networking in Facebook, the chief value of a business social networking web is to have a network impact in the business. This allows the business to increase innovation speed along with productivity. For example, through IT, Telecommunication providers can provide banking products on SIM-cards and also automotive firms can provide funding as well as insurance or even rental cars. Through social networking, telecom provider doesn’t have to turn out to be a bank; they can utilize their service from a bank via the business website. In addition, manufacturing organizations can manufacture products for several various organizations, like the ones within high tech and automotive already at present. They carry out this through formation of networks that join diverse services and abilities from various organizations. Furthermore, the business web will provide real-time intelligenceix. Industry Evaluation Since social networking is becoming a mainstream phenomenon, businesses are inclined to take advantage of their staff’s acquaintance with the technology in order to increase staff communication and teamwork. Basically, there are many advantages that social networking technology provides to businesses and they include: Increased customer and worker engaged, for instance identifying the needs of the customers on time Improved innovation via peer-to-peer sharing of knowledge, for example cross-divisional teamwork Improved decision making, for example by predicting markets. Both large and small organizations, including IBM and venture-backed startups, are trying to corner, whose value is anticipated to be $ 2 billion in 2013 and account for most of the revenue for Web 2.0 products. Organizations such as Best Buy and Groupe Danone have implemented social networking technologies since they deem them as fundamental for future success. Social networking comes with many opportunities and benefits and they can be connected to the size of the group working on the relevant task and additionally requirements of the group. Improved innovation can be accomplished within a group in case social networking facilities enhanced collaboration. Large, geographically distributed companies get many benefits from improved collaboration toolsx. Generally, social networking provides a business with a higher employee engagement and this is extremely important for big companies. Offering improved communication tools simplifies the process of workers to know their colleagues and probably clients better and hence improving engagement. Improved decision-making entails comparatively simple tools where the requirement for teamwork is lower. Nonetheless, decision markets are pertinent merely for larger companies where the participation of numerous people leads into a well-functioning marketplacexi. Social networking increases employee and customer engagement. Basically, employee relationships within an organization consist of strong ties, weak ties along with potential ties. There are numerous tools for developing and amending documents for employee. These consist of wikis and collaborative office software, for instance Google Docs or the Zoho Office suite. Social networking is most valuable in improving the weak ties within a company. A good illustration is a small organization that develops a Facebook group and promotes its workers to join. If its implementation is successful, workers can know their colleagues better, and this lowers the friction between workers that have not known each beforexii. In addition, social networking improves innovation in a business and they are numerous ways of improving and accelerating innovation within firms through social networking. There is also improved decision making by predicting markets whereby managers in big organizations in most cases face decision-making quagmire at the top whereas the information to make the best decision is at the centre and bottom of the organization with the workers interacting directly with clients. Such a problem can be solved by market prediction and these are small-scale electronic markets, mostly open to any worker and this binds payoffs to measureable future incidentsxiii. Implementation of social networking technologies can offer general organizational firm, but management should be aware of the absolute nature if the connection between the IT investment and the performance results. For example, management can try creating a customer-focused social networking site for interacting with customers. Even though the general performance goal for implementing social networking in an organization could be for increasing profitability, the instant impact of networking technologies can be perceived in various ways that range from utilizing the social networking site to more efficiently collect product element preferences to more effectively offer customer support for precedent sales. Taking into consideration the effect of customer contributed product knowledge, social networking can have numerous process-level effects and they include: Reduction of the costs for product development Offering management with improved information for sale fore-casting which results into decreased inventory and more sales Increased customer loyalty as well as repeat purchases and this obviously raises profits and on the other hand reduces customer acquisition costsxiv. Current Status of Social Networking Currently, people are hyper-connected through the mobile phones and there is an elevated blurring of business as well as individual lives. Similarly, businesses have undergone tremendous changes in the manner in which they communicate. Social networking enabled by ENS software, social media is being used as means of internal communication in most businesses. The raised emphasis on wireless communications for sales personnel as well as the cost pressure on the IT department has lead into a number of internal and external communications functions being migrated to the cloud. The ensuing simplicity in connecting to other cloud service, more so social networking software, has simplified the work of IT and further amplified the stress on security of organizational dataxv. The arrival of high-speed and wireless networks has resulted to “Digital Swarm”. Individuals, devices as well as other objects self-organize to perform synchronized activities as physically circulated entities with IT devices, utilizing wireless as a teamwork and decision-making platform. Because adoption of social networking software is widespread, it is deemed as an element of the organizational infrastructure just like email was within 2010xvi. Social networking has not taken long and also it has taken few years in changing employee behavior and patching all the security shortcomings and the organizations which took the leap as early as 2010 have been successful in improving their innovation