Final Exam ADM1370 
Part 1: M/C and T/F 
- 75 Questions (75 Marks) 
- 60 minutes 
- 25 questions from each section 
- Similar to quizzes 
Part 2: Short Answer 
- 6 short answer questions 
- 2 questions per section 
- 30 marks 
- lecture notes and class discussions 
Wiki: 
• course pack units 1, 2 and 3 
• not on technical part of wikis 
Excel: 
• course pack all units 
• short answer will test:  
− theoretical concepts 
− types of business intelligence dashboards 
You may be tested on your familiarity with concepts such as: 
− Purpose   of creating Excel tables 
− Difference between conditional and logical functions 
− Difference between structured, absolute and relative references 
− Purpose of decision analysis / what-if analysis tools such as Data Tables, Goal Seek, and  
Solver 
While you are required to know the purpose of various Excel features and functions that were  
discussed in class, you will not be asked to recall parameters for functions or their order: 
− For example, you should know that VLOOKUP allows you to search for values in a table that  
correspond to a lookup value, you will not be asked to write the function or specify what  
parameters are required. 
Access: 
• course pack: the first chapter only “Data, Text, and Document Management” 
• all slides 
• Students won’t be tested on technical aspects of MS Access such as those from the lab  
assignment. 
Wiki 
- Information technology tools to support operational, tactical and strategic level processes and decision making in  
an organization 
- What is an Information System?  
 Provides accurate, timely and useful information (all elements must be present to work together). 
 An Information System consists of FIVE PARTS, including:  
 People, Procedures, Software, Hardware, and Data 
- IT = hardware + software + data 
- You cannot buy IS, only IT. 
- IS aid the decision making process: 
 Improve productivity 
 Monitor Organizational Performance 
 Planning and Decision-Making 
 Enhance Competitive Advantage 
- Data: symbols , raw facts, must be “put together” in order to form information 
- Information: data that are processed to be useful; provides answers to "who", "what", "where", and "when" questions 
- Knowledge: application of data and information; answers "how" questions 
- Understanding: appreciation of "why" 
- Wisdom: evaluated understanding.  
- Three core activities of information systems: 
 Input: Captures raw data from organization or external environment 
 Processing: Converts raw data into meaningful form 
 Output: Transfers processed information to people or activities that use it 
- E-business involves:  
 Consumers  
 Producers 
 Information 
 Connectivity 
- Education in IS is a crucial skill that management must have now a days. Socialnomics is proof, that a new era has  
begun with all the available technology at fingertips end for a user. A good IS education is comprehensive across the  
skills listed below. 
Robert Reich created this concept (listed from top to bottom of triangle scheme): 
i. Abstract Reasoning Skils: The ability to analyze information, detect patterns and relationships,  
and solve problems on a complex and intangible level. 
i. Systems Thinking Skills: Understanding how things, regarded as systems, influence one another  
within a whole. 
i. Collaboration Skills: Specific ways in which students are expected to behave in order to achieve  
class norms. It is often associated with effective interactions and team work. 
i. Experimentation Skills: The ability to effectively discover something unknown or to test a  
principle, hypothesis, etc. 
- Business process involves MANNER, FLOW and COORDINATION 
- Innovative Connectivity 
 Social media tools connect people to processes and information  
 Apps are simply the means of doing that to help prevent information indigestion  
 It accelerates the data to information cycle to make information acquisition more efficient 
 Business processes gain new perspectives   
Exam Question: Gives a company and pitches situation of invention. How did it change nature of business to become more  
sustainable? Why did it give them an advantage? What was the game changer?  
