Three of the biggest outsourcers–Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, and Wipro are starting to see a decrease in revenue. This is affecting their business and these three companies are blaming it on the global economic conditions. After the ending period of June, outsourcers companies like Tata, Infosys, and Wipro will have spend more on outsources compare to previous quarter. Record shows that in 2008, “global spending on outsourcing is on track to break records — with Europe forging the biggest contracts.”

Infosys is being deceive about outsourcing because Infosys realize the company revenue is decreasing. Even thought there are a lot of money spent on outsourcing, Infosys, Wipro, and Tata has benefit enormously from it, including rise the profit.

I understand that many companies outsource because it’s about making products cheaper and affordable. But what they don’t think about is how it is effect the economic.

Health, Nick. (July 21, 2008). “India’s Outsource Giants Feeling the Pinch”. Retrieved November 11, 2009, BusinessWeek.
Website: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2008/gb20080721_758508.htm

Large Hadron Collider is experiencing impossible management situation. Krisztina Holly is a business leader and has to manage about 7,000 scientists from 85 countries around the world. A side from that she has to deal with the scientists’ languages, cultures, and expertise. Also she has no control over the salaries. This situation seems to be difficult to manage because of different sources from separate location.

However this is possible to manage, either big or small. Large Hadron Collider is handle by CERN, which is a European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland. The work behind it is enormous: “a 27-km-long circular tunnel and four enormous detectors, buried 100 meters underground. One of the four experiments, called ATLAS, weighs as much as the Eiffel Tower, has about 20 million components, uses 3000 km of cables and 1000 km of piping, and requires some 5 million lines of computing code to run.” With all this technology and device running there is no CEO or president to oversee this. Money is control by spokesperson and resource coordinator that tracks the salaries.

This article reminds me of when Fresno State was switching to a new phone system and everything has to be replaced and adjust. All the staffs and faculties had no working phone for nearly a week, but happen. Behind the scene, the phone system is an enormous machines that connection to all the phones on campus. It was interesting to see the work in process of switching over to a new system.

Holly, Krisztina. (May 20, 2009). “CERN’s Collaborative Management Model”. Retrieved November 5, 2009, BusinessWeek.
Website: http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/may2009/id20090520_115971.htm

The history indicated that M&A deals when the downturns are starting to show good result. The Boston Consulting has analyze nearly 400,000 deals between the years of 1981 and 2008, which the finding was stated, “downturn deals create 14.5% more value for shareholders of the acquirer.” It is a high chance that there will be a return of 50% or more. This is great news for the Pepsi Company, but they will need information technology integrations for support. There is a statement from the Pepsi Company, “PepsiCo’s $7.8 billion acquisition of its anchor bottling operations, announced in August, is a prime example of a company changing its business model in an effort to get more efficient and better serve customers. How? If done correctly, the acquisition will eliminate redundant support functions and streamline sales, marketing and supply chain operations.”

In order to make everything possible, there was a guiding principles that must be follow for outcome to be successful: make sure the higher up executive support the ideas, have trading partner be included early in the process, “create an overall program management office for full integration”.

The strategic seem to be very useful. It was a good thing that they planned everything early to insure a long term business that could last. PepsiCo is organized and achieve their goals. It’s possible to become successful when everything is done correctly and early.

Milde, Jim. (15 October 2009). CIOs: Take the “Pepsi Challenge”. Retrieved October 15, 2009, Fortune Magaizine.

Website: http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/10/16/cios-take-the-pepsi-challenge/

Cell phones has developed and changed so much over the years. It is a technology device for many purposes. However, more importantly in the developing countries, cell phone has become more than just a portable wireless phone. It is a technology device use to help advance health care. “Cell phones increasingly are used to respond to disease outbreaks, educate the local populace about illnesses, and remind patients to take their medications.”

In order to make it possible the governments, foundations, non-profit organizations, and private companies are willing to provide people in the developing countries cell phones. This way, people who lives in small villages or are out of reach from a hospital can access the cell phone and get help service available.

