Assignment:
Please respond to the following posts in one or more of the following ways:
- Offer your colleague one or more lessons you have learned, based on your own experience with the types of data resources and systems presented.
- Expand on your colleague's post by sharing how your organization has used these data resources and systems.
- Offer ideas for how the data resources or systems presented might be used in your organization. Identify any obstacles that your organization might face or has faced when using these data resources and systems.
- Compare your colleague's findings with your own to develop a set of recommendations from which organizations with similar data resource and processing needs might benefit most.
- Expand upon potential issues that could arise and offer one or more additional recommendations about how you would address those.
Responses must be at least to one paragraph to each post.
Part 1
In today's business society, information systems lie at the success of the company. In other words, businesses cannot function without technology and information systems. Information systems allows companies to perform various duties such as maintaining security and privacy efforts, loss prevention efforts, as well as being proactive in terms of keeping up with the latest demands of business.
For example, clouding has become a widely used storage system in the business environment. Clouding is a system or software that allows data to be stored in a central location and easily assessible to company personnel from wherever they are. According to Rivera (2018), different types of clouding systems includes, but is not limited to IDrive, Acronis, Carbonite, Zoolz, Ennyte, Backblaze, and many more. When turmoil occurs at the office such as the loss of data or misplacement of devices, the cloud system is used to recover data and share it with team members. This system is important because it allows team members to remotely access data, retrieve loss data, and share thoughts at one time to the team. Clouding saves time and money for companies.
The company in which I am employed currently uses a clouding system called Sharepoint. Sharepoint is powered by Outlook 365 and it allows everyone at the office to upload documents and we can view and edit documents that colleagues have sent. A short-term issue that clouding poses is the staff not knowing how to use it. It serves no purpose to include clouding if a lot of managers do not know how to use it. Another issue is a possibility of sensitive information being shared on the clouding system for unintended eyes. A long-term issue would be too much information being stored and having to delete certain files. Another issue is ex-employees having access to the cloud information after their separation from the company.
A data resource that is important to businesses are social media. Over the past few years, social media has reached new heights and business all over have recognized and utilized it. Businesses use social media to answer questions quicker and more efficiently. A great way companies have reported to be using social media is creating customer service chats where customers do not have to spend so much time finding answers to simple questions (Matthews, 2018). This method keeps customer service at the forefront of business and meets the majority of customers where they are which is important to business environments. We use social media in my company for ordering purposes for our customers.
However, we could utilize social media more to solicit job applicants, advertise for the jobs, and market our company in general. A short-term issue for social media could be the negative reviews or attacks. Social media is helpful if it is on your side. A long-term issue would be the need for daily monitoring. If it is not managed properly, it will not serve your company any good purpose.
A data processing system widely used in businesses are QuickBooks. QuickBooks is an accounting system that organizes all aspects of a company's finances. According to Collins (2011), there are so many features of QB that is has become the world's most used accounting system. Some of its features include memorizing transactions, it can process multiple reports, batch invoicing, remote access, creates financial reports, among many more features. QuickBooks is important because it caters to the company's finances which is the most important aspect of any business or entity.
The company I work for currently uses QB for accounting duties. We could also use QB for letter writing and envelopes. QuickBooks provides templates and mail-merge capabilities to create customized letters (Collins, 2011). Some of the letters include "Late Payment Reminders" and "Bounced Check" notifications. The secretary uses time to create those letters in which QB can create as well. A short-term issue with QuickBooks is limitations on the number of users. A limited number of personnel having access to QB can inadvertently put too much power in the hands of certain people. QB should be open to all financial personnel within the company. A long-term issue with QuickBooks could be unpredictability and system crashes. No technology is perfect, so it is inevitable that the system will likely one day experience technological difficulties.
Part 2
Big Data
Organizations need access to their data and most organizations have a lot of it! The volume, velocity and variety (known as the three Vs) is what is referred to as big Data. Big data comes from sensors, devices, video and audio files, networks, log files, social media, etc. Much of this data is generated in real-time and accumulates very quickly.
Examples of how this data will be captured in my organization are through customer purchases (online and in-stores) and through sensors and video files; showing human movement in stores and if a consumer purchases an item after reviewing it (i.e. reading the package, touching the product, etc.).
The biggest risks of big data are unorganized data, data storage, and data privacy. Before an organization jumps into the big data world, a well planned governance strategy is essential. Traditional data storage methods are just not enough to store big data and retain it. Organizations wanting to have big data should consider cloud storage solutions as part of their strategic planning. Most organizations make use of sensitive data such as personal customer information and a breach in security can not only ruin the organizations reputation, it can also lead to legal and civil actions. Having a solid security plan is a compliance necessity.
Data that is captured "automatically" through no to little human interaction is considered less variable than data that is manually input into an application. Now that we have captured all of this data, how do we access it and use it to our advantage?
Big data Tools
It's not the amount of data that's important; it's what organizations do with the data that matters. Technology advances are increasingly adding new sources of data and organizations need the ability to use analytics against large and diverse data sets that may or may not be structured similarity.
Big Data tools allow businesses to make better and faster decisions using the data that was previously inaccessible or unusable. Some of the tools currently available are text analytics, machine learning, predictive analytics, data mining and statistics. These tools give business the ability to gain new insights that may have not been available historically from their data sets.
Data has intrinsic value but it's of no use until the value is discovered. The biggest risk of data analytics is incompetent analytics. Without proper and effective data analytics, big data is just a pile of junk taking up space and resources. Since data analytics is an emerging technology and is rapidly changing, having the right talent and knowing when to apply the right tools is critical to make relevant business decisions. My organization will need to invest in their people strategy to ensure our workforce is prepared to embrace this emerging technology advancement.
Cloud Computing
Organizations that plan on having and using big data also need a Cloud Strategy. Having a platform that can cost-effectively store all of this data is important. According to a study by Forrester, 84% of IT professionals say that having all layers of the technology stack in one cloud environment is a critical or important requirement.
Cloud environments allow organizations that ability to store more data with more agility. It also gives organizations the ability to manage, monitor, secure and upgrade applications and data from anywhere in the world. This will allow organizations to become more integrated and the ability to scale dynamically on customer-facing applications.
The three major risks for cloud operations are the need for integration between cloud services and between on-premise services (i.e. hybrid integration), maturity of technology and security.