Chapter 10: Albassami's Job Is Not Feasible Without It

      1.     What systems are described here? What valuable information do they provide?

Robust computerized system and Information system.  Both systems have replication between the servers at headquarters and the client’s branches. Interaction between both parties allows the data aggregate to create the most update database version. The most recent version of the client list, new shipping contracts and truck’s availability will be shared during the transmission message. Thus, the customer is allowed to deal with any branches at any time. Furthermore, the recipient branch will create a receipt entry on the system upon arrival of the truck and then a Short Messaging Service communication (SMS)  is create and sent to the customer, who will then go to the destination branch to receive the car.

  

       2.     What value did the IT/IS investment added to Albassami?

Information Technology/Information System investment help Albassami to conduct all the business processes. The shipping information system will trigger the transmitting of the information from all the branches to the HQ and then the information will be shared and sent back to all branches. Management team will then extracted the knowledge from the central database and enabled them to make sound investment and operational decisions. Therefore, the business is able to be maintained its success and leadership in the Kingdom.

3.   How did implementing the Shipping Information System address the business needs and information   requirements of Albassami?

Shipping Information System which includes information about the output of the vehicle’s tracking information that allowed a better audit on all drivers’ behavior.  Moreover, the system also provides standard reports  to top management and head sectors about all the productivity branches, more accuracy to identify the need for different regions and thus proper budget allocation. On the other hand, linking the data of vehicle maintenance centers with the transportation services helps to improve company performance and customer service. Lastly, the Shipping Information System used at Albassami also maintains all the sender information such as the sent car, the truck number, the sender and receiving branches, and it also send an SMS to the client acknowledging the arrival of the car. In a short word, Shipping Information System is essence to all the company, the cooperation and interaction between employees is needed whenever conduct this system.

Presentation Slide: Achieving Operational Excellence and Customer Intimacy:Enterprise Applications

Chapter 8 : Customer Relationship Management Heads To The Cloud

1. What types of companies are most likely to adopt cloud-based CRM software services? Why? What companies might not be well-suited for this type of software?

Answer:

The companies that most likely to adopt cloud-based CRM software services are small companies such as Fireclay Tile, a small sustainable tile manufacturer and Large companies such as Siemens, the Wall Street Journal, Pitney Bowes and Starbucks. Small companies adopt cloud-based CRM software service to find the on-demand model especially appealing because there are no large up-front hardware and software investment on lengthy implementation corporate computer systems. Large companies adopt cloud-based CRM software service track sales performance against objective in real time and to monitor key performance indicators, sales calls and sales volume. The companies like Nikon might not be well-suited for cloud-based CRM software service because Nikon had been using different system to perform business functions and was struggling to merge customer data located on a variety of legacy systems.


2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using cloud-based enterprise application?

Answer:

Advantages

• Helped the company quadruple new sale leads by using e-mail and Web-to-lead
• Can tracks more field activities with automated reports and dashboards monitoring key performance indicators, sales calls and sales volume
• Embedded tools for forecasting and analytics and interactive dashboard
• To merge customer data from disparate sources and applications into a single system
• Customizable applications, impeccable customer service and robust infrastructure
• Implement a Web-based FAQ system to answer customer questions and provide support on the data and thus to reduce the number of incoming calls
• Combine outbound e-mail, contact management, and customer records into a single system in cloud
• Receive a solid return on the investment (ROI) and saving money

Disadvantages

• Assurances and service level agreements are not always available
• No guarantees that their data will be available all the time
• Users dependent on the cloud computing provider
• Facing security risks related to entrusting their critical data and systems to an outside vendor that also works with other companies

3. What people, organization, and technology issues should be addressed in deciding whether to use a conventional CRM system versus a cloud-based version?

Answer:

Many companies are concerned about maintaining control of their data and security. Although cloud computing companies are prepared to handle these issues, availability assurances and service level agreements are not always available. At the same time, companies that manage their CRM apps with a cloud infrastructure have no guarantees that their data will be available at all times or even that the provider will still exist in the future.

Chapter 12: Life On The Grid: iPhone Becomes Itrack

1. Why do cell phone manufacturers (Apple, Google, and BlackBerry) want to track where their customers go?

Answer: Cell phone manufacturers want to track where their customers go because:

• Manufacturers and their customers can use this information to trend consumer buying habits and pinpoint poorly selling or defective products.
• Enables carriers and retailers to cull important information about a phone through its lifecycle, pinpointing when a unit is shipped, received, returned, and refurbished.
• Both Apple and Google claim the information is being used only to identify the location of cell phones for Wi-Fi-connected phones, and to improve the customer experience of location-based services.
• Apple’s technology reads the signal strength of nearby Wi-Fi transmitters, identifies and maps their location, and calculates the location of the iPhone device.
• Advertising firms will pay Apple and Google for that information and for distributing their mobile ads, manufacturing firms will earn money from there.
• Enable advertising companies send us advertisements, coupons, and flash bargains, based on where we are located.
• If our cell phone is lost, then the manufacturers can help us to track the location of our cell phone.