- Digitalization: the replacement of physical tasks by digital means 
- Digital Goods: Goods that can be delivered over a digital network 
- Competitive advantage – a product or service that an organization’s customers place a greater value on than  
similar offerings from a competitor 
- First-mover advantage – occurs when an organization can significantly impact its market share by being first to  
market with a competitive advantage 
- Porter’s Five Forces = suppliers, buyers, threat of new entrants, rivalry of existing competitors, and substitutes 
- Three strategies for generating revenue from Web 2.0 applications: 
 Advertising 
 Subscriptions 
 Commissions  
- Wiki:  a website/online resource which allows users to add and edit content collectively.  (A collaboration tool) 
Globalization:  
• Globalization 1.0 (1492 to 1800) 
o Globalization focused on countries 
• Globalization 2.0 (1800 to 2000) 
o Globalization 2.0 focused on companies (searching labor and marketing) 
• Globalization 3.0 (2000 to present) 
o Globalization 3.0 focused on groups and individuals (globalizing themselves with others around the world) 
o Worldwide Communication 
o Worldwide collaboration without barriers 
10 Flatteners By Friedman: 
- 1. Fall of the Berlin Wall 
o After the end of the Cold War, this allowed people from other side of the wall to join the economic  
mainstream. 
- 2. Netscape goes public 
o Netscape and the Web broadened the audience for the internet from its roots as a communications  
medium for anyone.  The digitization that took place meant that everyday occurrences such as words,  
files, films, music and pictures would be accessed and manipulated on a computer screen by all  
people across the world.  
- 3. Development of workflow software 
o The ability of machines to talk to other machines with no humans involved.  
- 4. Uploading/ Open Sourcing 
o Communities uploading and collaborating on online projects.  
o Ex: Wikipedia 
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- 5. Outsourcing 
o Outsourcing has allowed companies to split service and manufacturing activities into components  
which can subcontracted and performed in the most efficient, cost-effective way. Process became  
easier with the mass distribution of fiber optic cables during the introduction of the World Wide Web. 
- 6. Offshoring 
o The internal relocation of a company's manufacturing or other processes to a foreign land to take  
advantage of less costly operations there. China's entrance into the World Trade Organization  
allowed for greater competition in the playing field. Other countries like Brazil must now compete  
against China to have businesses offshore to them. 
- 7. Supply Chaining 
o Friedman compares the modern retail supply chain to a river, and points to Wal-Mart as the best  
example of a company using technology to streamline item sales, distribution, and shipping.  
- 8. In-Sourcing 
o Friedman uses UPS as a prime example for insourcing, in which the company's employees perform  
services – beyond shipping – for another company. For example, UPS repairs Toshiba computers on  
behalf of Toshiba. The work is done at the UPS hub, by UPS employees. 
- 9. In-Forming 
o Individual's ability to build and deploy your own supply chain of information, knowledge and  
entertainment 
o Self-empowering; empowering individuals to do what they think best with the information they want. 
o The opportunity for people to have private, semiprivate, or public gatherings on the Internet  
regardless of geography and time 
o EX: Search Engines, RSS Feed  
- 10. The Steroids 
o Wireless, Voice over Internet, and file sharing.  
o The new technologies that are amplifying and turbo-charging all other flatteners.  
o EX: Computing speed and capacity, Instant messaging, Videoconferencing, Computer graphics,  
Wireless technologies and devices, mobile phones, personal devices 
o Keywords: digital, mobile, personal, virtual. 
o What were the three specific examples of Digital Steroids cited by Friedman?   
o 1: Computing Speed / Storage / Portability ; 
o 2: Peer-to-Peer Features (IM, File Sharing);  
o 3: Voice over IP (e.g. Skype) 
- RSS (Really Simple Syndication): standardized data format used to publish frequently updated content such as blog  
entries and news headlines 
 Website material is made available to end users or other sites through web feeds. 
 Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it.  
 Revolutionary because it has the ability to deliver granular news on demand. 
WEB 2.0 Concepts: 
- Definition of Web 2.0: a second generation in the development of the World Wide Web, conceived as  
a combination of concepts, trends, and technologies that focus on user collaboration, sharing of user- 
generated content, and social networking. 
o Examples: Social Networking Sites, Video Sharing Sites, WIKIS, Blogs 
o Mash-ups and API's (Application Programming Interfaces) 
- Attributes: 
o The ability to tap into the collective intelligence of users Data is made available in new or never-intended  
way.  
o Relies on user-generated and user controlled content and data. 
o Lightweight programming techniques and tools let nearly anyone act as a website developer 
o The virtual elimination of software-upgrade cycles make everything (continuous) a perpetual beta or work-in- 
progress. Applications can be designed quickly to meet changing needs. 
