Course: Global Economic Information Systems - Nguyễn Kim Hạnh; Semester 1, 2021-2022

Department of International Business

CASE STUDIES

THE NEW YANKEE STADIUM LOOKS TO THE FUTURE

Although baseball is a sport, it’s also big business, requiring revenue from tickets
to games, television broadcasts, and other sources to pay for teams. Salaries for top
players have ballooned, as have ticket prices. Many fans now watch games on television
rather than attending them in person or choose other forms of entertainment, such as
electronic games. One way to keep stadiums full of fans, and to keep fans at home happy
as well, is to enrich the fan experience by offering more video and services based on
technology. When the New York Yankees built the new Yankee Stadium, they did just
that.

The new Yankee Stadium, which opened on April 2, 2009, isn’t just another
ballpark: It’s the stadium of the future. It is the most wired, connected, and video-enabled
stadium in all of baseball. Although the new stadium is similar in design to the original
Yankee Stadium, built in 1923, the interior has more space and amenities, including more
intensive use of video and computer technology. Baseball fans love video. According to
Ron Ricci, co-chairman of Cisco Systems’ sports and entertainment division, “It’s what
fans want to see, to see more angles and do it on their terms.” Cisco Systems supplied the
computer and networking technology for the new stadium.

Throughout the stadium, including the Great Hall, the Yankees Museum, and in
stadium restaurants and concession areas, 1,200 flat-panel high-definition HDTV
monitors display live game coverage, up-to-date sports scores, archival and highlight
video, promotional messages, news, weather, and traffic updates. There is also a huge
monitor in center field that is 101 feet wide and 59 feet high. At the conclusion of games,
the monitors provide up-to-the moment traffic information and directions to the nearest
stadium exits.

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Course: Global Economic Information Systems - Nguyễn Kim Hạnh; Semester 1, 2021-2022

Department of International Business

The monitors are designed to surround fans visually from the moment they enter
the stadium, especially when they stray from a direct view of the ball field. The
pervasiveness of this technology ensures that while fans are buying a hamburger or a
soda, they will never miss a play. The Yankees team controls all the monitors centrally
and is able to offer different content on each one. Monitors are located at concession
stands, around restaurants and bars, in restrooms, and inside 59 luxury and party suites. If
a Yankee player wants to review a game to see how he played, monitors in the team’s
video room will display what he did from any angle. Each Yankee player also has a
computer at his locker.

The luxury suites have special touch-screen phones for well-heeled fans to use
when ordering food and merchandise. At the stadium business center, Cisco interactive
videoconferencing technology will link to a library in the Bronx and to other New York
City locations, such as hospitals. Players and executives will be able to videoconference
and talk to fans before or after the games. Eventually data and video from the stadium
will be delivered to fans’ home televisions and mobile devices. Inside the stadium, fans in
each seat will be able to use their mobile phones to order from the concessions or view
instant replays. If they have an iPhone, an application called Venuing lets them
communicate with other fans at the game, find nearby facilities, obtain reviews of
concessions, play pub-style trivia games, and check for news updates.

The Yankees also have their own Web site, Yankees.com, where fans can watch
in-market Yankees games live online, check game scores, find out more about their
favorite players, purchase tickets to games, and shop for caps, baseball cards and
memorabilia. The site also features fantasy baseball games, where fans compete with
each other by managing “fantasy teams” based on real players’ statistics.

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Course: Global Economic Information Systems - Nguyễn Kim Hạnh; Semester 1, 2021-2022

Department of International Business

MIS IN YOUR POCKET

Can you run your company out of your pocket? Perhaps not entirely, but there are
many functions today that can be performed using an iPhone, BlackBerry, or other
mobile handheld device. The smartphone has been called the “Swiss Army knife of the
digital age.” A flick of the finger turns it into a Web browser, a telephone, a camera, a
music or video player, an e-mail and messaging machine, and for some, a gateway into
corporate systems. New software applications for social networking and salesforce
management (CRM) make these devices even more versatile business tools.

The BlackBerry has been the favored mobile handheld for business because it was
optimized for e-mail and messaging, with strong security and tools for accessing internal
corporate systems. Now that’s changing. Companies large and small are starting to
deploy Apple’s iPhone to conduct more of their work. For some, these handhelds have
become necessities.

