Information Systems and Technology, Company Profiles

---Management Information Systems

Company Name(s) Associated Article

Office Depot The Next Wave by Malcolm Wheatley, CIO. Extensive coverage of Office Depot's sophisticated inventory management system and the benefits its has produced for the company and its customers.

Question: Through its inventory management system, Office Depot tries to prevent products from being out of stock while still minimizing their inventory. How does the company pursue this objective?

Grand Circle Travel Working Smart by Megan Santosus, CIO. "When Grand Circle Travel let marketers get their own data, sales went up, costs went down and IS had time for other projects."

Question: What major change did the IS (Information Systems) Group make in their relationship with the marketing department and what were the results?

Cendant:
...NetMarke t
...AutoVantage
...Rent.Net
...
United Healthcare
Charles Schwab
AMR
Knight Ridder
Wal-Mart or Western Union? by Jeffrey Young and Julie Pitta, Forbes. Each of the five companies on the left has made major investments in information systems to further their businesses.

Note: One of the Web sites (NetMarket) for the first company in the article, CUC International, is now part of the Cendant Company. Some of the other Cendant sites are also listed to the left.

---Advanced and Future Technologies

The links below will take you directly to those sections of the company Web sites covering technologies that could have a significant impact on the business world. Emphasis has been placed on companies with some involvement in computers, information or communication technology.

Activity: Pick a technology from one of the sites that interests you and learn more about it in other locations on the Web. For example, you could select a search engine such as the one in Yahoo! and type "nanotechnology" to locate sites that cover it. Then, write up a summary of the impact the technology will have on the business world.

Texas Instruments This Web page provides a well-written summary of the impact of digital technologies on business and society.

IBM
Examples of technologies: nanotechnology (manipulation of matter and data at very small, even atomic, levels); storing data in new ways, such as high-density hard drives and holographic storage; larger, high-resolution computer monitors.

Xerox
Examples of technologies: smart matter ("Imagine how different the world would be if matter were programmable, so that fundamental properties such as shape, stiffness, color, reflectivity of light and sound, and even load-bearing strength could be dynamically adjusted on demand."); natural language interfaces, such as speaking or typing requests to your computer in plain english.

Sun Microsystems
Examples of technologies: conceptual indexing (conducting a search based on a concept instead of just the words – ex. finding articles that cover the subject of product quality rather than articles that contain the words, "product quality.").

United Technologies
Examples of technologies: diagnostic algorithms (software models and designs) for anticipating and preventing product failures, improved communication designs for the Web or company networks that remove bottlenecks and slowdowns.

Rockwell
Examples of technologies: graphical programming to enable novice programmers to more easily develop and debug software, human computer interfaces for virtual reality, 3-D audio and speech recognition.

Hewlett-Packard
Examples of technologies: ultra-portable computing, secure electronic commerce and fiber-optic telecommunications.

Dell
Examples of technologies: Gigabit Ethernet (to dramatically increase the speed of the Internet), new computer designs to improve the speed of communications from one part of the computer to another, such as how fast video images can be displayed on the screen.

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Company Name(s)	Associated Article
Office Depot	The Next Wave by Malcolm Wheatley, CIO. Extensive coverage of Office Depot's sophisticated inventory management system and the benefits its has produced for the company and its customers. Question: Through its inventory management system, Office Depot tries to prevent products from being out of stock while still minimizing their inventory. How does the company pursue this objective?

Grand Circle Travel	Working Smart by Megan Santosus, CIO. "When Grand Circle Travel let marketers get their own data, sales went up, costs went down and IS had time for other projects." Question: What major change did the IS (Information Systems) Group make in their relationship with the marketing department and what were the results?

Cendant: ...NetMarke t ...AutoVantage ...Rent.Net ... United Healthcare Charles Schwab AMR Knight Ridder	Wal-Mart or Western Union? by Jeffrey Young and Julie Pitta, Forbes. Each of the five companies on the left has made major investments in information systems to further their businesses. Note: One of the Web sites (NetMarket) for the first company in the article, CUC International, is now part of the Cendant Company. Some of the other Cendant sites are also listed to the left.