...Business Information Systems Introduction With the advent of modern technology, the Internet has replaced most ways of obtaining information. One such method of obtaining information is crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing has revolutionized the way services are rendered, with an online community taking up the tradtional role of suppliers. Forever 21, the popular American fashion retail chain has hired a leading international consulting firm to advice on global crowd sourcing. As a junior consultant, specializing in Information Systems at the firm, I have been tasked with recommending crowdsourcing strategies for Forever 21. In doing so, I shall investigate the crowdsourcing phenomenon and aim to identify the best crowd sourcing strategy for Forever 21. The client has identified platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), Freelancer, oDesk, Would You Rock This (WYRT), and Spoonflower to be off particular interest. As a junior consultant, I have thus evaluated these platforms and then put forward my recommendation on the best crowdsourcing platform. One that I believe is capable of posing radical challenges or opportunities in line with Forever 21’s objectives and operations (Allen, 2011). In-Depth Analysis of the Various Types of Crowd Sourcing Platforms In this section, I shall conduct an in-depth analysis of the aforementioned crowd sourcing platforms on the basis of their target markets (Barnes, Hinton, & Mieczkowska. 2003). Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk): The Amazon...
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...'Sucessful Crowdfunding campaign’ Introduction: Crowdsourcing: Crowdsourcing emerges as a new paradigm of organization used by companies to reach out to distributed talent in the context of a globally interconnected society (Villarroel et al 2007, 2011a, 2011b). Although the term “crowdsourcing” is relatively new (Howe 2006), and it has only received theoretical attention by management academics in recent years (Geerts, 2009) (Malone, et al., 2010), crowdsourcing initiatives led by companies have over two decades of existence, finding roots in the software industry (von Hippel & von Krog, 2003). Crowdsourcing offers a new business model that allows companies to gather faster and at a lower cost, the knowledge distributed among the population, specific to each one of us, the knowledge of time and place. (Hayek, 1945) (Schenk & Guittard, 2011)(Villarroel 2008, 2011c; Villarroel & Taylor 2007). (Malone, et al., 2010) Even though crowdsourcing is emerging recently to the understanding of a wider audience, it has stuck the eye of a few lecturers as early as 1998, whilst Thomas Malone and Robert Laubacher, noticed the organizational changes in motion and expected long term consequences (Malone & Laubacher, 1998). The Linux case has highlighted these new flexible businesses which might be assembled at some point of the initiatives and then are dissolved once the venture is done so staff can then seek for long term projects to paintings on. (Malone & Laubacher, 1998) This new...
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...Canada and the Middle East. The candidate is expected to be independent minded, self-learner and entrepreneurial.Skills Required: * Internet Savvy and used to tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. * Clearly able to differentiate selling SERVICES vs. Products. * Able to communicate directly with customers over emails and preliminary phone calls to setup meetings between executives * Able to Research Industries, Geographies, and technology segments to develop marketing lists * Able to prepare marketing material to be sent out to these lists * Able to predict, plan and deliver a minimum of $1500 per month * Able to perform basic IT analysis and form proposal structures. Plus * Experience of online marketing channels like eLance, oDesk * Experience of SEM/SEO and the concepts involved therein * Experience with Technical writingThe role requires a senior resource willing and able to work independently. Compensation will be above market averages and in-line with the employee owned compensation model of Allied Consultants. The ideal candidate will have a strong desire to understand the business and functional context of the client’s requirements. This is a long term position and with build-up of significant...
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...The Catalyst Leader by Brad Lomenick Name: Instruction: Date: A leader is defined as a person who influences other people towards certain goals. A leader in the basic meaning takes the lead role by example and motivates others to follow. Leadership is an important aspect of all human activities. Effective leadership helps nations during difficult times and makes a business organization successful. It enables organizations to fulfill their missions and most importantly, effective leadership in parents enables children to grow strong and healthy and become responsible and productive adults in the society. Nurturing and building leadership skills in young people is an assurance of stability and growth for the society and organizations. Brad Lomenick in his book ‘The Catalyst Leader: 8 Essentials for Becoming a Change Maker’ defines leadership and describes the hallmark traits of effective leadership. Most of the leadership approaches that Brad has identified are universal and are congruent with the academic literature on leadership. The study of leadership approaches has been an important part of the literature on organizational behavior and management. Leadership receives more interest than any other role in many organizations (Schwandt &Marquardt, 2000, p.15). Leadership concepts have been studied for a long time dating back to Plato and Caesar times (Bass, 1981, p. 28). Although there is a lack of harmony about the exact definition of leadership, a literature review shows...