Dimagi is for-profit companies that helps developing world’s health crises and find ways to make it cheap “without basic infrastructure like hospitals or roads.” The Dimagi Company is looking for alternative to make profit for the company and at the same time do goods things to the countries in need.

I thought this was an informative article. It was interesting to learn that in developing countries cell phone is the health care cure for people. When I think about it, cell phone is the most helpful to use because people can be reach directly and calls can be made anywhere around the world. Beside it is the cheapies way to go since telephone are difficult and expensive to construct in the developing countries.

Shambora, Jessica. (30 December 2008). The health-care cure: Your cell phone. Retrieved October 12, 2009, Fortune Magazine.

Website: http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/26/technology/mobile_health.fortune/index.htm

ATM was invented for customers to withdrew money from their bank account without the complication of waiting in line. Web check-in was created for people to check in to the airport faster and easier without the trouble of waiting for an early flight.

Overall these machines are developed to make the process move quicker and provide easy access. Then what about the unpleasant procedure of checking in to a hospital? Checking in to hospital is a long wait, difficult, inconsistency and patient’s medical information are sometime stored in different departments. Jim Hewett, CIO of Springfield Clinic “decided to create a more engaging experience for the patient.” The Springfield Clinic hospital is planning on putting in 50 automated kiosks and deploys it to 24 clinics.
The healthcare information technology company Allscripts builds the automated kiosks. It operates as a central database that stores patient’s healthcare record. Also the automated kiosks has feature such as a camera credit card reader, and printer. Since healthcare records are personal matter and made available to the public, it has a build-in palm secure reading, which scans not only the patient’s palm, but also the vein patterns. This also include photo of patient and answering a number of basic questions. Kiosks operate almost as an ATM that store medical information instead.

This is how the automated kiosks works, “a patient sets up a user profile in an initial visit by posing for a photo, establishing a palm scan, and answering a number of basic questions. Once that’s out of the way, the patient registers in subsequent visits by merely putting a hand on the screen” then the medical data is up for viewing. While the patient is seeing a doctor or nurse, their session log will keep every nurse and doctor inform of their health record without having to repent the same questions.

The kiosks are sold a $17,000 each and that amazing news about it is President Obama is supposing the ideas developing an electronic health records. I think it is a great idea and it will bring great help to the hospital and patients. Once the kiosks goes world wide then I will feel more a eases when going to visit the doctor because I know it will not take the entire day just to check-in.

O’Brien, Jeffrey. (6 April 2009). Hospital tests ‘ATM’ for health records. Retrieved October 10, 2009, Fortune Magazine.
Website: http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/06/technology/ehr_kiosk_hospitals.fortune/index.htm

The article touched on the different types of ethics. Ethics has become an important subject for business and part of the fast growing employment categories. Wal-Mart was bought up as an example of why ethic is difficult to apply in some corporation. Ethics decision can be use and interpret among the employee in the corporation, but this leads to danger of whistleblowing. Jim Fisher, from Emerson Center for Business Ethics stated that there are many cases where employees avoid making an ethical complain because they fear of losing their job. Even if the employees who are brave enough to point out a problem in the corporation can have everything turn up side down for them in the end. Report shows that about 95% of whistleblowers end up losing their job. Sometime it can be worst for whistleblowers, such as, family breaking apart. Explanation as to why many employees decide not to get involve in ethical lapses or questionable to management if it does not involve them.
In business, ethics must be taken seriously and value. This way whistleblowers can be protected and feel secure to report any unethical situations, does not matter if it is big or small as long as it is a serious cause that can affect the company. It will be great benefits to corporations if they focus on building a strong ethics strategic.
The reason I decide to choose this article about trouble with business ethics because the chapter that we are going over talks about ethics and the logic behind it. However, it can be difficult to apply in most businesses.

