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An Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) is a data model that illustrates the relationships between entities within an IT system. Such entities could include people, objects, places, concepts or events, and along with each entity comes its own respective attributes including, but not limited to, name/ID, address, phone, etc. Within an ERD, each entity would receive its own box with the entity title listed at the top followed by each of its respective attributes. ERDs allow for a simple means of visualizing specifically how each entity within a system interacts with other entities. For example, an entity might have an arrow line connecting it to another entity in the diagram with a verb or descriptive phrase that describes the relationship between the two entities. The line can also be drawn to indicate a one to one or one to many relationship. We can use ERDs to help us create, improve, or fix databases.

A swimlane diagram, or just a “swimlane,” is essentially just a flowchart that visually distinguishes the sub processes and responsibilities undertaken by each actor within a business process. What distinguishes swimlanes from other flowcharts is that subprocesses and decisions are placed in separate lanes, hence the name swimlane diagram. Each separate lane distinguishes each person, group, or subprocess within a general business process. Each lane is labeled with the title of its respective actor. Swimlanes are most useful when diagramming a business process that involves more than one department within the business. They are used to clarify each of the steps within a process, who is responsible for each step, and how mistakes and or delays are most likely to occur. Swimlanes are used mainly for organizing the activities within a process into an easy to understand visual display. They serve to increase the productivity of an organization by making sure all actors are precisely aware of their responsibilities within a business process. 

The term MIS stands for Management Information Systems. Management Information Systems are used for decision making within an organization by way of coordinating, controlling, analyzing, and visualizing information within the organization. MIS involves the people, processes, and technology that provide managers with timely and appropriate information allowing them to make effective decisions within a shorter period of time. The main goal of MIS within an organization is to increase the value and profits of the business. Considering the rapid advancement of technology as well as the increasing propensity for business processes to become streamlined and automated as we enter the age of automation, management information systems are becoming increasingly more relevant to the world of business and technology. In recent years, tech has been disrupting nearly every industry. No matter what company or corporation you work for, there is a very high chance that management information systems play an integral role in fulfilling processes within that organization.

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is a way for businesses to keep track of their customer data and interactions with them. The purpose of a CRM is to understand customers of a business or company and allow easy communication between the two. This is important for businesses because having a strong relationship with your customer base and knowing what your customer base is allows for a stronger company. Knowing your customers can allow for you to be able to service them more efficiently and effectively. 

The people that use CRMs are companies and organizations that want to know more, strategically, about their customer base. They look through data of customers they have and future potential customers to be able to know what products or services to sell. CRMs are also useful for interacting with customers by sending email campaigns, sharing websites, or through mobile marketing and advertising. But usually it is the company itself that is using the CRM technology to be able to find what customers to interact with. 

ERPs and CRMs were the main focus of our class last week. ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. ERPs are integrated systems that manage business processes. ERPs allow businesses to have one system that stores all of their data instead of multiple systems that store their data separately. It helps to consolidate data and make business processes move with more efficiency.

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. CRMs allow businesses to store data about their consumers, making it easier to improve customer relationships. The people who use CRMs are those who work in sales and marketing, HR, accounting, and strategy. The people who need insight on consumers are the people who need CRMs. 

Both ERPs and CRMs store data in order to increase profits. In addition to similarities, ERPs and CRMs have some distinct differences. ERPs have an internal focus whereas CRMs have an external focus. ERPs help business processes move faster by having all data in one system. CRMs are used in order to improve external relationships that businesses have with their consumers. 

(Week 5): What is the purpose of an ERP?

Enterprise Resource Planning allows for there to be one centralized system of data in a company or entity. Having everything centralized allows for much higher efficiency and productivity in the long run. For example if each sector in a business had its own separate system, then it would be very complicated to perform tasks across multiple sectors of the business. Having all the data of all the sectors of the business in one centralized system allows for various tasks to be done much more efficiently.

 

(Week 5 since week 6 questions do not show up): What is the purpose of a CRM?