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...their skills”(6). Thus, it might be easier to find help in quicker ways but, for such resources the internet may actually prove to be making people lazier if they never have to run their own errands anymore. The second major online outsourcing resource is Fiverr which is packed with “$5 gigs” and is a less rigorous conditions for people to help. Summed up completely by Outsource Yourself by Patricia Marx that it’s been so successful there have been many “copycat sites”(6). These websites in turn now create competition in the job market like big-box companies by being so cheap for such quick operation with low prices. Last but the one the most important individual outsourcing website is based on normal ways of the modern times is Elance. Elance is now known as Upwork from its merger with oDesk. In Upwork their mission is “ To create economic and social value on a global scale by providing a trusted online workplace to connect, collaborate, and succeed.” stated on their website. In Upwork they connect high professional freelancers to clients (individuals or business). Located in San Francisco, the company supports many jobs from a customer service associate to director of engineering. Thus, if any rising online site to be on the lookout for it will be this one. It may change everyone's regularly stable job life into a outsourced freelance competition at nearly every opportunity. Outsourcing is through business is what we call the meat and potatoes of the whole . Outsourcing...
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...Connecting to Work: How ICTs Are Expanding Job Opportunities Worldwide September 10, 2013 * * ------------------------------------------------- Top of Form Bottom of Form * * * Information and communication technologies are creating new job opportunities for workers and employers around the world. STORY HIGHLIGHTS * Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are transforming the world of work, creating new job opportunities and making labor markets more innovative, inclusive, and global. * Three trends are driving this shift: greater connectivity, the ability to telecommute and outsource work, and globalization of skills. * A new paper looks at ways policymakers can maximize the positive impact of ICTs on employment. RELATED WORLD BANK * Policy Note: Connecting to Work: How Information and Communication Technologies Could Help Expand Employment Opportunities * Website: World Bank ICT * Website: Jobs Knowledge Platform MULTIMEDIA Video Connecting to Work: ICTs & Jobs When Gopal Maharjan, a young engineering graduate in Nepal, started looking for a job in Kathmandu he did not get a great response. Then he heard about online jobs with CloudFactory, a “microwork” platform. He and some friends formed a group and applied online. They were accepted and given part-time jobs doing work such as digitizing old, hand-written data, tracking supermarket receipts, or even medical transcription. The group meets regularly with CloudFactory staff...
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...15 African Entrepreneurs Jonathan Liebmann Country: South African Occupation: Real Estate developer Position: CEO of Propertius Details: Liebmann, 28, is the Managing Director of Propertuity, a South African Real Estate development company and the brains behind the construction of the Maboneng Precinct, a thriving cultural district in the east side of Johannesburg’s CBD. Once neglected and deteriorating neighborhood housing abandoned industrial complexes. Liebmann transformed Maboneng into a vibrant urban mixed-use community complete with Art galleries, artist studios, retail spaces, offices and artist studios. Patrick Ngowi, Country: Tanzanian Position: CEO, Helvetic Solar Contractors Details: Nine years ago, Patrick Ngowi, 28, received a small loan from his mother to start off a business. He started off selling Chinese mobile phones, but when he discovered that a tiny fraction of Tanzanians enjoyed any access to stable and reliable electricity, he knew he had to rectify that problem. Ngowi set up Helvetic Solar Contractors Limited, a company that is a pioneer in the supply, installation and maintenance of solar systems throughout the Northern Circuit of Tanzania. Helvetic Solar Contractors is the first company in the Northern Circuit to cater for Solar needs. The company did about $3 million in revenues last year. Lorna Rutto Country: Kenyan Occupation: Green Tech Entrepreneur, Founder, EcoPost Details: Lorna Rutto, 28 is the founder of EcoPost, a profitable social enterprise...