2. Do you think cell phone customers should be able to turn tracking off? Should customers be informed when they are being tracked? Why or why not?

Answer:

Yes, I think that there should be a feature to turn such features off. Customers should be informed even though most apps do display that GPS and network access is a requirement for the application. By doing so, the privacy of customer will be protected. Sometimes customers might don’t want others to know where they are and what are they doing so it is better to turn tracking off. For example, if we don't want our location to be tracked on our cellphone by police, just turn the GPS off, otherwise we've got no expectation of privacy.

How to Prevent Cell Phones from Being Tracked :

• Watch for signs your phones is being tracked. Does your battery drain faster than it should, is your phone interfering with your radio even when turned off, or is your phone still warm after hours of being idle. You may also have difficulty turning your phone off, your phone may light up when not performing any of its normal functions, or you hear strange background noises during your calls. While none of these alone indicate your phone is being monitored, several together can be cause for worry.
• Take your phone to your service provider. Ask them to wipe your phone's memory and restore it to its factory presets. While this will erase all data, it should also remove any tracking and/or eavesdropping software on your phone.
• Keep your phone turned off when not in use. While this will do little to circumvent eavesdropping, it will prevent the gps in your phone from broadcasting your position. Tracking devices can only find your location when you make or receive a call and/or text.
• Call your wireless service provider's customer service. If they are tracking your phone, they are charging your account for this service. As it is illegal in most countries for a private citizen to track another phone, your service provider will inform you whether they are tracking your particular phone. If they are, you can have this service removed from your cell phone.

3. Do you think cell phone tracking is a violation of a person’s privacy?

Answer:

        Yes. Smartphones contain a treasure trove of personal information, including banking information, travel plans and family photos. However, while use of advanced security software is commonplace on our computers, many of us are not safeguarding the personal information stored on and transmitted through our smartphones. While there is security software for smartphones including anti-virus and encryption software, it is not available for all models of cell phones and has not been widely adopted.

          Apple iPhones and Google Android smartphones are regularly tracking people locations and recording this information in a hidden file stored on our phones. Anyone able to access our phones can use the stored locational information to reconstruct our daily travels and routine. 

          Verizon Wireless is selling all our app usage and location information to marketers.Verizon is not only tracking consumers, it is sharing that information with other companies, and possibly linking it to databases with more of your personal information. 

          Cell phone tracking is a violation of a person’s privacy. Cell phone tracking enables someone to track other person location without the consent of that person. It will cause disturbance for that person or cause many problem, such as the enemies of that person can track that person location and plan to murder that person. Moreover, bank information or other private and confidential information flow to other people means it violate a person’s life.

          Strict ethics and security measures are strongly recommended for services that employ positioning, and the user must give an informed, explicit consent to a service provider before the service provider can compute positioning data from the user's mobile phone.

         Officially, the authorities like police can obtain permission to position phones in emergency cases where people including criminals are missing. So, the cell phone tracking should give to some specific people, not to all the people. That specific people make sure the information not flow to other people.

Chapter 9: Social Commerce Creates New Customer Relationships

1) Assess the people, organization, and technology issues for using social media to engage with customers.

Answer:

We can assess the people, organization, and technology issues using social media such as Facebook and Twitter to engage with customer.

•  Powerful tolls for engaging customer and asses the people, organization, and technology issues.
• Companies are rolling out ads that capitalize on the social media features of Facebook to achieve greater visibility.
• Twitter has developed many new offerings to interested advertisers, like Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends.
• Facebook targeting capabilities to determine which type of people respond to the various ads it has created.
• Many companies are running online ads that focus less on pitching their product than on promoting their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts.
• The ads feature menu  tabs and allow users to click within the ad to see a brand’s Twitter messages or Facebook wall posts in real time, or to watch a brand’s video content from YouTube-all within the Web page where the ad appears.
• Even if the Facebook or Twitter postings in ads show brands apologizing about missteps or customer complaints, advertisers may still benefit. 

2) What are the advantage and disadvantage of using social media for advertising, brand building, market research, and customer service?

