FA18 Morgan MIS 204

Whether you are a new company or an established large corporation, Big data and social media can have big impacts on the engagements with your customers. Many benefits can be found by using the data found in your companies digit footprint. This footprint includes everything from day-to-day transactions to a mobile social media presence. Analyzing big data allows marketing departments strategic advantages when publishing print and online materials. This provides business with the ability to better make informed decisions to the needs and expectations of consumers. [1]   Other advantages include amplifying the businesses brand message and delivering that message to a targeted audience. This has allowed smaller business to compete with larger organizations that was once controlled by the amount of money throw at advertising. This has resulted in reduced marketing cost when the net doesn’t have to be throw as broadly as before. When companies have better customer engagement t...

Databases make doing business a lot easier. Sure you can create individual spreadsheets to keep track of customers and product inventories, but the benefits of using a database give business owners a central repository to quickly query when making business decisions. Forms and interfaces can be used in a transaction workflow with your customers. When transactions occur, sale people can quickly add or retrieve new and existing customers. As orders are taken, inventories can be adjusted, storage life can be monitored, and pricing maybe reflected upon. When developing the database it is useful to create tables that store only specific entity information. It doesn't make much sense to have a customer's order history in the same table as the customers contact information. Analyzing which data you will store in a table is also necessary. Customers want a simple process when creating their account with you. They also have to feel comfortably sharing their personal information with...

Recently I was involved with a discussion about Green Disposal with my classmates. I shared the facts about Erie Insurance's commitment to sustainable activities when it comes to Green Disposal. Is it worth the investment? Its hard to imagine a company not looking at the environmental impacts of joining in on the efforts to reduce green waste. While making the decision might be easy from an ethical stand point, practicing green disposal usually come down to more than an altruistic decision. Companies can also profit from a reduction in operating cost through purchasing less paper. According to Xerox, paper is expensive and difficult to manage from an information management perspective. [1] The impact of green disposal is that disposal companies are able to efficiently dispose of green waste without harming the environment. However, there can be a disadvantage to reducing paper. Reducing the amount of paper increases our dependency on electronic equipment. Some of these device...

Erie Insurance was established in 1925 as an insurance company that emphasized on customer service above all else. [1]  ERIE's home office located in Erie, PA, with over 5000 employees throughout it's 12 State footprint. In this digital age ERIE is utilizing new technologies to be a competitive advantage in the industry through automation and organizational strategies. I started with Erie Insurance as a Software Configuration Manager five years ago. The role is within the Operations department in the IT Service Transition division. My role tasks me with providing the company with a strategic advantage in the software delivery domain.  One of the ways we accomplish our advantage is through Continuous Integration builds and automated deployments. CI builds are accomplished by monitoring repository commits for changes and build through automation. This improvement removes several  possibilities for human error and makes processes more efficient for the company. Executi...