Computer Applications for Business 1

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Computer Applications for Business (1)

• Health Safety Information
• Goals of the course
• Help you get the best out of computers
• And out of the IT staff youll work with
• Be able to construct a convincing Business Case
• Objectives to cover business uses of PC
  packages
• For assisting in business decision-making
• To communicate conclusions and ideas
• Ensure you can reuse and update material
  efficiently
• This course is for you
• Content depends on what you know already
• Most of you have already used computers heavily
• Goal is to glue together Islands of
  understanding

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How Well Do This

• Method is to enhance your Business skills by
• Extending expertise with a Word-processing
  package
• This is often a matter of breaking bad habits
• Developing expertise of a Spread-sheet package
• Being able to set up and use a database
• At the end, you will be able to produce reports
  in a variety of styles, integrating the
  techniques youve learnt
• On the way, youll learn a bit of
• Basic Computer Architecture
• Understanding of Operating Systems
• Therell be an advanced class at 9am on Monday

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Relevant Topics

• Word Processing
• Setting up and using styles
• Complex layouts
• Designing for update
• Simple desktop publishing
• Spreadsheets
• Modelling Business issues
• Presenting data clearly
• Selecting graphical displays

• WWW Browser
• Getting Internet information
• Optimizing the use of search engines
• Introduction to Databases
• Where theyre useful
• How to set them up
• Creating mailings

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Other Topics to Mention

• Electronic Mail
• Business risks and benefits
• How to make it work for you
• Protecting systems from malware and Spam
• Project Management is a big topic that well
  cover later in the degree key ideas are
• Concept of critical path
• Gantt and PERT charts

• Producing/processing surveys
• Digital Imaging
• Internet publishing
• Writing HTML
• Unlikely to get hands-on experience with software
  for
• Accounting
• Customer relationship mgt
• Project Management

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Potential Packages to Study

• Depends on
• Students knowledge base and needs
• If you cant use Microsoft Word already, please
  enrol on an course at the Kenneth Kettle Building
• Well learn about making reports and presenting
  facts
• How computers are used in Business and Management
• Their contribution to business success
• What professional and managerial staff do with
  them
• Being selfish which skills will give you an
  advantage over your peers?(graduates
  performance creates the Universitys reputation)

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Getting to know one another

• Erics Background
• Joined Winchester in January 98, to teach on last
  years of our Computing programme
• Previously in industry with IBM, acting as bridge
  between business and technical people
• Also gave an intensive programming course
• Started programming as a student in 1966 my
  love for computers hasnt dimmed since then
• Wide range of jobs in IBM from 1970 to 1996
• Still believe in the mainframe Love the
  Internet
• Graham is also ex-IBM he can introduce himself

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Goals of the Course

• Understanding rather than skills
• Not how to do word-processing etc(you should
  get training from ITCS if you need it)
• Foundation for rest of Computing thread of
  Business programme
• Basic computer architecture mainly Intel and
  IBM 390 mainframe (now called zSeries)
• General and PC hardware
• The impact of computers on Business
• How Managers use Computers
• Introduction to Operating Systems
• Help you understand the connections in Business

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An Aside Can You Make an Egg Fly?

• This is an exercise designed to help you get to
  know one another
• Very simple goal
• Drop an egg from the ceiling, arranging that
• it lands on the floor undamaged
• Like everything else we do
• Resources are constrained
• Key thing is how well you use them
• Should teach you a range of useful Business
  skills
• Please form yourselves into groups of 5, and
• read the notes at the end of your handouts

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What did the Egg Game Teach Us?
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What do you already know?

• Every year, students performance suffers from
• Treating Word like a typewriter
• Wasteful practices in Excel spreadsheets
• The test sheet will let me see what you know
  about
• Entirely optional, used to select for advanced
  group session on Mondays at 9 am
• Not too advanced has to cater for all 50 in the
  group
• Dont worry if you are on Business Thinking on
  Monday, we can move you to the Thursday
  occurrence
• Part of it is a Word practical
• Some bits youll know, some will be strange
• All the tasks are useful in building Business
  documents

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Lets find out what youre confident with
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BS1904 Attendance and Performance
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Last years run of this module
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Why express it like this?