- Take note: 
o Rapid and continuous creation of new business models. 
o Major emphasis on social networks and computing. 
o Users can access applications entirely through a browser. 
o Information sharing and collaborating is highly encouraged. Same for adding value to the application the  
user uses.  
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- Social Media:  is a group of mobile and web-based applications (Listed below)  that build on the ideological and  
technological foundations of Web 2.0 (widgets, Mashups, Syndication, API's) , and that allow individuals and  
communities to share, co-create, discuss and modify user-generated content. 
 Social Networks: Facebook, LinkedIn 
 Blogs: Tumblr 
 Microblogs: Twitter 
 Multimedia Sharing: Youtube 
- API (Application Programming Interface):  specifies a software component in terms of its operations, their inputs  
and outputs and underlying types. Its main purpose is to define a set of functionalities that are independent of their  
respective implementation, allowing both definition and implementation to vary without compromising each other. 
- Widgets: Are standalone programs that can be embedded into web pages, blogs, profiles on social networking sites,  
and common desktops. A small application with limited functionality that can be used within a web page/mobile web.  
- Syndication: Uses standardized protocols to permit end users to make use of a site's data in another context (such  
as another web site, a browser plug in or separate desktop application.) 
- Mash Ups: A web application that combines data or functionality from more than one source into a single integrated  
interface or tool: 
o applications generated by combining content, presentation, or application functionality from disparate  
sources. 
o Revolutionary because of their ability to combine content to form new content. 
- Web 2.0 is often called “the social web” 
- Many consider it an extension of the old web, not necessarily something new.  
- Web 2.0 Applications:  
 Blog: Content marketing, where info is shared to users 
 Wikis: many people can edit and update a site, contributions run it.  
 Social networking services: defined by a profile (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)  
 Sharing Sites: upload and share various media (YouTube) 
 Widgets and Mash-ups: stand-alone add-ons 
 RSS (really simple syndication): feed to allow users to view updates in real time. 
 Social Bookmarking: Tracking sites that show favourite and most visited 
 AJAX Technologies: respond to users’ actions without the whole page reloading (HTML, XML, CSS, Java) 
 Social Media: Collectively all these apps are social media, because control has shifted from organizations  
to the users individually.  
- Businesses have been integrating technologies in order to raise revenues; they risk irrelevancy if they don’t  
participate.  
- Online communities have formed: interacting, collaborating and trading 
 Associations, Ethnic communities, Gender communities, Affinity portals (organized by interest), Young  
People, B2B online (technology blogs and meetings and webcasts), Social networking sites (the mega  
communities) 
- Social networking analysis has begun to build relationships with consumers as they use the tech. 
- Facebook remains the most used SNS (social networking service) 
Social Media Metric (4) : 
- You cannot manage what you do not measure. 
- Management depends on data-driven measurements, or metrics, to see the effectiveness of their  
activities.  
- Metrics:   evaluating the use and patterns of social media. 
- We measure social media to identify key methods of measuring the effectiveness of social media  
efforts, but acknowledge that there are many variations on what we decide. 
o Managers are kept informed by using performance dashboard to summarize the effectiveness of  
activity and progress toward goals. 
o This data is continuously fed into dashboards. 
- Businesses develop media objectives around various models called response hierarchies. 
- Stages: 
o Awareness 
o Knowledge  
o Liking  
o Preference 
o Purchase 
- Advertisers set measurable objectives for each stage. 
