Abstract: Knowledge management is identified as a key success factor in most industries today. While data or information can be stored independently from people, knowledge is bound to people who use it for their interactions. The main goal of knowledge management is to improve the usage of knowledge in the enterprise. Knowledge management systems are not only organizational memory information systems. They also contain organizational standard procedures and a certain cultural attitude. A reference framework gives implementation hints mainly influenced by technical possibilities. The knowledge management system reference architecture contains layers of sources, repositories, taxonomy, services, applications and user interfaces. A software tool that largely corresponds to this reference framework is the Knowledge Café. Possible applications of this tool to the area of hospitality and tourism are described in this paper.
Information technology has changed how businesses operate and succeed in today’s global economy. Organizations can now use IT to transform themselves and achieve a tremendous competitive advantage. Information Technology for Management: Transforming Organizations Organizations in the Digital Digital Economy, E conomy, Seventh Seventh Edition E dition highlights how this new technology is changing the current c urrent business environment and what effect it has on today’s students. The text addresses the major principles of MIS in order to prepare managers to understand the role of information technology in the digital economy. Revised and updated for a junior or senior level MIS or MBA course, this title will give students what they need to succeed in the emerging digital economy. Chapter 1: IT in the Digital Economy
The Wireless Café in Shanghai offers fantastic food in a whimsical décor. The chef’s contemporary interpretation of classical Chinese cuisine gives foodies a reason to indulge, and its location on the famous Bund along the Huangpu River makes it a destination for locals and visitors alike. The free wireless Internet access and table-to-table instant messaging help to create a community where regulars return time after time. Your academic achievements, coupled with your major advisor’s connections have landed you a summer internship at the Wireless Cafe and you have just settled into your Shanghai apartment for the summer. Your initial interview with Jade Leung, co-owner of the Wireless Cafe has piqued your interest in restaurant operations, and you are now on your way to meet Jade’s husband and restaurant co -owner Jimmy Kwok. Jimmy is the the the Wireless Café’s office manager and accountant with whom you will be working closely this summer. Jimmy has created a web site for the Wireless Cafe that provides information on the restaurant’s location, décor, and cuisine in addition addition to a web portal for employees employees only. You should view it before answering the following questions.
1. What did you learn about the Wireless Cafe from their web site?
a. What kind of restaurant is the Wireless Cafe?
b. What are the attractions of the Wireless Cafe?
c. What is the organizational structure of the Wireless Cafe?
d. Who’s the head chef?
e. What recognition has the Wireless Cafe received?
f. Are there currently any job openings at the Wireless Cafe?
g. How can you contact the Wireless Cafe?
h. What’s on the Wireless Café’s intranet?
2. What information and communication technology pressures does the Wireless Cafe face?
3. What market and societal pressures are unique to the hospitality industry in general and to the Wireless Cafe in particular? Chapter 2: The Wireless Café’s Information Architecture
You find you’re becoming quite a foodie after enjoying some of Chef Feng’s fusion Chinese cuisine at The Wireless Café in Shanghai, and you’re starting to learn your way around the restaurant’s back office. Now, you need to get to work on a preliminary study of the restaurant’s information architecture. In
addition to managing the restaurant operations, Jimmy has implemented most of the information technologies currently used at the Wireless Cafe, though he hasn’t had the time to document what he’s done. To better understand the direction Jimmy and Jade should be taking their IT architecture, you need a comprehensive understanding of what IT they have now. Jimmy has also asked you to help him document the existing IT infrastructure.
1. Identify three people you want to interview at the Wireless Cafe to help you understand the current information architecture.
a. For each person interviewed, prepare three questions you will ask them to elicit information about their information needs.
b. To better prepare yourself for the interviews, go online to research software and hardware available to the restaurant industry in particular and to hospitality in general.
2. Visit the Wireless Café website and determine the different ways customers can obtain food. What are the information implications of these different ways?
3. Relate the major internal support systems at the Wireless Cafe and relate them to Jade and Jimmy’s managerial functions.
4. What competitive opportunities can the Wireless Cafe exploit for competitive advantage?
Chapter 3: Network Computing: Discovery, Communication and Collaboration
Although English language classes are compulsory beginning in grade school in China, the China Daily notes that 95 percent of Chinese college students will not use oral English in their lifetime... With a prime location on the Bund in Shanghai, employees at The Wireless Café in Shanghai need to be bilingual, though Jimmy and Jade have noticed some missed communications and misunderstandings among the staff. Now, they seek ways to improve staff communications, including utilization of the installed wireless network for pictographic and bilingual communication. Your task is to identify ways network computing can facilitate better staff communications.