Doylestown Hospital, a community medical center near Philadelphia, has a mobile

workforce of 360 independent physicians treating thousands of patients. The physicians
use the iPhone 3G to stay connected around the clock to hospital staff, colleagues, and
patient information. Doylestown doctors use iPhone features such as e-mail, calendar,
and contacts from Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync. The iPhone allows them to receive
time-sensitive e-mail alerts from the hospital. Voice communication is important as well,
and the iPhone allows the doctors to be on call wherever they are.

Doylestown Hospital customized the iPhone to provide doctors with secure mobile
access from any location in the world to the hospital’s MEDITECH electronic medical
records system. MEDITECH delivers information on vital signs, medications, lab results,
allergies, nurses’ notes, therapy results, and even patient diets to the iPhone screen.
“Every radiographic image a patient has had, every dictated report from a specialist is
available on the iPhone,” notes Dr. Scott Levy, Doylestown Hospital’s vice president and
chief medical officer. Doylestown doctors also use the iPhone at the patient’s bedside to

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Course: Global Economic Information Systems - Nguyễn Kim Hạnh; Semester 1, 2021-2022

Department of International Business

access medical reference applications such as Epocrates Essentials to help them interpret
lab results and obtain medication information.

Doylestown’s information systems department was able to establish the same high
level of security for authenticating users of the system and tracking user activity as it
maintains with all the hospital’s Web-based medical records applications. Information is
stored securely on the hospital’s own server computer.

D.W. Morgan, headquartered in Pleasanton, California, serves as a supply chain

consultant and transportation and logistics service provider to companies such as AT&T,
Apple Computer, Johnson & Johnson, Lockheed Martin, and Chevron. It has operations
in more than 85 countries on four continents, moving critical inventory to factories that
use a just-in-time (JIT) strategy. In JIT, retailers and manufacturers maintain almost no
excess on-hand inventory, relying upon suppliers to deliver raw materials, components,
or products shortly before they are needed.

In this type of production environment, it’s absolutely critical to know the exact
moment when delivery trucks will arrive. In the past, it took many phone calls and a great
deal of manual effort to provide customers with such precise up-to-the-minute
information. The company was able to develop an application called ChainLinq Mobile
for its 30 drivers that updates shipment information, collects signatures, and provides
global positioning system (GPS) tracking on each box it delivers.

As Morgan’s drivers make their shipments, they use ChainLinq to record pickups
and status updates. When they reach their destination, they collect a signature on the
iPhone screen. Data collected at each point along the way, including a date- and time-
stamped GPS location pinpointed on a Google map, are uploaded to the company’s
servers. The servers make the data available to customers on the company’s Web site.
Morgan’s competitors take about 20 minutes to half a day to provide proof of delivery;
Morgan can do it immediately.

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Course: Global Economic Information Systems - Nguyễn Kim Hạnh; Semester 1, 2021-2022

Department of International Business

TCHO is a start-up that uses custom-developed machinery to create unique

chocolate flavors. Owner Timothy Childs developed an iPhone app that enables him to
remotely log into each chocolate-making machine, control time and temperature, turn the
machines on and off, and receive alerts about when to make temperature changes. The
iPhone app also enables him to remotely view several video cameras that show how the
TCHO FlavorLab is doing. TCHO employees also use the iPhone to exchange photos, e-
mail, and text messages.

The Apple iPad is also emerging as a business tool for Web-based note-taking, file
sharing, word processing, and number-crunching. Hundreds of business productivity
applications are being developed, including tools for Web conferencing, word processing,
spreadsheets, and electronic presentations. Properly configured, the iPad is able to
connect to corporate networks to obtain e-mail messages, calendar events, and contacts
securely over the air.

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Course: Global Economic Information Systems - Nguyễn Kim Hạnh; Semester 1, 2021-2022

Department of International Business

GLOBAL E-BUSINESS AND COLLABORATION TELUS EMBRACES SOCIAL

LEARNING

TELUS is a Canadian telecommunications company that has been around for a century,
and it wants to ensure that every Canadian is connected to the rest of the world, whether
that connection is through wireless devices, the Internet, television, or traditional
telephone lines. The company has 12.7 million customer accounts.

Providing superior service is an important corporate goal. Management believes that

good teamwork and employee learning are vital for achieving this goal. Until recently,
most employees learning at TELUS took place in formal classroom settings outside the
company. Much of what employees learned depended on knowledge presented by
instructors, and this learning method was expensive. Employees would be better off
learning from each other’s expertise, management concluded. Moreover, 40 percent of
the TELUS workforce was expected to retire within the next 10 years, making it essential
for the company to find multiple ways of sharing and preserving employee experience
and knowledge.