Answer:

Advantages:

• Building Brand Awareness

One of the most obvious reasons for using Social Media Marketing is to build brand awareness and it certainly does if used correctly.

• Reach a Large Audience

Using social media to market our business online will without a doubt help us reach a larger audience. In a way, the more people we reach, the better brand awareness we have but with social media, there is a lot of noise. We need to make sure we use a tool like Hoot suite so we can eliminate all of the noise and focus on reaching the people who want to engage with us.

• Great for SEO

Social Media or even more specific, Google+ is great for boosting our SEO. Google is picking up on how much activity each business is doing on social media and will rank our business accordingly. The more active and fresh content we are posting on our social media accounts, the better our business will rank on Google and it really is, as simple as that.

• Cost Effective

Social Media Marketing doesn’t cost you a penny, unless you want it to. You can market on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and any other social network for free. If we want to run competitions or use a few select third party tools, we may end up have to pay a small fee but on the whole, social media marketing is very cost effective.

• Become a Thought Leader

Using Social Media to market our business can make us a thought leader in our selected field.

Disadvantages: 

• Understanding on how it works

We need to understand how social media works, when and how to use it and which channels to focus on depending on our end goal of using social media in order to get its full effects.

• Commits illegal crime

Social media may open possibility for hackers to commit illegal crime such as fraud, spam and virus attacks. People falling prey to online scam may also increase, resulting in data or identity theft.

• Viral social disadvantage

This may damage one’s reputation. The wrong online brand strategy could put us on this.

• Negative effects on worker productivity

Results in lost productivity and employees may use social media to attack the company’s reputation. Instead of working in their time of work, they can waste such valuable time using social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook. This may result in negative comments from employees about the company or potential legal consequences if employees use these sites to view objectionable, illicit or offensive material.

• Distraction

Most people who suffer from this are students. Instead of doing their homework’s they tend to fail their academic endeavours because of using social media in the wrong way.

• Serious detrimental outcomes on individual’s health

When social media is used in a wrong way, it may have a negative effect on both mental and physical health of individual.

3) Should all companies use Facebook and Twitter for customer service and advertising? Why or why not? What kinds of companies are best suited to use these platform?

Answer:

            Now days, people are not call up a company and complain or tell their feedback. Now, they are more likely to head to their smartphones or computers to tell the world how a product is. That’s why social media platform like Facebook, Twitter is important for customer service.

Example of company which use Twitter for Customer service:

            JetBlue Excels in Responsiveness. Airline delays are one of the most common causes of customer frustration. JetBlue ensures they’re responsive to their customers because they understand it’s important for continued customer loyalty. They engage with happy customers, but they also respond to and help frustrated customers as quickly as possible.

            JetBlue is to be extremely responsive to customers mentioning their brand. Whether they send public a reply or a private DM to answer a question, they are quick to interact. As seen in the picture above, they reached out to their frustrated customer within the hour.

            Social media is a channel where customers get quick responses. Social media platform help companies to response quickly to customer. Many companies dedicate full-time employees to the task of responding to customers and potential customers on social media. Social media help to satisfy customer needs.

Moreover, social media help find all this things.

• Social Listening (Listening for conversations about your company, competitors or other topics of interest)
• Social Conversation (Finding and responding to conversations online – engaging with others in social media)
• Social Marketing (Launching and running campaigns and promotions in social media)
• Social Analytics(Measuring and analyzing results of social media efforts across various platforms)
• Social Influencer (Identifying and engaging with influencers that are relevant to your company or industry)

               Social media platform is cheaper than traditional marketing and advertising methods. Promote a product using social networking sites by determining where their customers and potential customers are, and getting their product visible on those sites.

Facebook page

            Companies’ product can have its own page, where people can like it, comment on it, leave reviews and even link to your website so they can buy it. Companies can offer incentives such as coupons and discounts. Invite people to share company page with their friends so company community can grow.

Twitter account

            Companies can set up an account on Twitter for their product and promote it by attracting followers. Companies have to come up with brief messages that describe and promote their product. Follow people, brands and companies that might be interested in their product. The more people a company follow, the more followers that company have a chance of attracting.

            In our opinion all companies are best suited to use social media platform. At the same time the company should figure out what they want to accomplish via Social Media. Moreover, what are their human resources, and how many people can work on their social media efforts. Finally, how long is their project going to be.

