Chapter 1 - Case Study
1) Apple achieved business success through the use of information from all areas operations to create a competitive advantage to their products. Converting data information into meaningful information could make a product from simply to whole. Sharing common information, enable an organization to be more effective and efficient. Steve Jobs had a lot with Apple's success. He was a perfectionist and wanted every product to be perfect. Every department relies in each other and work together to produce the best.
Information technology(IT) enable managers to be more competent in the business function and the organization departments to be more effective. Information technology can control the use of computers and computers software. Jobs, wants to "control the primary technology in everything he does". He was obsessed with control, he wants i-Pod playing songs encoded by Apple only, but it will limited the i-Pod markets. Then he came with the idea landing with a Windows compatible and that made i-Pods sales when up. Apple's designs are distinctive and their devices rely more in standard technologies. His decision to change was fundamental to the exceptional success that Apple has over the past ten years. Giving a little control, Jobs found more power.
Apple provides the best customer service to all Apple users. Apple employees are smart and supportive, experts to connect customers and their to help integrate into their lives. Organizations are more interested to their customers satisfaction now than before. Apple knows that an organization without customers is unable to succeed. Apple use information from customers comments and suggestions about their products to develop new products and devices. This is important for customers to remain loyal and to continuing using them.
2) The types of information staff employees at an Apple Store require is data. Based on business technology research, data are raw facts that describe the characteristics of an event or object. Before the information age, managers manually collected and analyzed data, a time-consuming and complicated task without which they would have little insight into how to run their business. Lacking data, managers often found themselves making business decisions about how many products to make, how much material to order, or how many employees to hire based on intuition or gut feelings. In the information age, successful managers compile, analyze, and comprehend massive amounts of data daily, which helps them make more successful business decisions.
The types of information the executives at Apple's corporate headquarters require is information. Meaning of information from business technology context is data converted into a meningful and useful context. Example of information that executives at Apple's corporate headquarters need are do they have enough inventory to meet demand, are prices too high or too low, what is employee turnover per store, where should they build a new store or should they close a store,etc.
Yes. There are links between these two types of information. Staff employees at an Apple store use also information to do their jobs however it is just at a store level not a corporate level. But for executives at Apple's corporate headquarters, they require information from many stores and the volumes of data they use to gain information are larger than store employees.