1. Based on your experiences in restaurants, and by looking at the Wireless Café’s organizational chart, consider the different kinds of interpersonal and transactional communications that occur during and across shifts. a. List three business-related transactions and the kind of communication they require b. For each of these transactions, identify data items that should be captured What kinds of networked solutions discussed in the chapter might be useful in facilitating communications?
The Wireless Cafe has created a basic employee portal at wireless_cafe_bund.com.cn . Review its current contents, and describe other kinds of information you think would facilitate better communication and collaboration among the employees of the Wireless Cafe. Suggest how bilingual web pages may help or hinder communication among employees. 2.
Jimmy is concerned that the implementation of new networked communications applications will cost more than the benefits provided. Identify some tangible and intangible costs and benefits that would help Jimmy evaluate the financial impact of implementing new networked communications applications. Use these costs and benefits to give Jimmy a set of criteria to evaluate different discovery, communication and collaboration applications. 3.
Chapter 4: E-Business and E-Commerce
As the head hostess for The Wireless Café in Shanghai, Jade has noticed more customers using wireless devices at their tables, using Instant Messaging, sending and receiving photos, looking up information during business lunches, as well as talking on the phone. She has shared this observation with you and asked you to identify ways the Wireless Cafe can attract more customers through ecommerce. After reading chapter 4, you are now aware that ecommerce is more than just business-to-customer relationships, so you ask her if you can broaden the scope of your analysis. Jade agrees. 1. Identify the category, participants, and benefits of using ecommerce for the following activities:
1. a. Ordering food supplies b. Financial reporting (city, province/state, federal) c. Employee benefits management
d. Customer reservations and communication e. Job postings and applications
Inventory management is more than just ordering food supplies. It includes table setting items (dishes, glassware, cutlery, napkins), and cleaning and office supplies in addition to ingredients for the daily menu offerings. How would Internet-based EDI benefit the Wireless Cafe in managing these inventories? Can you find any products and services on the Internet that would help the Wireless Cafe do this? 2.
Chapter 4 discusses the three major EC mechanisms. Visit the Wireless Café website and find examples of these three mechanisms (or describe how one might be implemented). How do these mechanisms provide the Wireless Café an advantage? 3.
4. Identify for Jade some lessons learned in implementing successful ecommerce projects and how they can help assure the Wireless Café’s success.
Chapter 5: Mobile, Wireless and Pervasive Computing
While you were relaxing with a specialty tea at the Wireless Café in Shanghai, thinking about data flows (between IM to your friends in college), you noticed that the waitstaff made numerous trips to the kitchen counter to place orders and to check up on order readiness. You remembered seeing an ad for a product called Wireless Waitress (www.polymorph.com.sg/accpolwaitress/) when you were browsing through some hospitality trade journals in Jimmy’s office and decided to do some research on the genre of wireless products for waitstaff to present to management. 1.How would a wireless handheld product such as the Wireless Waitress be used in the Wireless Cafe? Describe some of the changes that this application would bring about in the way waitstaff do their job.
Visit the Wireless Café website and identify how many ways wireless communication is outside-facing, that is, accessible and useful to customers and partners. Can you think of other ways, wireless could be exploited? 2.
2.
3. It is clear that the Wireless Café and most other restaurants and are headed in the direction of wireless applications. Prepare a memo to Jade and Jimmy with your advice on how they should strategically position the Wireless Cafe vis a vis wireless applications.
4. Until the globe is blanketed by pervasive wireless data communications cloud (see, for example, a United Nations initiative at www.w2i.org/pages/wsis/track2/), commercial hotspots can be used to generate revenue or bring in more customers. What are some benefits and risks to the Wireless Cafe in offering a free hotspot to its customers?
Chapter 6: Transaction Processing, Functional Applications, CRM and Integration
Your restaurant vocabulary is increasing. You’ve learned that a “cover” is a guest, the cover count is something that Jimmy keeps a very close watch on, and the per-person amount is critical to the Wireless Café’s success. Running a café is more than just cooking and serving Chinese fusion food, and you’ve been able to identify activities and transactions at Wireless Café that fit most of the categories discussed in this chapter. In fact, it seems to you that there are a lot more activities at the back of the house (kitchen and office) than the front of the house (dining room).
