My Database Assignment

Okay, I was once again asked to do an assignment for my IS Management class. I was reading about Databases and decided to the Closing Case Study about Ben and Jerry’s and Bigelow Teas. The questions and answers are as follows:

1. Ben and Jerry’s tracks a wealth of information on each pint of ice cream and frozen yogurt. If you were to design Ben and Jerry’s data warehouse, what dimensions of information would you include? As you develop your list of dimensions, consider every facet of Ben and Jerry’s business operations, from supply chain management to retail store monitoring.

The dimensions of information that I would include are sales of each product, a list of each kind of ice cream and how much they are selling, the sizes that are available and how much is sold of each one, what areas have the best sales for Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, any complaints about any of the ice cream, and how much ice cream is shipped to each location.

2. Databases are the underlying technology that allows Ben and Jerry’s to track ice cream and frozen yogurt information. Based on your knowledge of databases, what sort of tables or files of information would Ben and Jerry’s need in its databases? What would be the primary keys for each of those? What would be the foreign keys among those to create the necessary relationships?

Ben and Jerry’s would need the type of ice cream and frozen yogurts they sell, the order dates, the locations where ice cream and frozen yogurt is going, what products are actually sold, and what do the customers go after the most. The order number would be the primary number for the type of ice cream sold and the order date, the truck number is the primary key for the delivery locations, the customer number would be the primary key for what ice cream is sold and what they go after the most. The order number and the truck number would be foreign keys to help determine the order file to help determine what will be shipped.

3. According to the discussion of Bigelow Teas, part of the success of BusinessObjects comes from its look and feel being similar to Microsoft Excel. Why do you believe this is true? When introducing employees to enterprisewide BI tools such as BusinessObjects, why is it an advantage to have the BI tool look like and work like personal productivity software tools? Why was a similar look and feel to spreadsheet software more important than word processing or presentation software?

When I use a program that is similar to a previous program that I have used, then applying what I know from the previous program to this program is easy, especially if it is a program like Microsoft Excel, where everything feels easy to manage with that program. When anyone is able to use a program that is similar to something they are familiar with and doesn’t have any problems working with it, then it should be easy to function and makes the learning process go faster. Word processing is always easy to use and presentation software is not entirely necessary for the position, so having the same feel to spreadsheet software gets the information on the database faster so all the information on how to improve the company can always be updated.

4. How could Bigelow Teas open up its business intelligence information to its suppliers and resellers? What benefits would Bigelow Teas gain by keeping its suppliers and resellers more informed with business intelligence? What types of business intelligence would Bigelow Teas want to exclude its suppliers and resellers from seeing? Why?

Bigelow Teas could open its business intelligence information to its suppliers and resellers by showing them what products are being sold the most and what to advertise and focus on when customers come into the store. Bigelow Teas would gain better sales by letting their suppliers and resellers know about business intelligence, as well as what products will succeed and what won’t. The type of business intelligence that would be only for Bigelow Teas is your own internal operations because it would not be wise to give that information to others and have them use your strategies against you.

5. Neil Hastie, CIO at TruServe Corporation, once described most decision making in all types of businesses as “a lot of by-guess and by-golly, a lot of by-gut, and a whole lot of paper reports.” That statement is not kind to managers in general or to IT specialists charged with providing the right people with the right technology to make the right decisions. What’s the key to turning Neil’s statement into a positive one? Is it training? It is providing timely information access? Is it providing everyone with a wide assortment of data-mining tools? Other solutions? Perhaps it’s a combination of several answers?

The key to turning Neil’s statement into a positive one is by training, providing timely information access, and making sure all statistics are accounted for. With all of these elements put together, the key can be turned, and the decisions made can be beneficial for the company, and the company can succeed.

Once again, let me know of anything that seems incorrect with the following questions I just answered. I am open to improvement.

As well, I just found out this morning that Paramount and DreamsWorks both switched over to Blu-Ray. Now all the major movie industries will be producing in Blu-Ray.