Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Assignment 6(MIS)

If you were hired by the university president as an IT consultant, what would you suggest (technology, infrastructure, innovations, steps, processes, etc) in order for the internet connectivity be improved? (3000words)

First i will define what is an IT consultant?
• The Information Technology Consultant works with user groups to solve business problems with available technology including hardware,
software, databases, and peripherals. Services may include studying and analyzing systems needs; systems development; systems
process analysis, design, and re-engineering; feasibility studies; developing requests for proposals; evaluating vendor products and
making recommendations on selection. Enterprise support may require knowledge of business management, systems engineering operations research, and management engineering. Duties are performed at various levels within the defined category

• Probably focus your technical skills on predictable technologies: Microsoft server and desktop OSs, Microsoft Office software, e-mail platforms, and TCP/IP. Particularly ambitious IT consultants might add VoIP, Cisco, SonicWALL, and other network technologies to their plate, too.
But you may be missing a cash cow if you overlook Intuit products. The company recently reported a 9 percent increase in quarterly revenue vs. the third quarter 2008. With third quarter 2009 revenue of $1.4 billion, someone is buying Intuit products, and many of those people could be your clients.



• A consultant is a professional that provides expert advice in a particular domain or area of expertise such as accountancy, information technology, the law, human resources, marketing, medicine, finance or more esoteric areas of knowledge, for example engineering and scientific specialties such as materials science, instrumentation, avionics, and stress analysis. See related Certified Management Consultant and MBA.
• An expert in a specialized field brought in to provide independent professional advice to an organization on some aspect of its activities. A consultant may advise on the overall management of an organization or on a specific project, such as the introduction of a new computer system. Consultants are usually retained by a client for a set period of time, during which they will investigate the matter in hand and produce a report detailing their recommendations. Consultants may be established in business independently or be employed by a large consulting firm. Specific types of consultants include management consultants and internal consultants.

==I would suggest the following to improve the internet connectivity==

♥Technology♥

-Technology is helping to connect low-income residents with information, services, and
people in their communities. Technology can contribute to these efforts in significant
ways. Universities tend to play three general roles in the marriage of technology applications to
community development goals
• Consultant,
• Application Service Provider
• Catalyst.
Although these roles are not mutually exclusive, each offers a different set of benefits and
challenges for the specific technology project, and for the university-community partnership as a whole.
Technology can open the door to meaningful partnerships. Although the field of community development has yet to take full advantage of IT, the innovations at these six sites demonstrate that technology can play an important role in community development efforts. It is most effective when utilized as a means to impact community priorities, rather
than an end in itself. Using IT to achieve broad community goals can lead to sustainable, long-term collaboration between “town and gown.

♥Infrastructure♥
- Infrastructure can be defined as the basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function. The term typically refers to the technical structures that support a society, such as roads, water supply, sewers, power grids, telecommunications, and so forth. Viewed functionally, infrastructure facilitates the production of goods and services; for example, roads enable the transport of raw materials to a factory, and also for the distribution of finished products to markets. In some contexts, the term may also include basic social services such as schools and hospitals. In military parlance, the term refers to the buildings and permanent installations necessary for the support, redeployment, and operation of military forces.

..Infrastructure consulting, integration services and solutions help you build a responsive IT infrastructure, including network, data centers, messaging systems to meet the critical needs of today's businesses. We have extensive methodologies for architecting, integrating and testing the infrastructure solutions. Our long-standing strategic alliances with different companies helps customers gain access to worldwide professional services of these technology leaders during architecture, design and implementation phases of projects. We also offer IT infrastructure assessment and audit services, which help you realign your IT infrastructure to meet growing and changing business requirements.
IT Infrastructure availability is critical to your business. Whenever a new application is scheduled to go online, or you are experiencing availability issues and can't determine the cause, our infrastructure assessment services would help you to align your IT infrastructure with your business objectives.
The basic physical systems of a country's or community's population, including roads, utilities, water, sewage, etc. These systems are considered essential for enabling productivity in the economy. Developing infrastructure often requires large initial investment, but the economies of scale tend to be significant.
-infrastructure is the physical hardware used to interconnect computers and users. Infrastructure includes the transmission media, including telephone lines, cable television lines, and satellites and antennas, and also the routers, aggregators, repeaters, and other devices that control transmission paths. Infrastructure also includes the software used to send, receive, and manage the signals that are transmitted.

In some usages, infrastructure refers to interconnecting hardware and software and not to computers and other devices that are interconnected. However, to some information technology users, infrastructure is viewed as everything that supports the flow and processing of information.

Infrastructure companies play a significant part in evolving the Internet, both in terms of where the interconnections are placed and made accessible and in terms of how much information can be carried how quickly.