1. Describe Wireless Café’s value chain. What are some transactions that take place along this value chain?
2. Describe in detail the information used in one back of the house transaction.
3. Consider the complexity of information, timing, and activities that it takes to run a successful, trendy restaurant. The food must be fresh, , guests shouldn’t have to wait long for a table, and there should be sufficient waitstaff to provide prompt service. But too much of these resources will go to waste and diminish profits. Consider how process integration across the various functional systems in the Wireless Café could provide better information to Jimmy and Jade and help all of the staff make better decisions. Discuss the benefits and risks of integrating the staff scheduling, reservation, and restaurant supply systems.
4. Jade is interested in the potential of CRM to better understand c ustomers’ needs and serve repeat customers. You are unsure of the privacy and security issues and wonder if they outweigh the potential for personalization. Discuss the pro’s and con’s of using CRM to better know Wireless Café’s customers.
Chapter 7: Enterprise Systems: From Supply Chain to ERP to CRM
Management at the Wireless Cafe has a good relationship with their suppliers, though occasionally running out of tea or chopsticks or rice noodles reduces profits. Jimmy remembers reading about SCM and ERP systems in his information technology class in college, but he’s not really sure if the Wireless Café is big enough to be concerned about managing its supply chain or planning enterprise-wide resource utilization. You are tasked with identifying opportunities to better manage inventory – from noodles to napkins. First, though, you need to better understand a café’s supply chain .
1. Who is in the Wireless Café’s upstream supply chain? Identify ingredients the chef uses to prepare meals for guests. Then, use a tool like Visio, Word or PowerPoint to draw a diagram that shows the flow of these ingredients and their accompanying information through the supply chain to the Wireless Café.
2. What are some potential problems in the supply chain? Remember, an oversupply of lemongrass is just as problematic as an undersupply. What kinds of information can be used by the Wireless Café management to prevent these problems?
3. Based on the days and nights you have spent at the Wireless Café, watching the operations, observing the customers, it is clear to you that the satisfied, repeat customers are the foundation of the Wireless Caf é’s success. You can see a real opportunity for CRM to have an impact and help to build this loyal customer base. Describe either a customer-facing application, customer-touching application, or customer-centric intelligence application you would recommend to Jade and Jimmy to help build their customer loyalty.
Chapter 8: Interorganizational and Global Information Systems
One morning, Jimmy comes in whistling, “XML, XML, data everywhere” to the tune of “Jingle Bells.” Uh-oh, you think, he must have been watching the morning business show. Fortunately, you have already studied XML, and are aware of its utility even for small, infrequent transactions. The Wireless Café is upgrading its office software to a new version that supports XML-based documents and data tagging, so it is time to investigate how you can exploit these new features for interorganizational communication.
1. Search the web for information on XML and the hospitality and food & beverage industries. Describe any activity you find in developing XML standards that would impact the Wireless Café, and describe also what those impacts could be.
2. SYSCO is one of the major purveyors in the food and beverage industry. They have a new service, eSysco (esysco.com) to provide online web ordering and tracking. Visit the Sysco Web site and determine whether the eSysco service is a major consideration in choosing a purveyor.
3. While The Wireless Café does not have global business partners, it does need to maintain records and initiate transactions with a number of governing bodies. Issues such as HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) and fire safety, music and royalty fees, city ordinances and noise laws, and alcohol liability and underage drinking require café management to stay current and provide timely reports. Choose a municipality in your geographic area, then identify an ordinance and its reporting requirements that the Wireless Café would be subject to if they were located there. Describe how intranets, extranets or IOS could help the Wireless Café stay in compliance. Chapter 9: Knowledge Management
You’ve noticed that Jade and Jimmy spend quite a bit of time intervi ewing potential employees, and some quick web research reveals that average restaurant turnover for the past few years has been running over 100%. This news is alarming to you, as you think of all of the new information systems and technologies that could help the Wireless Café run more efficiently. How will the staff ever develop system expertise if they stay less than a year?
1. What kinds of knowledge is the Wireless Café losing with such a high turnover? Consider both tacit and explicit knowledge accumulated by employees in the different positions. How important is this knowledge to the well-being and long-term success of the Wireless Café, and what can Jade and Jimmy do about capturing it?
2. Using the Wireless Café’s web site, match the jobs with information systems that the café might adopt. Try to rank the level of training or expertise you think an employee needs to have before using the system on the job and if online training would be beneficial.