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...Working Together from Afar A Study on the Effectiveness of the Communication Strategies and Flow used in a Virtual Office By Patricia Camille C. Duremdes Submitted December 13, 2014 to Dr. Rosario M. Baria Abstract Communication is important in any group that has a common goal (Simon, 1976). It is a requirement in a situation where people with different tasks have to coordinate to work as one. While achieving effective communication is relatively easy in a traditional organization, organizations that exist in cyberspace have to find alternative ways to communicate effectively due to the limitations caused by the long distances between the members. This study was conducted to find out whether or not the communication within a virtual writing service of 14 workers is effective. The study used both qualitative and quantitative methods in gathering information. Information about the virtual office’s communication strategies and flow were obtained through first-hand observation, while the effectiveness of communication was determined through questionnaire results. The results indicated that the communication strategies and flow used in the office were effective, as a vast majority of the respondents had positive views on the communication within their office. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I Introduction Importance of the Study Purpose of the Study Limitations of the Study Definition of Terms 1 2 2 3 3 CHAPTER II Review of Related Studies 5 CHAPTER III Methodology 9 CHAPTER...
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...Topic: Examine groupware systems including their various types and examples of organisational activities they support, and discuss how they would evolve in the future. Student number: 21819254 Introduction Nowadays, usage of IT systems in enterprise environment is growing at an incredible pace. The main purpose of it is to help groups of cooperating individuals to overcome time and spatial barriers. Enterprise systems implementation has led to the problem of cooperation between companies to reach their goals and successfully operate in the current market environment. The rising demand for collaboration software has led to the groupware market expansion. Collaborative software has influenced the expansion of enterprises by improving the effectiveness of a range of tools such as the ability to communicate over long distances. This software had a significant impact on expansion of enterprises and increased efficiency of its work, for example, the communication over long distances. Along with development of technologies, the way workers operate in organisations has completely changed. Monotonous and time consuming tasks can be easily solved using the computer. Consequently, this change led to increase in the number of “knowledge workers”, workers, whose main capital is knowledge (Davenport, Thomas, 2005). Organisations more often require employees, who have the skill and experience of working within a team. Obviously, teamwork has a significantly greater efficiency, especially in...
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...Business process outsourcing (BPO) is a subset of outsourcing that involves the contracting of the operations and responsibilities of specific business functions (or processes) to a third-party service provider. Originally, this was associated with manufacturing firms, such as Coca Cola that outsourced large segments of its supply chain. In the contemporary context, it is primarily used to refer to the outsourcing of business processing services to an outside firm, replacing in-house services with labour from an outside firm. BPO is typically categorized into back office outsourcing - which includes internal business functions such as human resources or finance and accounting, and front office outsourcing - which includes customer-related services such as contact centre services. BPO that is contracted outside a company's country is called offshore outsourcing. BPO that is contracted to a company's neighbouring (or nearby) country is called near shore outsourcing. Often the business processes are information technology-based, and are referred to as ITES-BPO, where ITES stands for Information Technology Enabled Service. Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) and legal process outsourcing (LPO) are some of the sub-segments of business process outsourcing industry. Benefits and limitations An advantage of BPO is the way in which it helps to increase a company’s flexibility. However, several sources have different ways in which they perceive organizational flexibility. Therefore...
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...Ten Rules for Web Startups #1: Be Narrow Focus on the smallest possible problem you could solve that would potentially be useful. Most companies start out trying to do too many things, which makes life difficult and turns you into a me-too. Focusing on a small niche has so many advantages: With much less work, you can be the best at what you do. Small things, like a microscopic world, almost always turn out to be bigger than you think when you zoom in. You can much more easily position and market yourself when more focused. And when it comes to partnering, or being acquired, there's less chance for conflict. This is all so logical and, yet, there's a resistance to focusing. I think it comes from a fear of being trivial. Just remember: If you get to be #1 in your category, but your category is too small, then you can broaden your scope‹and you can do so with leverage. #2: Be Different Ideas are in the air. There are lots of people thinking about‹and probably working on‹the same thing you are. And one of them is Google. Deal with it. How? First of all, realize that no sufficiently interesting space will be limited to one player. In a sense, competition actually is good‹especially to legitimize new markets. Second, see #1‹the specialist will almost always kick the generalist's ass. Third, consider doing something that's not so cutting edge. Many highly successful companies‹the aforementioned big G being one‹have thrived by taking on areas that everyone thought...