• Taking averages of opinion scores doesnt make
  sense
• Scales are non-linear
• It hides extremes of view for example
• overall score averages over 6, but
• This hides the 19 who were discontented
• Pie-charts could show the same data, but
• Dont make the good-bad progression so clear
• Makes it harder to compare areas of interest
• Why blue and red?

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Computers in Business

• With a focus on what matters on Management
  Degrees

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How Computers fit into Business

• Operations
• Point of Sale systems
• Warehouse control
• Ordering, Logistics
• Accounting
• Production
• Numerically-controlled machines
• Design
• Production control
• Control Management
• Monitoring of Operations and Production
• Decision Support tactical and strategic

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How Important are Computers?

• Most human achievements happened before computers
• Shakespeare, Mozart, Michelangelo
• Even things youd not consider doing without a
  computer, like cracking the Enigma code, or
  building aircraft
• Theyre important now because we are addicted
• Manufacturing and commerce run just in time
• Control is more detailed than previously
• Business is global
• Product life cycles are shorter, demanding fast
  decisions
• And because were more democratic
• Most of population now has at least one bank
  account
• Only richer section of population used banks 50
  years ago

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A Way to Assess Value

• Think how you would survive without computers
• Analyse business processes
• Look how they use computers
• Assess how long the business could continue
  without
• What are the immediate killers?
• Which processes secure long-term future?
• This analysis was used in my Year-2000 seminars
• Focus on short-term issues (specific to Year
  2000 none of us believed the problems will take
  long to fix)
• Look at contribution to revenue short and
  mid-term

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Business Processes Priority

• Physical safety (not getting shut down under
  HASAW)
• Generating Revenue
• Making Product or Service
• Getting paid
• Processing orders
• Satisfying Customers Partners
• Delivering product
• Paying bills
• Handling enquiries
• Staff Morale
• Payroll, working conditions
• Management Information

Distinguish between Urgency and Importance
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Our focus is on Management

• We need to know about production computing,
• But few of us will actually use it ourselves
• Physical safety outsourced to building management
• Point-of-Sale equipment used at fairly junior
  levels
• As is order-processing, telesales...
• Making product or service often requires very
  specialized applications
• So do warehousing and logistics systems
• We are likely to use
• Accounting systems, including payroll and
  personnel
• Financial tracking and forecasting systems
• Management Information and communications

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So what do Managers Use?

• Dont believe everything you read in Dilbert
• But believe a lot of it thats why its in the
  Library!
• Business success depends on
• Communications
• Formal, including instructions, materials orders
• Informal, such as e-mail
• Interpersonal, such as presentations
• Decision support
• Understand potential costs and benefits
• Determine trends
• React to correct errors and missed opportunities
• Picking key indicators out of a pile of figures

Thisiswhatwellstudy
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Communications

• Formal, such as Electronic Data Interchange
• Many large companies now order only via EDIIf
  you want to sell to Boeing interface with their
  system
• NHS now gets most dentists bills over EDI
• IBM avoids costs of 350M a year by Online
  Education
• Informal point-to-point, such as e-mail
• IBM Europe funded a large network in 1979 on
  basis of faster communication of fixes for
  production errors
• Informal Broadcast, like the Internet WWW
• Companys Home Page is a high-impact PR resource
• IBM valued its Intranet at 1B in 2000-01
• Big impact from tie-in between WWW and line of
  business applications e.g. on-line ordering

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Decision Support

• Some very esoteric systems
• City trading desk support
• Oil or commodity trading
• Others based on more familiar business models
• Business-case development
• Trend analysis
• Market share
• Profitability
• Technology substitution
• Sometimes the decision is reached and implemented
• More usually you have to convince people
• Present the figures in a way they understand and
  believe

The assignmentdoes this
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Lets build a list

• Word Processing ?
• Electronic Mail ?
• WWW Browser ?
• Graphics/Drawing ?
• Database ?
• Spreadsheet ?