Chapter 10: Data Management: Warehousing, Analyzing, Mining, and Visualization
You were intrigued by the opening story of Harrah’s use of CRM d ata to improve the customer experience. Though the Wireless Café offers far fewer products than Harrah’s, it seems to you that there are many parallels between satisfying Harrah’s customers and the café’s customers. You have noticed that Jimmy likes to r eview the Wireless Café’s financial and customer data using Excel charts and graphs, so you think he might be interested in discussing ways to exploit existing Wireless Café data for improving the customer experience in the diner.
1. Your new Google email account on gmail gives you one gigabyte of data storage for free. This highlights how cheap data storage is getting these days, and gets you to thinking that data warehousing and data mining might be a valuable tool for the Wireless Café to respond to the trends of the fickle, restaurant going public and make intelligent business decisions. For each of the three sources of data described in the chapter (internal, personal, external) identify specific data for the Wireless Café. Then, identify what kinds of knowledge the integration and mining of these data sources may yield.
2. You’ve become quite fond of chef William’s Chinese fusion cooking, and you would like to help him develop a large following in Shanghai. The idea of using business intelligence and data mining to better predict customer ordering trends and behaviors strikes you as something that would help. For example, do customers buy more Asian tapas on Friday and Saturday than during the week? Or, who orders more dessert, people who order the Lemongrass Curry Chicken or the Dijon Miso Duck Breast? Do some research on business intelligence software and prepare a brief report for Jimmy and William to describe the kinds of business intelligence that could be used to prepare smash-hit menus as well as relevant analysis techniques.
3. The Wireless Café does not have a significant marketing budget, however you have learned that carefully crafted and inexpensive web-based marketing strategies can be quite effective. Earlier, Jade expressed interest in creating a CRM system to better know and serve the Wireless Café’s customers. Describe a strategy to combine CRM data and web-based marketing to grow the customer base at the
Wireless Café. Be sure to consider data mining techniques that guide your web-based marketing strategies as well as user-side issues such as spam, popups, and permission-marketing.
Chapter 11: Management Decision Support and Intelligent Systems
Everyday, you see Jimmy and Jade make dozens of decisions from deciding how much bok choy to buy, to accommodating a schedule request from an employee, to creating a bid on a large dinner party. Their responses, given the timing, information and complexity of these decisions, impress you, but still you wonder if they could make even better decisions if they had the right automated tools. 1. Describe the interpersonal, informational and decisional roles of the two shift managers at the Shanghai Wireless Café. How can decision support systems help them in each of these roles? Do a web search to find some products that represent the different categories of DSS described in the chapter, and look at their features to help you answer this question.
Jade and Jimmy are active in a Shanghai food bank, and they donate excess food supplies when the excess might otherwise go to waste. However, they would like to better manage their menu planning, quantity projections, and order timing to maintain freshness and quality at the lowest possible prices. What are some inputs and outputs to a DSS that would support food management? 2.
3. You have observed that many repeat customers like to sit at certain tables. Local Shanghai celebrities who frequent the Shanghai Wireless Café like to see and be seen. You conclude that reservations and table management are tightly integrated for a successful social dynamic at the Café. How could DSS, the Café’s Web reservation system and artificial intelligence be integrated to help keep cu stomers happy with their seating, yet keep the self-service component of online reservations successful?
Chapter 12: Using Information Technology for Strategic Advantage
You have observed the abundance and variety of Internet-enabled and wireless devices that customers use while dining and socializing at the Shanghai Wireless Café. You have also noticed that competitors are also offering wireless and other services that the Café does. And, you have observed that the Café’s web site makes more transparent to competitors the kinds of services, the pricing, and some of the business strategy that has led to the Café’s current success. How can you help Jade and Jimmy use information technology to further their competitive advantage? 1. Search the web for resources that can be mined to identify and predict trends that are important to Jade and Jimmy, including technology habits of successful professionals and upscale restaurant trends. What are some resources? What data and knowledge do they provide that would be helpful to the Shanghai Wireless Café in improving their competitive advantage? 2. Porter’s Five Competitive Forces provides a framework for analyzi ng the strategic impact of information systems. Choose one of the five forces and discuss it in relation to IT and the Internet at the Shanghai Wireless Café.
3. As you read the text and observe activities at the Shanghai Wireless Café, you get more and more ideas on how IT can give Jade and Jimmy a greater competitive advantage. At the same time, you understand that IT planning and alignment with corporate objectives is essential to success. Identify what should happen and who should be involved in the four stages of IT planning described in the chapter.