Tool Based Metrics 
- are metrics a company uses to determine what a company is trying to achieve. 
o Tool Based metrics are designed to identify information about a specific application. (Web 2.0) 
Tactical Metrics 
- Another way for organizations to select appropriate metrics is based on tactical objectives. (goals) 
- Ex: 
o Increase traffic on website by 10% 
o Increase the number of profiles created on website by 25%. 
- Using tactical metrics of this nature, they can determine the relative impact that each of these  
specific media activities is having on their tactical objectives. 
Strategic Metrics 
- Aim to fully capture the potential of social media than what is described by focusing on a specific  
Web 2.0 tool or tactical objectives. 
o 1. Listening: pay attention to what customers are saying online. 
o 2. Talking: Engage in conversations with your customer. 
o 3. Energizing: encouraging customers and fans to spread the word through ratings, reviews and  
positive "buzz". 
o 4. Support: help customers solve problems with online resources and information. 
o 5. Embracing: Embrace innovation by inviting customers to share their ideas for products and  
services.  
- Organizations who seek to optimize their performance in ALL 5 areas will identify and implement  
social media tactics as well as track related metrics to evaluate their progress. 
o Social Media monitoring services are purchasable. 
o I.E.: Calculate how many posts were posted on their forums. 
- Example: 
o United Break Guitars. 
o Dave Taylor has his guitar get trashed purposely by United American Airlines. They poorly handled  
the situation. 
o Solution is to develop strategic, and tactical metrics to avoid problems like these. 
Return On Investment Metrics(ROI) 
- This approach attempts to monetize the return on the cost of implementing social media   
strategies. 
o Very appealing because it addresses the need of the businesses organizations to engage in  
activities that will contribute to revenue goals. 
o Example of ROI for social media: 
 If an online retailer can increase traffic to its website by publishing a blog, then the company can  
track how many of these customers ultimately make a purchase offer reading the blog. 
- Crowd sourcing: asking users what they want, and what they are demanding. One challenge can be getting the right answer and  
valid information. A lot of people that answer won’t even know what you’re asking 
 You need a strategy and clear boundaries 
 Opens the potential for unethical labour (crowdsource your wiki and pay them to write your wiki) 
 Privacy becomes an issue too 
Enterprise 
- Enterprise 2.0 refers to Web 2.0 technologies used for some business purpose:  
 Promote collaboration and knowledge exchange among employees, consultants and company partners  
- Philosophic Foundations of Enterprise 2.0 
- Organizations had communicated with their audiences using a broadcast model (old model): 
 messages flowed from sender to receiver.   
- Newer model   is the conversation model: 
 where communication flows back and forth between sender and receiver.  
- Business use of Web 2.0 technologies: 
 Recruiting and professional networking 
 Marketing, promotion, and sales 
 Internal collaboration and communication 
 Supply chain management 2.0 
- Enterprise 2.0 Tools:   
 Social media use in businesses is exponentially increasing 
 Used for: 
 recruiting and professional networking; 
 Marketing, promotion and sales; 
 Internal collaboration and communication and 
 Supply chain management 
-  Social Media Objectives and Metrics: 
 Metrics: evaluating the use and patterns of social media. 
 Response hierarchies are used to enhance: awareness, knowledge, liking, preference and purchase 
Characteristics of Web 3.0: 
- Main benefit of web 3.0: allows us to track information because of tags on the information 
- Some of the barriers are coming around data. As more and more data is collected, how do we decide to bundle the data and tag it.  
It becomes hard to organize. 
• Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS) 
•  where 
 3C = Content, Commerce, Community  
 4th C = Context: 
 defines the intent of the user; for example, trying to purchase music, find a job, or share memories with friends  
and family. 
 P = Personalization: 
 refers to the user’s personal characteristics that impact how relevant 
 VS = Vertical Search: 
 refers to a search strategy that focuses on finding information in a particular content area, such as travel, finance,  
legal, and medical.  
- Social capital: the advantage created by a person's location in a structure of relationships. It explains how some people gain more  
success in a particular setting through their superior connections to other people.  