♥Innovation♥
- refers to a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental and emergent or radical and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations. A distinction is typically made between invention, an idea made manifest, and innovation, ideas applied successfully. (Mckeown 2008) In many fields, something new must be substantially different to be innovative, not an insignificant change, e.g., in the arts, economics, business and government policy. In economics the change must increase value, customer value, or producer value. The goal of innovation is positive change, to make someone or something better. Innovation leading to increased productivity is the fundamental source of increasing wealth in an economy.
Innovation is an important topic in the study of economics, business, design, technology, sociology, and engineering. Colloquially, the word "innovation" is often synonymous with the output of the process. However, economists tend to focus on the process itself, from the origination of an idea to its transformation into something useful, to its implementation; and on the system within which the process of innovation unfolds. Since innovation is also considered a major driver of the economy, especially when it leads to increasing productivity, the factors that lead to innovation are also considered to be critical to policy makers. In particular, followers of innovation economics stress using public policy to spur innovation and growth.
Those who are directly responsible for application of the innovation are often called pioneers in their field, whether they are individuals or organizations.
==Goals of innovation==
Programs of organizational innovation are typically tightly linked to organizational goals and objectives, to the business plan, and to market competitive positioning.
For example, one driver for innovation programs in corporations is to achieve growth objectives. As Davila et al. (2006) note,
"Companies cannot grow through cost reduction and reengineering alone . . . Innovation is the key element in providing aggressive top-line growth, and for increasing bottom-line results"
In general, business organizations spend a significant amount of their turnover on innovation i.e. making changes to their established products, processes and services. The amount of investment can vary from as low as a half a percent of turnover for organizations with a low rate of change to anything over twenty percent of turnover for organizations with a high rate of change.
The average investment across all types of organizations is four percent. For an organization with a turnover of say one billion currency units, this represents an investment of forty million units. This budget will typically be spread across various functions including marketing, product design, information systems, manufacturing systems and quality assurance.
==Failure of innovation==
Research findings vary, ranging from fifty to ninety percent of innovation projects judged to have made little or no contribution to organizational goals. One survey regarding product innovation quotes that out of three thousand ideas for new products, only one becomes a success in the marketplace. Failure is an inevitable part of the innovation process, and most successful organizations factor in an appropriate level of risk. Perhaps it is because all organizations experience failure that many choose not to monitor the level of failure very closely. The impact of failure goes beyond the simple loss of investment. Failure can also lead to loss of morale among employees, an increase in cynicism and even higher resistance to change in the future.
Innovations that fail are often potentially good ideas but have been rejected or postponed due to budgetary constraints, lack of skills or poor fit with current goals. Failures should be identified and screened out as early in the process as possible. Early screening avoids unsuitable ideas devouring scarce resources that are needed to progress more beneficial ones. Organizations can learn how to avoid failure when it is openly discussed and debated. The lessons learned from failure often reside longer in the organizational consciousness than lessons learned from success. While learning is important, high failure rates throughout the innovation process are wasteful and a threat to the organization’s future.
The causes of failure have been widely researched and can vary considerably. Some causes will be external to the organization and outside its influence of control. Others will be internal and ultimately within the control of the organization. Internal causes of failure can be divided into causes associated with the cultural infrastructure and causes associated with the innovation process itself. Failure in the cultural infrastructure varies between organizations but the following are common across all organizations at some stage in their life cycle (O'Sullivan, 2002):
1. Poor Leadership
2. Poor Organization
3. Poor Communication
4. Poor Empowerment
5. Poor Knowledge Management
Common causes of failure within the innovation process in most organisations can be distilled into five types:
1. Poor goal definition
2. Poor alignment of actions to goals
3. Poor participation in teams
4. Poor monitoring of results
5. Poor communication and access to information
Effective goal definition requires that organizations state explicitly what their goals are in terms understandable to everyone involved in the innovation process. This often involves stating goals in a number of ways. Effective alignment of actions to goals should link explicit actions such as ideas and projects to specific goals. It also implies effective management of action portfolios. Participation in teams refers to the behavior of individuals in and of teams, and each individual should have an explicitly allocated responsibility regarding their role in goals and actions and the payment and rewards systems that link them to goal attainment. Finally, effective monitoring of results requires the monitoring of all goals, actions and teams involved in the innovation process.
Innovation can fail if seen as an organizational process whose success stems from a mechanistic approach i.e. 'pull lever obtain result'. While 'driving' change has an emphasis on control, enforcement and structures it is only a partial truth in achieving innovation. Organizational gatekeepers frame the organizational environment that "Enables" innovation; however innovation is "Enacted" – recognized, developed, applied and adopted – through individuals.
Individuals are the 'atom' of the organization close to the minutiae of daily activities. Within individuals gritty appreciation of the small detail combines with a sense of desired organizational objectives to deliver (and innovate for) a product/service offer.
From this perspective innovation succeeds from strategic structures that engage the individual to the organization’s benefit. Innovation pivots on intrinsically motivated individuals, within a supportive culture, informed by a broad sense of the future.
Innovation, implies change, and can be counter to an organization’s orthodoxy. Space for fair hearing of innovative ideas is required to balance the potential autoimmune exclusion that quells an infant innovative culture.


Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation#Goals_of_innovation

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