Gogoi, Pallavi. (22 June 2007). The Trouble with Business Ethics. Retrieved September 17, 2009, Business Week.
Website: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jun2007/db20070622_221291.htm

The postal service is looking for new ways to make address change and mail more accessible. Perhaps the postal service can provide services through e-commerce, but looking back at the risks the company took to expand business, it did cost postal service to loss profit. Once again, it is necessary to try e-commerce. The vice presidents are debating if this is a good idea to begin with since everyone is using the Internet to do many things, such as, paying bills and exchanging resources. The leader of U.S. Postal Service, Deputy Postmaster General John Nolan promoted the idea that it is about time the business tries something new. He mentioned that they already have documents in hard copies, why shouldn’t they start making things available online for their customers.

Wasserman, Elizabeth. (28, February 2001). Postal Service looks to e-commerce for answers. Retrieved September 9, 2009, CNN.
Website: http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/industry/

02/28/postal.e.commerce.idg/index.html

Building trust in business can be difficult because everyone cannot just let go of their worries and trust someone to stick to their promise. Netflix is a demonstration of building trust. They trust their customers and employees to be loyal. The customers can keep the movie for as long as their want and employees have the freedom to take vacations when they need it. Netflix totally rely on building trust, this way they can have loyal customers and employees.

The business market almost did not survive because there was not enough trust. Every business was afraid to lend out loans and depend on contracts to hold agrees among two parties. Maybe it is a little risking trusting other businesses, but it’s possible to gain loyal, by being honest and ethical. For instance, if there was a doughnut shop owner and he was willing to service his customers faster when they left some tips on the counter. When he give the customers better service it result to winning their trust, which leaves the doughnut shop owner not have to worry about his competitors.

I totally agree that building trust with customers and employees is a successful strategic in decision making since now the economy is hurting. Many businesses is afraid of falling into debts and by opening up the door to trust, it will lead to a loyal people that the business can trust and will not have to feel cautious about doing business. Netflix is great example of building trust since they fully rely on their employees and customer’s loyalty. This is the reason why they have become more successful in the market because not many businesses can do like Netflix.

Seidman, Dov. (27 August 2009). Building Trust in Business by Trusting. Retrieved September 2, 2009, Business Week.
Website: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/

09_36/b4145076753447.htm

Albert Gonzalez, age 28, a computer hacker and identity theft, is charged in Miami 2008 for stealing more than 170 million accounts of credit card and debit card numbers. Gonzalez’s case is the largest cases known for identity theft in America. He used to work for the U.S. Secret Service hunt hackers under the government in 2003. Gonzalez did have three cases accusing him of identity theft and only two cases were pleaded guilty. Report shows that even when Gonzalez was in jail, he still found ways to hack into systems and steal about 40 million accounts, which he was accused for using a different identity theft to take out other peoples’ assets. When Gonzalez was working under the government in U.S. Secret Service hunt hackers, he secretly hacked into large and wealthy company, such as, the Fortune 500 companies. He had stolen credit card numbers from T.J. Maxx, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority and OfficeMax. The reason why he is able to do this is by using a laptop and cruising through certain places searching for “retailers’ accessible wireless Internet signals”. Once the wireless signals are available then he uses a program called “sniffer programs” to captured credit cards information and digits. He either use the accounts information or sale it to others to make a profit. Of all the causes that Gonzalez had done, his defense lawyer stated that Gonzalez is “good man and means no harm”, he only has a computer addiction.

I thought the article explaining about Gonzalez’s addition to hack into companies system was very interesting. It makes me more cautious of what I do when using my card and to be aware of where I slide it because anyone could get access to it. Identity theft has happen to me before where someone stole my social security numbers and I do not favor it one bit. Gonzalez deserves what he is getting and never gets access to computers and any kind of network.

Lush and Barrett. (27 August, 2009). Man charged in record ID theft case in plea talks. Retrieved August 28, 2009, from Business Week.
Website: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9ABGGHO2.htm