187187The purpose of these three chapters is to increase awareness and understanding of specific IT appli-
cations being used in today’s organizations. Rapid changes in business conditions and management
methods, the types of applications available, and the IT platforms and networks that support them all
provide new opportunities for organizations to use IT in new ways in order to survive and grow.
Chapters 5 through 7 offer a comprehensive view of the capabilities of a wide range of IT applications
that can be considered for adoption by business and IT managers. For those readers with consider-
able business experience, this chapter will help you categorize and assess the capabilities and
features of systems that you might have already worked with.
The first two chapters in Part II focus on IT applications used withinan organization’s boundaries:
enterprise systems (Chapter 5)—systems that support the entire organization or large portions of it—
and managerial support systems (Chapter 6)—systems designed to provide support for one or more
managers. At the beginning of Chapter 5 we first introduce several concepts critical to the understand-
ing of IT applications in general: batch versus online processing, client/server systems, virtualization,
service-oriented architecture, and Web services. Then we discuss transaction processing systems, fol-
lowed by enterprise resource planning, data warehousing, customer relationship management, office
automation, groupware, intranets, factory automation, and supply chain management applications.
Among the managerial support systems discussed in Chapter 6 are decision support and group sup-
port systems, as well as data mining, geographic information systems, business intelligence systems,
knowledge management systems, expert systems, neural networks, and virtual reality applications.
The focus of Chapter 7 is e-business systems—applications designed to interact with customers,
suppliers, and other business partners. The chapter begins with a brief history of the Internet and the
technology innovations, U.S. legal and regulatory environments, and e-business opportunities (and
threats) that initially shaped e-business applications via the Internet. Business-to-business (B2B) exam-
ples (including reverse auctions) are then described. After looking at B2C benefits in general, six B2C
retailing companies that have evolved their e-business capabilities are described: successful dot-com
examples (Amazon, Netflix), traditional catalog retailers (Dell, Lands’ End), and traditional store retailers
(Staples, Tesco). Then successful dot-com intermediary examples are discussed, including eBay,
Google, and Facebook. The chapter ends with ideas about what makes a good Web site for consumers
and what makes a good social media platform for businesses to directly interact with the public.
Part II concludes with a set of six original teaching case studies. A supply chain management initia-
tive that builds on an enterprise system capability is described in “Vendor-Managed Inventory at NIBCO.”
The Continental Airlines case study illustrates how an organization invested in data warehousing
and business intelligence applications to turn a poor performing organization into an industry leader.
The Norfolk Southern Railway case study, which is coauthored by the company’s Vice President of