MIS Individual Project
Question 1
A business may be interested in location based mobile networking so as to reach its target market. Location based mobile networking allows the business management to access the location most visited by its clients. The management therefore directs marketing efforts to those locations as opposed to randomly advertising. This saves marketing costs for the business while increasing the businesses ability to reach all its customers.
Question 2
The development of mobile phone technology has set the stage for the growth and success of sense networks and their products.
This is even more so with the continued development of iphones, blackberries and smartphones in general, that can support more advanced mobile technologies.
Question 3
The privacy risks surrounding citysense are not significant. Citysense does not share ones location and neither does it ask for personal information. There are no logins, passwords or phone number. Any historical data created within the system belongs to the users and can be deleted every 24hours or he entire history.
I would join citysense because it makes networking easy. The system shows one the most popular places based on real-time data, therefore eliminating the need to search.
Question 4
From the airlines perspective the support system is working well. This is because a support system is meant to reduce the decision-making time so as to speed up business processes. The support system is doing just that. The support system is solving the airlines’ dilemma of how to fill a airplane seats including those booked by passengers who never show up.
This therefore is increasing profits and cutting on losses for the airlines. From the passengers’ perspective the support system is not working well as rebooking them is very hard and it may sometimes take days for them to get a flight going to the same destination if they are bumped.
Question 5
Although the aim is usually to reduce loss due to empty seats, sometime overbooking results in the need to compensate by way of free flight vouchers of up to $400 in value. This causes unnecessary spending on the part of the airline which reduces savings.
Bumping has also resulted in loss of goodwill by fliers as nowadays they refuse to take free vouchers or be bumped as the wait for the next flight might take days.
Question 6
Input processes are input of data of reserved seats and statistics of no-shows. Output processes are predicting no-shows and over-booking flights.
Question 7
People reserve seats on flights and never show up. The airlines like any for-profit organization aim to maximize its profits and minimize its losses. The airlines therefore have no second thought about adopting a DSS to solve this problem.
However due to the complex computer models used to predict no-shows and to overbook flights they sometime pass the set target.
Question 8
It is a people problem because if people reserved seats and actually showed up for the flights then the airline would not have to adopt overbooking as a strategy to reduce losses due to no-shows
References
Bumped Fliers and No Plan B. (2007). New York Times. Retrieved August 16, 2010, from http://www. nytimes. com/2007/05/30/business/30bump. html? pagewanted=2&_r=1