Chapter 13: Information Technology Economics
This chapter has brought you back to reality. Over the course of your internship, you’ve recommended many useful and innovative technologies that would help make everybody’s job at the Shanghai Wireless Café more productive and interesting including CRM, SCM, DSS, and wireless networks and applications, to name a few. However, the Shanghai Wireless Café’s budget definitely won’t support all of your recommendations in one year. Jade is concerned that Jimmy may overextend the Shanghai Wireless Café’s finances, because he sees benefits in all of the tec hnologies, so she has asked you to help with a more reasoned analysis of IT economics for the Café. 1. What is the
business case
for implementing the following systems at the Shanghai Wireless Café?
1. a. CRM b. SCM c. Wireless networks and applications
2. Choose a service that is exposed on the Wireless Café’s website, such as self -service reservations, or an activity on the employee portal, such as scheduling, and discuss both the tangible and intangible benefits of this service.
3. This chapter presents a number of ways to evaluate the economic viability of a technology investment. Which method would you choose for a small business such as the Shanghai Wireless Café and why?
Chapter 14: IT Acquisitions
A project to automate the ordering process of supplies has been approved, and it now needs to be planned and implemented. Jimmy doesn’t feel the Shanghai Wireless Café is ready to hire a fulltime IT manager, and a contract consultant is expensive, so he has asked you to do some preliminary planning for this project, preparatory to handing it over to a consultant.
1. What are the steps in the IT planning process you will follow in preparing a preliminary plan for implementing online ordering of supplies?
2. Direct operating expenses for a restaurant include such items as paper supplies, cleaning supplies, linens, tableware, and kitchen utensils. Chopsticks are one of these supplies, and the Shanghai Wireless Café elevates the dining experience with nicer, reusable chopsticks. There is, however, breakage, loss and theft of chopsticks, so they need to re-order regularly from a supplier such as Ekitron (http://www.ekitron.com ) What are some of the issues the Café will encounter in setting up direct online ordering of chopsticks with Ekitron?
3. Consider that Jimmy currently does all of the supplies ordering by hand and by phone. How would you redesign the ordering process for all suppliers that are online to alleviate some of Jimmy’s effort?
Chapter 15: Managing Information Resources and Security
Recently, you went into Jimmy’s office to chat with him about the new web -based applications and their implications for the Shanghai Wireless Café. Jimmy wasn’t there, but you were surprised to see that his office was open, his computer was on, and an application displayed employee information on the screen. You’ve been reading about privacy and security laws and data vulnerabilities, and so you shut off Jimmy’s monitor before leaving his office. 1. What particular exposures and vulnerabilities can you identify for information technologies at The Wireless Café? As the restaurant’s information systems become automated, what are some intentional and unintentional threats the information is exposed to? 2. You’d like to suggest that Jade and Jimmy institute a formal set of securi ty controls covering all of their computerized information. What physical and application controls would be appropriate in a restaurant? Consider that the restaurant workers are in a different setting than an office worker, they are quite mobile, and they often don’t have full computer access to information. 3. Restaurants are much more prone to physical disasters, such as kitchen fires, that typical offices are. You want to recommend to Jimmy and Jade that they prepare a disaster recovery plan for the ca fé’s data and software assets. What steps will you take to help them prepare a disaster recovery plan? Consider the web site, web-based applications, on-site applications, and all of the associated databases
1. Chapter 16: IT Ethics and Security
When you began your internship with the Shanghai Wireless Café, you were a little concerned that there was enough work to occupy you. As your internship comes to an end, you realize information management, even in a café, could be a fulltime job! After reading about the impacts of IT on society, you realize that all of these new technologies and data acquisition and analysis systems you have read about and considered for The Shanghai Wireless Cafe also have social and ethical impacts. Dehumanization, privacy and security, accuracy of information… these and more are directly related to everything you have considered.
1. A frequent criticism of information technology and automation is that it is dehumanizing. As one of the most human of establishments, restaurants create a social experience. Is the increased dependence on and integration of information technologies at the Wireless Café going to diminish or enhance the customer experience? Defend your response.
2. Consider the data that is collected at the Shanghai Wireless Cafe website on transactions with customers, employees, and suppliers. Prepare a draft privacy of information policy for the Café to post on their website.
3. While the Shanghai Wireless Café is not (yet) a global enterprise, it is embracing many of the Internet technologies that support remote work and global outsourcing. Which of the management issues described at the end of the chapter should Jimmy and Jade be aware of, and which do not apply to them or the Shanghai Wireless Café operations?