- Social Network Analysis (SNA) is the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations,  
computers, or other information or knowledge processing entities  
 Aggregator, geographical, industry, topical 
Excel 
Why Learn Excel? 
• most popular spreadsheet tool today. 
• true “killer app” by many experts. 
• using Excel at work, and possibly at home. 
• used for simple data management and problem-solving, as well as complex decision making. 
• used to cultivate  
• Critical Thinking and Decision Making Skills 
• used to enter, analyze, and present (quantitative) data 
• automatic calculation functions 
• presentation tools 
• enhance the presentation and facilitate sorting and filtering of data in the ranges. 
Four skills for a job: 
- abstract reasoning skills 
- system thinking skills (Excel) 
- collaboration skills (Excel) (WIKI) 
- experimentation skills (excel) (WIKI) 
The purpose of Microsoft Excel ( a computer program)is to enter, analyze, and present (quantitative) data into an electronic  
spreadsheet program.  
Excel: 
- a computerized spreadsheet application used to build and manipulate worksheets and workbooks 
- An electronic spreadsheet program such as excel aids a multitude of problem-solving and decision-making processes  
through providing: 
1. Data management features. 
2. Automatic Calculation Functions 
3. Presentation Tools. 
4. Decision analysis functions. 
- An electronic spreadsheet like MS Excel allows for quicker, more accurate changes than were possible with a manual  
ledger.  
Worksheet: a spreadsheet that may contain data including text, numbers, formulas, charts etc. Sometimes a charts based  
worksheet is referred to as a “Chartsheet” 
Workbook: a collection of related worksheets within one file 
File Tab: Consists of file operations commands such as opening, closing, saving, printing, and sharing files. 
Tabs  Ribbon: Each tab corresponds to sets of features displayed horizontally as a ribbon. A ribbon consists of groupings,  
and controls. Tabs are designed to be task-oriented and consist of several logical groupings of controls that perform similar  
functions. 
Quick Access Toolbar: Contains controls / commands that are most commonly used. Additional controls can be added  
through Excel Options settings through the Office Button. 
Select All button: used to select all elements of the worksheet 
Status Bar: Displays information about a selected command or operation in progress. Also displays basic summary  
information about a selected range of values. 
Range: Can consist of contiguous (together) or non-contiguous (not together) cells 
- A formula is an expression that returns a value through performing operations on literal values specified in the  
formula itself or referenced values from other cells 
o The most commonly used operators are arithmetic operators  
- Using VLOOKUP:  
o For Closest Matches: e.g. mapping numerical marks to letter grades 
o For Exact Matches: e.g. mapping salary levels to employee categories 
- =AVERAGE(number1,number2,..) Excel sums the values in the range and then divides by the number of non-blank  
cells in the range 
- =STDEV(number1,number2,..) 
- =MAX(number1,number2,..) 
- =MEDIAN(number1,number2,..) 
- =PEARSON(number1,number2,..) Pearson correlation coefficient 
- =COUNT(range) Counts the number of cells that contains numbers 
- =COUNTA(range) Counts the number of cells that are not empty. Both numeric and text entries are included 
- =COUNTBLANK(range) Counts the number of empty cells 
- =COUNTIF(range,criteria) Counts the number of cells within a range that meets the condition. Will try this one in  
detail in upcoming lab sessions. 
- Grouping: organizing data so that it can be viewed as a collapsible and expandable outline.  
- Formulation: Transformation of a real problem scenario into a mathematical model 
- Solution: Solving the model to obtain the optimal solution 
- Interpretation: Analyzing results and implementing solution 
FV(rate,nper,pmt,pv,type) 
- Rate: Interest rate per period – e.g. 8 percent annual interest rate 
- Nper: Total # of payment periods in an annuity  
- Pmt : Payment made each period. Cannot change over the life of the annuity  
- Pv: (optional) present value or the lump-sum amount that a series of future payments is worth right now 
- Type: (optional) the number 0 or 1 indicates when payments are due. If type is omitted, it is assumed to be 0 (end of