The company decided to focus on making team member education more “continuous,
collaborative, and connected” through informal and social learning, using mentoring,
coaching, job rotations, videos, blogs, and wikis. TELUS set a 2010 learning budget of
$21 million, 40 percent of which was for informal and social learning and 60 percent for
formal learning. (The year before, formal learning had accounted for 90 percent of the
firm’s $28.5 million learning budget.)

To support the new learning initiative, TELUS harnessed the capabilities of Microsoft
SharePoint Server 2010, which provides team members with a single point of entry to
shared knowledge within the company and the ability to search all the company’s
learning assets simultaneously. TELUS used the SharePoint MySites feature to enable
team members to create their own Web pages that describe their areas of expertise and
special skills. Team members are able to see their positions and those of others in the

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Course: Global Economic Information Systems - Nguyễn Kim Hạnh; Semester 1, 2021-2022

Department of International Business

organizational hierarchy, connect with colleagues, and establish informal groups with
other people with similar skills. An Expert Search capability provides ranked search
results identifying TELUS employees with expertise in specific areas. MySites also offers
blogging tools for team members to build their own blogs and contribute to those of
others. Through these blogs, a team member can locate an expert, discuss his or her
experiences, share advice, and find the answers to questions without having to take a
class or interrupt a colleague.

TELUS used SharePoint to develop team sites called My Communities, where project
teams, departments, and other groups can work together and share documents and other
content. They are able to create categories for classifying and tagging user-generated
content. TELUS Tube allows team members to post and view user-generated video of
their accomplishments on the job or questions to ask col-leagues. Over 1,000 videos have
been posted. A new learning management system working closely with SharePoint Server
2010 enables team members to track and display the formal learning courses they have
taken as well as the courses other team members have taken.

TELUS recognized that moving from formal learning to acquiring knowledge through
employee collaboration and participation required a shift in company culture. “This is not
a scenario in which we can flip a switch and have everyone change their work habits
overnight,” observed Dan Pontefract, Senior Director of Learning for TELUS. To
encourage acceptance of and participation in the new social learning processes, the
company set up an internal site showing tangible examples of the new collaboration tools
and launched a wiki to facilitate employee discussion. Pontefract includes information
about the new learning initiative on his blog to help prepare team members for the shift.

The new SharePoint system gives TELUS team members much faster access to the
specific skills and knowledge areas where they need help—they don’t need to wait for the
next formal learning class. Instead, team members can immediately reach out to
colleagues who have expertise in a specific area, or they can read wikis and blogs, watch

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Department of International Business

videos, and participate in discussions to find answers. Implementing SharePoint reduced

the TELUS learning budget to $21 million in 2010. The company was able to trim this
budget by 20 percent the following year as it continued its shift to informal and social
learning. Further cost savings will occur as the new learning solutions take hold. In the
TELUS three-year plan, formal learning will comprise just 50 percent of the total
learning budget.

Sources: Sharon Gaudin, “Telus Links Social, Traditional Training,” Computerworld,

March 27, 2012; “TELUS Telecom Company Embraces Social Computing, Streamlines
Formal Learning,” www.microsoft.com, accessed April 5, 2012; Barb Mosher,
“Sharepoint 2010 Case Study: Informal and Social Learning at TELUS,”CMSWire, June
30, 2010, and www.telus.com, accessed April 6, 2012.

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Course: Global Economic Information Systems - Nguyễn Kim Hạnh; Semester 1, 2021-2022

Department of International Business

VERIZON OR AT&T-WHICH COMPANY HAS THE BEST

DIGITAL STRATEGY?

Verizon and AT&T are the two largest telecommunications companies in the
United States. In addition to voice communication, their customers use their networks to
surf the Internet; send e-mail, text, and video messages; share photos; watch videos and
high definition TV; and conduct videoconferences around the globe. All of these products
and services are digital.

Competition in this industry is exceptionally intense and fast-changing. Both

companies are trying to outflank one another by refining their wireless, landline, and
high-speed Internet networks and expanding the range of products, applications, and
services available to customers. Wireless services are the most profitable. AT&T is
staking its growth on the wireless market by aggressively marketing leading-edge high-
end devices such as the iPhone. Verizon has bet on the reliability, power, and range of its
wireless and landline networks and its renowned customer service.