Chapter 7: Information Security Threats and Policies In Europe

1. What is a botnet?

• The term bot is short for robot. Criminals distribute malicious software (also known as malware) that can turn the computer into a bot (also known as a zombie). When this occurs, the computer can perform automated tasks over the Internet, without us knowing it.
• Criminals typically use bots to infect large numbers of computers. These computers form a network, or a botnet.
• A botnet is a network of autonomous malicious software agents that are under the control of a bot commander.
• The network is created by installing malware that exploits the vulnerabilities of Web servers, operating systems, or applications to take control of the infected computers.
• Once a computer is infected, it becomes part of a network of thousands of “zombies”, machines that are commanded to carry out the attack.

2. Describe some of the main points of the Digital Agenda for Europe.

The main points of the Digital Agenda for Europe are:

• Create a new and stable broadband regulatory environment.

-Broadband speeds of 30 Mbps will be available to all European citizens by 2020.

-Guarantee universal broadband coverage

• New public digital service infrastructure through Connecting Europe Facility loans.

- exploit the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in order to foster innovation, economic growth and progress.

•  Propose EU cyber-security strategy and Directive.

- For instance, to react in real-time conditions, a well function and wider network of Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) should be established in Europe.

- At a more operational level, internationally coordinated information security targeted actions should be pursued, and joint action should be taken to fight computer crime, with the support of a renewed European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA).

• Digital Single Market

- Europe has successfully dismantled cross-border barriers to trade in most physical goods and many services.

- Leveraging Europe’s digital strengths into global competitiveness, economic wealth and sustainable jobs requires the creation of a European Digital Single Market, where business can be conducted online as easily as via traditional channels.

-The Digital Single Market will require greater harmonization across policy areas to eliminate existing obstacles to the provision of pan-European online commerce and services.

•   Launch grand Coalition on digital skills and jobs

- We need to both grow our ICT sector and drive the development of individuals with the necessary understanding and skills at all levels of the value chain.

- Europe must set ambitious goals for 2015 including halving the digital literacy and competence gaps and guaranteeing that all primary and secondary schools have high-speed Internet connections. By 2012 the EU should ensure all primary and secondary school students receive training about the risks and safe use of the Internet. All adults of working age should have access to e-Skills training.

• Update EU’s copyright framework.

- diverging copyright licensing; copyright levy systems unfit for the digital age; differing data protection rules; different consumer protection regimes; contrasting interpretations of intermediary liability; technology neutral standards; lack of radio-spectrum harmonization; lack of effective payment systems to facilitate cross-border transactions and a lack of Europe-wide organised recycling schemes to support large-scale operations.

•   Accelerate cloud computing through public sector buying power.
• Launch new electronics industrial strategy – an “Airbus of Chips”

3. Explain how a cyber attack can be carried out.

There are two types and techniques of cyber attacks commonly used include:

Distributed denial-of-service

A denial of service attack occurs when “an attacker attempts to prevent legitimate users from accessing information or services.” This is typically accomplished when the attacker overloads a system with requests to view information. This would be an example of a remote attack. By extension, a distributed denial of service (DDoS) occurs when multiple computers are involved in a denial of service attack causing an even larger amount of traffic on the target website.

Vulnerability

Vulnerability is some part of the system that the attacker can take advantage of or manipulate A safe cracker, for instance, must know where the safe is and how to get into it. The vulnerability would require knowledge of the safe, its locking mechanism and what aspects may be exploited. The payload, in this case, would be a bag full of money. Given these three aspects, prior intelligence is needed to understand what access is available and what vulnerability can be exploited in order to attack precise targets.

This figure shows how a cyber attack was carried out.

4. Describe some of the weakness exploited by malware.

Malware is a program that is inserted into a system.

• The Web is made up of billions of pages created by different people with different levels of technical skills, offering rich content in many different formats. Accessing some of this content requires helper applications, such as media players. Many different types of back-end software serve up these web pages, content, and many of those formats, applications, and tools have weaknesses hackers can exploit.
• Hackers use vulnerabilities to create exploits that let them penetrate your computer or network. Often, when you visit an infected webpage or open an infected email, the attack code starts snooping around for any known weaknesses in your system.
• The level of sophistication is remarkable in that the malware sites can actually identify the particulars of your computer and operating system and infect or attack the system appropriately. For instance, if you run Safari as your browser, the malware sites will not bother trying any known Internet Explorer vulnerabilities. Instead, they focus on Safari or Safari plug-in weaknesses.
• When a useful vulnerability is found, the goal of the malware attack is to create a buffer overflow condition in your computer. This then gives the malware the capability to initiate the download of harmful code, the key loggers, botnet software, spyware ad generators, or others.
• Malware creators and distributors also take advantage of "weaknesses" in human nature, such as curiosity, trust, and desire for connection, and carelessness, to dupe users into handing over the keys to their system security.