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...ISTM5010 – Integration of Information Technology and Business -1 Outsource Insource Final Paper Capella University December 14, 2012 ISTM5010 – Integration of Information Technology and Business -2 ABSTRACT The company in topic is BAILEYpc, Inc. (www.baileypc.com) and their recent organizational structure change for cloud hosting services centered on maintaining a premium service while being agile to industry change for both customer and provider. BAILEYpc offers web hosting as a re-seller through (Site5) rather than owning and maintaining their own server. As a consulting service first the model is not primarily a hardware company. So all services like domain name sales, web hosting services and website development are all outsourced. Web hosting is offered as a compliment service to business development consulting services with servers being leased from a company specializing in hosting rather than inhouse. ISTM5010 – Integration of Information Technology and Business -3 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................................................... 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS ..................................................................................................................... 3 SUMMARY ......................................................................................................................................... 4 CLOUD COMPUTING TRANSITION .......
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...So how did I take a site from 0-450 visitors per day (on the weekend mind you, much slower) and earning over $5 per day in adsense alone AND on the first page of msn for its main keywords in less then 3 weeks. Unfortunately I won t be showing this site as I did in the last post. Due to many reasons. Only a few now about it, and heck you could probably find it anyhow. (I know the investigative powers of the warrior forum) The first step that I take when looking at building a new site is the keyword research, and topic research. There are many ways you can go about doing this. My fav way at the moment is by using The Dowser tool, also I use wordtracker and even a free tool. http://www.123promotion.co.uk/ppc/index.php Once there, start running your list ideas through the keyword tool and look for something which has a decent traffic count in overture. (I choose overture as an example because it is widely recognized). I usually target niches with 80,000 upward searches per month for the main keyword. This way you are bound to be able to drive some good traffic to your site. The recent site I picked had 1,000,000 searches per month. Then I would plug in some of the top sites into SeoElite and find out how much seo the main sites are doing and how hard or easy it is going to be to beat them. Next thing I do is research affiliate products and adsense ads available for that keyword. The adsense ads you can do either in The Dowser tool. Or you can go to http://www...
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...1.0 Introduction Global crowdsourcing has become an increasingly popular choice for individuals as well as businesses for its efficiency and effectiveness in fulfilling specified requests. It is often employed to gain a competitive edge in the evermore fierce business environment. 1.1 Target Market Crowdsourcing has no particular target market as the concept itself builds upon accreted public input from all relevant sources (Enrique E.A. 2012). The websites designed utilising this concept aims to captivate a large pool of personnel with differing skills sets, commonly referred to as solvers, to provide solutions to those who desire particular skills for their problem, called the seekers. Common value propositions: For seekers: • Efficient and effective completion of specified tasks. • Employment on a ‘need’ basis for cost savings. • Vast skills pool to find the most suitable candidates for the job. • ‘Open Innovation’ (Chesbrough, H. 2003). For solvers: • Vast job opportunities. • Specified workload and financial reward. • Flexibility of working hours and location. • Gain experience in various fields of work according to own preference. 1.2 Crowdsourcing Platforms Analysis Platform Website Specific Value Propositions Mechanical Turk Seekers – Individuals and companies seeking extensive labour. • Opportunities open to the general public as jobs focus on the division of labour for simple tasks requiring minimal innovation or technicality. • Fixed payment,...
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...Topic 1 a) Discuss any 3 key skills and characteristic should an information system manager posses. b) Today’s Point of Sales – Electronic Fund Transfer (POS-EFT) system requires several components to function. List and discuss the function for these components. a) An Information System (IS) manager has two principle roles within an organization. He has to be able to manage the change processes that are inevitably initiated by the introduction of technology into his workplace, and he has to manage the operational aspects of business and organizational activities founded on computing and communication technology. Hence an IS manager is a leading figure in both organizational change and performance. From this definition, it is a natural deduction that for IS manager to work effectively, they must have or need to be: * Detailed knowledge of the organization’s mission and vision, its peculiar business strategies and implementation skills. With these understanding, the IS manager will then be able to design an information system which can help the organization to achieve its goal. * Skilled in inter-personal management. This consists of communication skills both written and oral, people oriented and also negotiation skill. Regardless of how an organization structures its information system department, system development is a team effort. So learning how to work and communicate effectively with other team members is important for any information system professionals...
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