For a number of years, Verizon has tried to blunt competition by making heavy
technology investments in both its landline and wireless networks. Its wireless network is
considered the most far-reaching and reliable in the United States. Verizon is now
pouring billions of dollars into a rollout of fourth-generation (4G) cellular technology
capable of supporting highly data-intensive applications such as downloading large
streams of video and music through smart phones and other network appliances. Returns
from Verizon’s 4G investment are still uncertain.

Verizon’s moves appear more risky financially than AT&T’s, because its up-front
costs are so high. AT&T’s strategy is more conservative. Why not partner with other
companies to capitalize on their technology innovations? That was the rationale for
AT&T contracting with Apple Computer to be the exclusive network for its iPhone. Even
though AT&T subsidizes some of the iPhone’s cost to consumers, the iPhone’s
streamlined design, touch screen, exclusive access to the iTunes music service, and over

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Course: Global Economic Information Systems - Nguyễn Kim Hạnh; Semester 1, 2021-2022

Department of International Business

250,000 downloadable applications have made it an instant hit. AT&T has also sought to
provide cellular services for other network appliances such as Amazon’s Kindle e-book
reader and netbooks.

The iPhone has been AT&T’s primary growth engine, and the Apple relationship
made the carrier the U.S. leader in the smartphone carrier market lspace. AT&T has over
43 percent of U.S. smartphone customers, compared with 23 percent for Verizon. Smart-
phone customers are highly desirable because they typically pay higher monthly rates for
wireless data service plans.

The iPhone became so wildly popular that users overstrained AT&T’s networks,
leaving many in dense urban areas such as New York and San Francisco with sluggish
service or dropped calls. To handle the surging demand, AT&T could upgrade its wire-
less network, but that would cripple profits. Experts con-tend that AT&T would have to
spend $5 billion to $7 billion to bring its network up to Verizon’s quality. To curb
excessive use, AT&T moved to a tiered pricing model for new iPhone users, with data
charges based on how much data customers actually use.

Adding to AT&T’s woes, its monopoly on the iPhone may be ending. Apple
reached an agreement with Verizon in 2010 to make an iPhone that is compatible with
Verizon's network. Allowing Verizon to offer iPhone service will more than double
Apple’s market for this device, but will undoubtedly drive some AT&T iPhone customers
to Verizon in the hope of finding better net-work service. Verizon is further hedging its
bets by offering leading-edge smartphones based on Google’s Android operating system
that compete well against the iPhone. With or without the iPhone, if Verizon’s Android
phone sales continue to accelerate, the competitive balance will shift again.

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Course: Global Economic Information Systems - Nguyễn Kim Hạnh; Semester 1, 2021-2022

Department of International Business

CANNONDALE LEARNS TO MANAGE A GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN

If you enjoy cycling, you may very well be using a Cannondale bicycle.
Cannondale, headquartered in Bethel, Connecticut, is the world-leading manufacturer of
high-end bicycles, apparel, footwear, and accessories, with dealers and distributors in
more than 66 countries. Cannondale’s supply and distribution chains span the globe, and
the company must coordinate manufacturing, assembly, and sales/distribution sites in
many different countries. Cannondale produces more than 100 different bicycle models
each year; 60 percent of these are newly introduced to meet ever-changing customer
preferences.

Cannondale offers both make-to-stock and make-to-order models. A typical

bicycle requires a 150-day lead time and a four-week manufacturing window, and some
models have bills of materials with over 150 parts. (A bill of materials specifies the raw
materials, assemblies, components, parts, and quantities of each needed to manufacture a
final product.) Cannondale must manage more than 1 million of these bills of materials
and more than 200,000 individual parts. Some of these parts come from specialty vendors
with even longer lead times and limited production capacity.

Obviously, managing parts availability in a constantly changing product line

impacted by volatile customer demand requires a great deal of manufacturing flexibility.
Until recently, that flexibility was missing. Cannondale had an antiquated legacy material
requirements planning system for planning production, controlling inventory, and
managing manufacturing processes that could only produce reports on a weekly basis. By
Tuesday afternoon, Monday’s reports were already out of date. The company was forced
to substitute parts in order to meet demand, and sometimes it lost sales. Cannondale
needed a solution that could track the flow of parts more accurately, support its need for
flexibility, and work with its existing business systems, all within a restricted budget.

