OT...........P.S. Tell Zain his cyber-uncles want to know what kind of grade "we" got on the paper (A or A+??).
My dear Uncle Jerry,
I am posting my assignment on our thread. I will be getting my marks on Monday. I hope I will do well. I trust you will find a little bit of my father and a lot of my 'cyber-uncles' and spirit of 'Idea' covered in this assignment..
I hope it meets your approval and you will let me know my short comings, please do mark me,I will check for your before I leave for Uni in the morning. Anyway I am working hard. Please let me have your comments.
Your cyber-nephew,
Zain.
Introduction
There are over 200 million people having access to the Internet and this year Computer information systems (CIS) generated $300 billion in revenue. By 2008 CIS is expected to account for over 50% of the world economy. No business can afford to ignore these figures. If a business is to survive, it must move on with the times. CIS can answer tough management questions like:
 How do I give my customers a simple, quick, and cost-effective method to purchase and configure a product and have it easily serviced?
 Can I build global delivery capability to capture new markets?
 How can I shrink product development time to maximise market share?
 How can I avoid inventory build-up and minimise obsolescence costs through a fully linked supply chain?
American giants Wal-Mart, Cisco and General Electric use CIS to answer these questions and in all cases, these companies have achieved impressive results. The reason being CIS is an open, collaborative system that transcends the traditional barriers to business relationships and between geographies, allowing diverse constituents to access information, resources, and services in ways that work best for firms. We shall now move on to see how this works and how great a positive impact is CIS on firms.
Main Body
Glover Ferguson, analyst at Andersen Consulting, believes that the way companies use CIS will define their success in the coming era of virtual business. The demands of today?s Internet economy continue to transform the rules defining a scalable cost efficient business model. Businesses have to become more efficient and streamline their operations to reduce costs in the face of globalisation. How CIS can provide a positive impact on businesses will be discussed below.
1. Increased sales and revenue
CIS have allowed firms to reach millions of people all over the world in a cheap cost-effecting way. Research and information resources are also available and the Internet offers affordable and convenient access to a wide range of information sources enabling you to monitor industry trends, check out competitors and prospective customers, access government and supplier information, keep abreast of world events and financial information. Cisco systems, worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, receive 70% of its product orders via CIS. That?s more than $22 million each day through the Cisco online site. An electronic catalogue can sell virtually any type of merchandise, especially those that lend themselves to mail order delivery. Expansion has never been so easy. There are no geographical limits to the Internet -- reach beyond the boundaries of your traditional media and expand your market effortlessly into other countries. The excellent search tools on the Internet make it easy for customers in your niche to find you -- no matter where they are. CIS also helps firms to generate leads and make contact with people actively seeking out information critical to their purchasing decisions. General Electric uses CIS to purchase more than $1 billion worth of products over the Internet from more than 1,400 suppliers. GE's lighting division in Cleveland, Ohio, implemented an online purchasing system in 1996 that eliminated paper requisitions and forms, blueprint retrieval, and manual preparation of daily requests for low-value parts. The request-for-quote (RFQ) process has been reduced from seven days to one and has greatly expanded the volume of RFQs reaching prospective suppliers. GE has realised a 15% reduction in total purchasing cost resulting from increased competition between vendors, volume discounts by aggregating corporate-wide purchases, and lowering of purchasing headcount.
2. Marketing and promotion
Through CIS firms are able to gain publicity. Though quickly establishing itself, the Internet is still a novelty and the media regularly features new web sites, particularly those with intriguing content or presentation. CIS allows the testing of new products and services. Using online dialogue with customers can help inspire new product developments and get their reaction to new products and services before they hit the marketplace giving the company a forecast of what demand is set to be. Communication with the media is also possible by providing on-line press kits; you can make it easy for the media to "cut-and-paste" your information right into articles. CIS also offers a range of tools enabling you to communicate your message directly to your target audience: graphical billboards, pages and advertising space on the World Wide Web, contributions to relevant newsgroups and selective e-mail. CIS have also helped companies improve their customer service and overhaul their supply chains. Wal-Mart, US food retail giant, established networked applications with its supplier Proctor & Gamble (P&G). Each time Wal-Mart sells an item, the sale automatically triggers a replenishment request at P&G. The result: dramatic improvements in customer service because inventory is always fully stocked.