engines, improving employee engagement as well as improved decision making. Newer versions of social networking have simplified its usage but changing the culture of the company has taken longer than anticipatedxvii. The popularity of social networking has increased recently, more so with young individuals who are adopting social networks to improve their social communications and interactions. For instance, the degree of penetration of social network within college and university environment has been found to be very high. Due to such high level of penetration into an essential segment, it is believed that social networking is very important. For instance, Microsoft paid $240M for a 1.6 percent ownership stake in Facebook and this indicates a total market value of $15 billion. This indicates that social network technologies can offer value within business settings and a number of businesses have already begun implementing social network technologies within the corporate setting. A good illustration is Wachovia Company, which released its own social networking platform to more than 110,000 workers. This hence indicates that social networking is becoming popular and growing steadily and many companies are even choosing to create and develop their own social networksxviii. Many businesses have had considerable changes regarding their communications. This is because many firms are using social networking for internal communication. Managers in businesses should pay close attention to their workforce and acknowledge that change is coming. Future probable employees communicate differently whereby they spend most of their time sending text messages and accessing social networking sites. With the change in personal communication habits of the labor force, numerous software tools referred to as Enterprise Social Networking software are there for managers to implement in their companies. Benefits consist of increased worker engagement, increased innovation and teamwork as well as improved decision-makingxix. Implementing Issues One of the challenges of is the big number of stakeholders who are likely to have diverse requirements and priorities. Employees in an organization are likely to prefer working with tools that they are familiar with. The management has the concern that social networking can have a negative effect on the productivity of the workers and unless the networking software is a component of the organization’s research, they would rather not have any changes on their habits. This has to do with training and learning new things and is particularly a big issue to old employees who are almost retiring and are not comfortable with learning new programs for only few months. In addition, management has the concerns of security and confidentiality issues. The transparency of social networking ought to be accompanied with adequate controls to limit information flow to avoid loss of intellectual property as well as other sensitive data (Zuboff, 2002)xx. Another challenge of implementing social networking is that whereas networking is termed as essential, many businesses do not deem them as critical. As a result, people and businesses in most cases push social networking to the bottom of their priority list. In addition, engaging businesses is complex due to the multifaceted layers of bureaucracy as well as the number of stakeholders involved. Whereas the IT department has the responsibility of implementing the launch, human resources buy-in is needed to provide data regarding the employees and also support from the managementxxi. Another issue is reliability. This is because whereas customers may endure an outage on Facebook since it’s mainly viewed as entertainment, they may not take well downtime on a project. For instance, there might be delays in delivering the messages and also there might be variation of opinions regarding the implementation of the new technology. More importantly, the organization employees may be forced to undertake a computer information systems education and is risk averse. Another issue with implementing social networking is funding because there might not be adequate finances for investing within social networking. Finally, with any big and evolving organization, there is always a transition period that should be handled carefully to avoid various stakeholders from feeling disregardedxxii. Additionally, the data used in the social networking software can be biased at times. Probably, companies that have most benefits for implementing social networking software have already implemented and this has made social networking to seem more valuable than it is supposed to be for other businesses. Still, the efficiency of the software can also differ considerably and this depends on the requirements of the company, culture as well as incentives. What’s more, even if social networking in an organization addresses existing concerns regarding security, IP and privacy, unpredicted issues surface in the future. In such a circumstance, even though social networking software provides the expected benefits, the downside could be higher. A good illustration can be a cyber cold-war between the US and China where hackers attack social networking software and thus penetrating and interrupting business communications. Therefore, there are two likelihoods, which social networking provides the expected benefits or it does not, but higher chances are that implementing social networking in an organization always brings the associated benefitsxxiii. Conclusion In conclusion, companies investing in social networking currently have the likelihood of gaining an important head start in future; whereas future versions of the social networking software will be much simpler to utilize, the required cultural change for entirely take advantage of the software is likely to take some time. When implementing social networking in an organization, a business should take into consideration the organizational size and its communication necessities. Concerning the size, the social networking software has a given number of users whereby it is most efficient. For instance, email maybe very suitable for communications with small groups but twitter is a better way of reaching a large number of individual for instance millions of people. About communication requirements, the needs of a firm should be evaluated carefully to contest them with efficient software tools. For a company with simple requirements, for instance messaging, sporadic sharing of document, Google Docs can be the most effective solution. In a nutshell, picking the appropriate software and implementing the social networking software efficiently can result to a step change within worker communication, retention and teamwork, and this provides the next source of competitive advantage within a universal marketplace. End Notes Read More