FA18 Morgan MIS 204

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...

Many companies these days provide disclosures when it come to storing and use of user data. Most of these disclosures are buried in legalese. Even so, there is very little transparency to how responsible a company is with that data. This leads to several questions. Are companies respectful to their users data? Are employees following companies policies? Are customers exploiting companies? Take for example the data used by the university I am attending. Penn State University has it's own Acceptable Use of University Information Resources .  The University is required by law to be in compliance with these and other policies. They protect the integrity of University and establish guidelines for all faculty, staff, and students.

Information Systems provide conveniences to a wide array of business consumers. Our dependency on these systems however can cripple the relationship with an organization and its consumers when these systems take outages or communications are disrupted. The benefit to real time access to databases can't be argued. Consumers can get competitive pricing while they shop and examine product reviews.  Producers can make informed pricing decision by closely monitoring supply and demand. At the same time this requires companies to understand that they are interacting with more knowledgable consumers. Another facet of modern Information Sytems is that the speed and frequency of transaction processing. Companies proving an online presence and user driendly interfaces can make all the diffrence between closing or losing a sale. More and more companies are moving to self-service portals giving employees and customers access to knowledge base articles and frequently asked questions. This ...

Starting in the morning, I wake or snooze the clock app on my iPhone. That’s the beginning of an ongoing relationship that I have with Apple. What does my schedule, the weather, or the tops stories look like today? I get notified if there are any traffic dekays to expect. It almost seems like I can’t escape the influence my iPhone has over my decisions. Since I work as a software engineer, I also tout along a my MacBook Pro in case I get stuck in a meeting and need to be productive away from my desk. I choose a MacBook because Apple synchronizes between all of my devices. Besides all of my devices, I also subscribe to Apple’s family sharing service. One of the benefits of the sharing service is that we share everything from purchases to GPS location. Collaboration is even easier between colleagues since we can always reach each other no mater what the distance. The same goes for family and friends since we can connect through various social networks. All ...