Cannondale selected the Kinaxis RapidResponse on-demand software service as a

solution. RapidResponse furnishes accurate and detailed supply chain information via an

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Course: Global Economic Information Systems - Nguyễn Kim Hạnh; Semester 1, 2021-2022

Department of International Business

easy-to-use spreadsheet interface, using data supplied automatically from Cannondale’s

existing manufacturing systems. Data from operations at multiple sites are assembled in a
single place for analysis and decision making. Supply chain participants from different
locations are able to model manufacturing and inventory data in “what-if” scenarios to
see the impact of alternative actions across the entire supply chain. Old forecasts can be
compared to new ones, and the system can evaluate the constraints of a new plan.

Cannondale buyers, planners, master schedulers, sourcers, product managers,

customer service, and finance personnel, use RapidResponse for sales reporting,
forecasting, monitoring daily inventory availability, and feeding production schedule
information to Cannondale’s manufacturing and order processing systems. Users are able
to see up-to-date information for all sites. Management uses the system daily to examine
areas where there are backlogs.

The improved supply chain information from RapidResponse enables Cannondale

to respond to customer orders much more rapidly with lower levels of inventory and
safety stock. Cycle times and lead times for producing products have also been reduced.
The company’s dates for promising deliveries are more reliable and accurate.

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Course: Global Economic Information Systems - Nguyễn Kim Hạnh; Semester 1, 2021-2022

Department of International Business

YOU ARE ON FACEBOOK? WATCH OUT!

Facebook is the world’s largest online social network, and increasingly, the
destination of choice for messaging friends, sharing photos and videos, and collecting
“eyeballs” for business advertising and market research. But, watch out! It’s also a great
place for losing your identity or being attacked by malicious software.

How could that be? Facebook has a security team that works hard to counter
threats on that site. It uses up-to-date security technology to protect its Web site. But with
500 million users, it can’t police everyone and everything. And Facebook makes an
extraordinarily tempting target for both mischief-makers and criminals.

Facebook has a huge worldwide user base, an easy-to-use Web site, and a
community of users linked to their friends. Its members are more likely to trust messages
they receive from friends, even if this communication is not legitimate. Perhaps for these
reasons, research from the Kaspersky Labs security firm shows malicious software on
social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace is 10 times more successful at
infecting users than e-mail-based attacks. Moreover, IT security firm Sophos reported on
February 1, 2010, that Facebook poses the greatest security risk of all the social
networking sites.

According to a February 2010 report from Internet security company NetWitness,

Facebook served as the primary delivery method for an 18-month-long hacker attack in
which Facebook users were tricked into revealing their passwords and downloading a
rogue program that steals financial data. A legitimate-looking Facebook e-mail notice
asked users to provide information to help the social network update its login system.
When the user clicked the “update” button in the e-mail, that person was directed to a
bogus Facebook login screen where the user’s name was filled in and that person was
prompted to provide his or her password. Once the user supplied that information, an
“Update Tool,” installed the Zeus “Trojan horse” rogue software program designed to
steal financial and personal data by surreptitiously tracking users’ keystrokes as they

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Course: Global Economic Information Systems - Nguyễn Kim Hạnh; Semester 1, 2021-2022

Department of International Business

enter information into their computers. The hackers, most likely an Eastern European
criminal group, stole as many as 68,000 login credentials from 2,400 companies and
government agencies for online banking, social networking sites, and e-mail.

The Koobface worm targets Microsoft Windows users of Facebook, Twitter, and
other social networking Web sites in order to gather sensitive information from the
victims such as credit card numbers. Koobface was first detected in December 2008. It
spreads by delivering bogus Facebook messages to people who are “friends” of a
Facebook user whose computer has already been infected. Upon receipt, the message
directs the recipients to a third-party Web site, where they are prompted to download
what is purported to be an update of the Adobe Flash player. If they download and
execute the file, Koobface is able to infect their system and use the computer for more
malicious work.

For much of May 2010, Facebook members and their friends were victims of a
spam campaign that tries to e-mail unsolicited advertisements and steal Facebook users’
login credentials. The attack starts with a message containing a link to a bogus Web page
sent by infected users to all of their friends. The message addresses each friend by name
and invites that person to click on a link to “the most hilarious video ever.” The link
transports the user to a rogue Web site mimicking the Facebook login form. When users
try to log in, the page redirects back to a Facebook application page that installs illicit
adware software, which bombards their computers with all sorts of unwanted ads.

Recovering from these attacks is time-consuming and costly, especially for

business firms. A September 2010 study by Panda Security found that one-third of small
and medium businesses it surveyed had been hit by malicious software from social
networks, and more than a third of these suffered more than $5,000 in losses. Of course,
for large businesses, losses from Facebook are much greater.

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