3. Benefits of Extended Enterprise
Traditional supply chain integration provides some degree of cost savings, improved communication, and partnership. These benefits are limited, however, by the tools and approaches of the past. CIS takes a firm to an enterprise to an entirely new level of ability and benefit. A firm doesn?t have to trade-off lower costs for customer satisfaction, quality for time to volume. Integrating your supply chain enables maximising all of these simultaneously, creating efficient operations and a competitive advantage. Cisco has reduced new product time to volume by three months, enhancing revenues by more than $100 million annually. Systems that are shared with key suppliers simultaneously allow co-ordinated action and faster time to volume. Customers have access through the Internet to independently browse and price products, order and configure them, view shipment schedules, monitor delivery, and receive copies of invoices. Customer satisfaction increases with the customer's ability to control what they see and when they can see it. Through a customer self-service model, automation of the process means that fewer customer support representatives are required to maintain customer satisfaction levels. This enables rapid growth within a company and also frees support staff to work on higher value-added activities. With direct links to suppliers, an Extended Enterprise streamlines procurement, eliminating paper orders, and expediting receiving. Purchasing staff focus on more strategic activities such as negotiating, partnership, and business development. Because real-time information on forecasts, selling, and inventory levels travel immediately through the supply chains, companies maintain lower inventory levels without increasing the risk of part shortages. Inventory is an asset that is leveraged across the supply-chain enterprise. Stockpiles of inventory within the supply chain for "just-in-case" events are minimised because demand information is directly available to the entire supply chain. In 1992, Cisco began its Extended Enterprise that enables 50000 product tests to be performed per day, with only 50 test engineers, while sustaining more than a $10 billion revenue run rate.
4. Overall Operations
Increasingly, people expect to communicate with business via e-mail or go to a web site to learn more about products and services -- a web address is as important as a yellow pages listing. New technology also enables firms to better serve their customers, shareholders and business partners and also confirms their status as a modern leader in their particular field. Using CIS effectively reduces cost as they present the most sought-after information and encourage feedback and firms save on postage, courier, printing, telephone and other costs. Firms can post up to the minute prices, inventories, news and many more. Through the Internet, multi-media information can be distributed in a cost-effective manner. CIS makes it quick and easy to let your network access the information they need, when they need it. With no printing and mailing costs or publication deadlines to hinder you, inaccurate or changeable information can be updated immediately. Find out what's on the minds of prospects and customers immediately without the cost and time delay of surveys, business reply mail and other communication tools. CIS have allowed communication costs to decrease rapidly.
Conclusion
Today we live in an Internet economy. The figures attained by CIS in terms of revenue generated growth and job creation took a hundred years for the automotive industry to match. The growth experienced by CIS is expected to increase even further. One Merrill Lynch analyst has said ? The demand for technology will end when everyone in the world has a PC that can be asked in any language to provide any desired data or calculation and it can do so instantly. Anything less can be improved upon.? With CIS businesses have been able to reach their wildest imaginations from profit-maximisation to lower overhead costs and globalisation. There are no limits to what CIS can achieve for firms. Gone are the days of the industrial revolution, we have now entered the communication revolution. There is no choice for businesses to ignore this revolution. It is a matter of survival. The advantages of CIS are so dramatic and far reaching, they will almost certainly affect every aspect of a firm from marketing to customer service. Companies, which ignore these opportunities, risk falling behind competitors that have embraced them. If a firm can just visualise the stars, galaxies and planets, then and only then, will it be able to understand the importance of the historical, technological revolution. The time to act is now.
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