The Expansion Plan of TeleDoc

The TeleDoc project of Jivan Institute has combined mobile commerce and the ancient concepts of Ayurveda for treatment of rural residents of India for whom health services are still available only in dreams. Using GPRS network and J2ME applications on Nokia 6800 mobile phones, TeleDoc field workers are reaching the remotest villages of India with the promise of possible Ayurvedic treatments for subsequent illnesses. With cash-positive results in the first year of operations, TeleDoc wants to expand in a big-bang way by covering 10,000 villages in 2006. They also want to improve the service quality by using real-time video streaming. But many members of the TeleDoc technical team are skeptical whether the existing GPRS-based solution will serve the purpose or not. There are different priorities in the team (e.g., cost-effectiveness, quality of service, availability, immediacy, cost-ofchange, etc.). The IT consultant has many options, but getting the priorities sorted out is the daunting task at hand.

E-Technology

Globalisation, modernisation and streamlining paradigms have driven many enterprises to use various e-Technologies in order to improve the performance of existing operations, and compete globally and strategically to enhance manufacturing enterprise competitiveness, which in today’s digital economy, is often networked and interconnected via the Internet, Intranet, and Extranet. Examples of the e-Technology include e-Commerce, e-Business, e-Procurement and e-Logistics. These technologies are in place to support the notion of establishing a value-added e-Supply chain and e-Demand chain. The support of back-office systems, e.g. Supply Chain Management (SCM), Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRPII), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) are crucial to enable seamless information flow in the supply chain, whilst support from front-office systems, e.g. Customer Relationships Management (CRM), is important to coordinate the demand chain. Appropriate alignment of the e-Technology with the systems is expected to create further competitive advantages. Hence, e-Technology is a core competence in contributing to competitiveness in the digital economy. It is not merely a facilitating enabler, but a critical enabler towards globalization. (Ketikidis et al, 2006).

Impediments to the Successful Implementation of ICT

For many organizations, the implementation of a new information system (IS) may be the biggest capital expenditure they undertake. If substantial amounts of capital are committed to these developments it follows that every effort is needed to ensure that they are successful for the overall well being of the organization (Maguire & Redman 2007). A considerable amount of disruption can occur when an information system (IS) is introduced. There is a possibility that the IS may also be dysfunctional to the organization for several years after the system has gone ‘live’. (Maguire 2004). There is the thorny issue of how you are going to make sure that your staff are capable of realising the benefits from ICT. You should have a clear idea of what strategies you can adopt with regard to training, who in your company decides on training and where training resources are employed with respect to your overall strategy (Computer Weekly 2007).

Introduction to Current Techniques for Effective ICT Development

The development of information systems (IS) has for many years been regarded as the domain of the technical expert. In what appears to be a growing number of instances systems appear to be having negative effects on the organization. A regular spate of system failures may have identified serious flaws in the system development process. Organizations may often be significantly affected by the implementation of IS. Future IS development may increasingly be trans-organizational and therefore increase the potential for dysfunctionality. Even changing one line of code may have repercussions within a department/organization. To implement a totally integrated system within an organization without adequate preparation could have serious consequences for the financial well-being of the company. The development of information systems is a complex process, one with many opportunities for things to go wrong. To try and control this complex process a methodology was required that would bring more discipline to the IS development process. There is a need to make more efficient use of the resources that are available. Historically, IS has been developed using the system.development.life.cycle. (SDLC). This has been the prevailing methodology for medium and large system projects. However, the use of accepted methodologies for IS development have not guaranteed the successful implementation of information systems.

Identifying Opportunities for Using ICT

The reason for going ahead with a new information system (IS) development can come from many sources. A new business requirement may force an organization to develop a new IS. An existing IS may be coming to the end of its usefulness. The firm may decide to either update its existing system or develop a completely new system.

Linking Information to Business Strategies and Decision-Making

The ultimate reason why organizations develop information systems is so that their employees can make good decisions. If firms did not make decisions there would be no pressing need to implement systems. We must always make sure that we do not lose sight of this fact. An organization should make it their business to document what decisions are made in the course of their business. It will be very important to prioritise these decisions. Which decisions are crucial to the organization? Do we need up-to-the-minute information before we can make a decision on that issue? What level of accuracy do we need before deciding on that point? i.e. quality assurance.

Improving IT-Enabled Sense and Respond Capabilities

Commercial airlines face an extremely challenging operating and competitive environment. To remain in business they must comply with ever-changing regulatory requirements while, at the same time, minimizing their operational costs without sacrificing customer expectations of service levels. Increasingly, airlines are realizing that a “plan-execute” mode of operation must give way to a “sense-respond” mode of operation; in other words they must become a real-time (agile) organization, capable of sensing the occurrence of unforeseen events such as the placement of a last-minute shipping order, flight delays, and cancellations, and respond effectively in real-time to such events. To enable enterprises in general, and the airline industry in particular, to improve their sense-and-respond capabilities and ensure better resource utilization, a number of software vendors are offering event stream processing and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) solutions. This case examines a longitudinal set of real-world implementation projects using such a solution at a major US airline (referred to as Southern International Airlines) and the results and lessons gained from this deployment.

Developing a Telecommunication Operation Support Systems (OSS)

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 opened competition in the telecommunications market in the U.S. and forced the incumbent telecommunications companies to open both their physical and logical infrastructure for Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs). In this case study we focus on the problems that face a CLEC with regard to designing an information system and getting a back office system, called an Operations Support Systems (OSS), operational in a highly competitive, complex, fast-paced market in a compressed time frame when a change in a critical telecommunications network component, namely the central office switch, is made after 75% of the system implementation was completed. This case deals with the factors that led to this change in central office switches, its impact on the IT department, its impact on the company, and the alternatives considered by the IT department as possible solutions to the many problems created by this change.

Knowledge Management

Knowledge.Management can be defined as the critical issues of organisational adaptation, survival and competence against discontinuous environmental change. Essentially it embodies organisational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings. This definition proposed by Dr Yogesh Malhotra summarises a key issue for e-learning strategies and the way they will impact professional training and companies’ organisation policies.

System Development and Project Management

Nearly all information systems developments follow a structured approach. This is true of all projects. This chapter takes a critical look at both system development and project management. The development of computer systems is a complex process, one with many opportunities for things to go wrong. To try and control this complex process, a methodology was required that would bring more discipline to the computer system development process. There was a need to make more efficient use of the resources that were available. However, the use of accepted methodologies for system development has not guaranteed the successful implementation of information systems. There are still weaknesses in the traditional methodologies. This section examines some relevant current literature regarding the system development process and identifies areas of weakness that could be improved. In the UK the National Computing Centre in Manchester defined the system development process as a number of stages. Seven were identified: feasibility study; systems investigation; systems analysis; systems design; systems development; implementation; and review and maintenance. These stages were later revised but are still generally viewed as the key elements of the computer system development process. This defines the development process as a technical one. Many methodologies that have adopted this type of approach have become grouped under the heading of ‘hard systems methodologies’. This structured approach has proved popular with IS/IT professionals since it caters for their needs as technical staff who view information system development as systematic problem-solving. It is not surprising that some authors have a narrow view of what is entailed in the system development process. Some regard it as simply structuring hardware and software to achieve effective and efficient processing of the information system.