• Project Planning
• Accounting L2
• Desktop publishing
• Internet publishing L2
• Monitoring real-time events
• Processing surveys L2

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Convincing People

• Major part of most Business activities
• Creating markets
• Selling things
• Getting the best out of staff
• Encouraging change and innovation
• Achieved by writing or presenting
• Story must be logical and coherent(even better
  if its right!)
• Audience must respect person communicating
• Communicator must understand audienceand adapt
  to its needs

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Whats wrong with this sentence?

• Eric doesnt like greengrocers apostrophes

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Horses for Courses

• No one style is right for everything
• Most businesses have many prescribed styles
• Different styles used for different purposes,for
  example, in Winchester we have
• Definitive documents for validated degrees
• Forms for justifying and hiring external speakers
• Official minutes
• Informal e-mails and intranet postings
• The module assignment is practice at writing a
  specific kind of business report
• Fairly typical of a business case in a real
  company
• Ability to follow a prescribed style is a vital
  skill

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Or are they donkeys?
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Getting Business Information

• Formal sources
• Collected information (encyclopaedias,
  directories)
• Books on specific subjects more detail
• Learned Journals specialized, fairly current
• Magazines and newspapers current, lower
  accuracy
• Online databases (usually by subscription)
• CD-ROM databases (e.g. Postcodes, Phone numbers)
• Less controlled sources
• Primarily the Internet anyone can put anything
  there
• Cranks, iconoclasts, liberals, extremists
• Also bulletin boards, computer conferences
• Including Learning Network and moderated
  conferences on information providers like MSN,
  CompuServe, AOL

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Information Sources at Winchester

• Library
• Reasonable stock of books, with on-line catalogue
• Other publications available on inter-library
  loan
• OPAC (On-line Public Access Catalogue)
• On-line services like JStor (ask librarians)
• Limited range of periodicals see the Group
  Guidelines
• CD Server
• Learning Network Portal Growing collection of
  internal info
• Winchester web pages including the Business
  site
• http//www.winchester.ac.uk/bm/
• Internet Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, Ask
  Jeeves, etc)
• County Library has old newspapers on microfilm

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Accessing the Library

• When youre away from campus, you can still get
  useful information
• Browse the catalogue and reserve renew books
• Use databases using an Athens password
• Your turn
• Log on and get to the University Portal
• Find the Library Catalogue
• Use it to see if Jane Knights book is available
• Is there anything about Peopleware?
• Look for some databases

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Beware of

• Wikipedia
• Like any encyclopaedia, useful only as a starting
  point
• But no protection against authors with an axe to
  grind
• For example News International staff keep
  sanitizing entries relating to Rupert Murdoch
• Follow links to more reliable sources
• Youll get very little credit for citing
  Wikipedia
• Plagiarism
• A very serious crime in the academic world
• Means using other peoples ideas or words as your
  own
• Tutors are pretty good at spotting it
• Well cover what you need to do to avoid it
• If you plagiarize in an assignment, youve failed
  it altogether

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Decision Support Systems

• To address questions like
• How is the business doing?
• What happens if?
• Should we invest in X or Y?
• Usually needs access to operational data
• Ideally the real thing, not an out-of-date
  extract
• Improves decisions, avoids time-wasting
• Plus tools to manipulate the data
• Spreadsheets to analyse the numbers
• Word processor or graphics to present results
• Project planner to schedule your proposal

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Summary Computers in Business

• Production the job is using the computer
• Example check-out, order-entry
• Automation the computer does the job
• Example machine tools, telephone exchange
• Management computers control the business
• Started with simple accounting, now involves
  complex network of systems, usually centred on a
  database
• Decision support computers serving
  professionals
• This is what youre most likely to do with them,
  using spreadsheets and project planning tools

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Students 10 years ago To be updated with your
feedback