Customer Relationship Management is like an ERP in that it is a centralized system that stores data for all sectors except it is for the customer side of the business. ERP is the internal system and CRM is the external system. CRM is very important because a business can store all the data from its customers into the system to allow for a much better purchasing experience for the customers.

Week 5 Questions

-What is the purpose of ERP?
ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. It refers to a type of software that organizations use to manage day-to-day business activities such as accounting, project management, risk management, supply chain operations, etc.

-What is the purpose of CRM?
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is a technology for managing all of a company’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers.

Week 7 ( Week 6 won’t work when I try opening it…)

-What is a network effect and what are some examples?
A network effect is a phenomenon where increased numbers of people or participants improve the value of a good or service. Some examples would be: E-commerce, Ticket Exchange, Rideshare, etc.

-What are the differences between SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS?
SaaS is a software that’s available via a third party over the internet.
PaaS is hardware and software tools available over the internet.
IaaS is cloud-based services, pay as-you-go for services such as storage, networking, and virtualization.

A digital identity is defined as the body of information about an individual that exists online. They are used by computer systems to represent an external agent (i.e: a person, device, organization, or application). Unique patterns and identifiers make it possible to detect individuals and/or their devices. Many online services use digital identity to prove it’s you and give you access to services. 

An individual’s digital identity is an electronic file that contains pertinent personal identifiable information. This information may include their social security number, their birthday, passport number, home address, contact information, etc.  Digital identity systems work efficiently to ensure security of personal data and standard practices.

Having a digital identity is important because  is unlocks various essential services to individuals. Digital identity programs help ensure equal access to those services. 

 

An Entity Relationship Diagram, ERD, is a flowchart that demonstrates how entities (i.e: people, concepts, or objects) relate to one another within a system. ERDs may be used to model relationship data bases, in terms of business rules. ERDs are oftentimes the first initial step in determining the requirements of an information systems project. They are used to analyze existing databases, in order to resolves issues. By creating an ERD, the diagram is able to determine where an issue is occurring. ERD help in analyzing databases and modeling new data bases. 

ERDs are made up of entities, relationships, and attributes. Entities may be a person, object, event, or concept– nouns, relationships are how entities are associated with one another, and attributes are characteristics of the entities.

Week 3.

1.) An ERD (Entity-Relationship Diagram) is a visual representation of different data using conventions that describe how these data are related to each other.
2.) The two notations for ERD’s are Chen and Crow’s Foot.
3.) Entity is a rectangle; Noun. Attribute is a circle; Adjective/characteristic. Relationship is a triangle; Verb.
4.) Crow’s foot uses rectangles and lines. The rectangles have the entity at the top and the attributes underneath. It’s called crow’s foot because the lines can look like crow’s feet if needed; there are 3 different types of lines(relationships). 1:1= a one-to-one relationship. 1:m=a one-to-many relationship. m:m= a many-to-many relationship.
5.) Relationship; verb is written with an arrow. Entity listed at the top. Attributes listed underneath.
6.) Salesforce is a software company that provides customer relationship management software and applications that provides customer service, marketing automation, analytics, and application development.
7.) A Dynamic Dashboard is a type of data dashboard that updates automatically in real-time.
8.) The types of cardinality are one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many. They are used to describe the relationship between two entities or objects.

Week 4.

1.) A digital identity is the body of information about an individual, organization or electronic device that exists online. For example, photos you’ve posted to social media, certain online shopping information, search engine history, etc. What can you do to manage your identity? Don’t post anything that could potentially ruin your chances of getting a job or ruin your reputation entirely.
2.) It’s good to have a good digital identity because almost everything nowadays is electronic, so almost every job recruiter is going to search your name on the internet to see what they can find about you; which could be good or bad.
3.) The MIS community platform is a student professional development and learning management system that fundamentally transforms how students, alumni, faculty, staff, and industry partners interact.
4.) The purpose to building an e-portfolio is to provide an opportunity to reflect on yourself and your work.