The Paul Merage School of Business has been ranked #47 nationally by U.S. News & World Report (2004) and
#12 for Information Systems.
The school has also been ranked 4th in Information Technology by
the Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive (2004) Poll of Recruiters.
The area of information systems management is focused on understanding how companies
can utilize information technologies to gain competitive advantage. As the economy
transitions from an industrial economy to an information-based economy, information
technologies provide existing companies with new ways to compete, while also
creating new entrepreneurial opportunities. Fortune magazine argues that "More
than being helped by computers, companies will live by them, shaping strategy
and structure to fit new information technology." The technical aspects of managing
information systems are and will remain a perennial challenge for organizations,
and the consequences of mismanagement will be increasingly serious. But these
issues constitute only a part of the big picture of information technology in
the organizations in the Twenty-First Century. As important as the technical
issues are, the accompanying organizational and managerial issues are equally,
if not more, challenging.
Required Courses
207 Information Technology for Management
Focuses on the links between business strategy and information technology, the organizational implications of the technology, and how to successfully incorporate information technology into organizations.
Elective Courses
271 Systems Analysis and Design
Systems analysis and design is focused on developing and formalizing an understanding of the domain and problems to be solved with an information system in a modern business enterprise. Systems analysis and design must now examine how new information system technologies like the Internet, World-Wide Web, and Enterprise Portals enable new information system applications, and pose difficult technical and business challenges in integrating existing/legacy information systems. This is especially true in the context of applications for Electronic Commerce, E-Business and networked business processes, and Internet-enabled organizational forms like virtual enterprises.
272 Critical IT Decisions for Business Executives [ITM Course]
Focuses on developing frameworks for helping management make critical IT decisions. These issues include how much to invest in IT, how to align IT strategy and business strategy, understanding which management practices enable high return on IT investment, developing sourcing strategies for IT-enabled services including business process outsourcing and information systems services, coordinating with partners, suppliers and customers in value networks, and determining product and operational strategies in increasingly digital environments.
274 Database Management and Applications
Provides a balanced perspective of managerial and design issues related to capturing, retrieving and analyzing business data for decision making. The course is targeted at managers and does not require any prior technical experience.
Many firms like Verizon wireless are interested in predicting churn - which customers are likely to jump to another provider while others like Harrah’s Inc. are using sophisticated consumer databases to provide targeted special offers. Amazon excels at analyzing customer data to understand purchasing trends and recommend related products. 7-Eleven is using Business Intelligence tools for enterprise planning, integrating budgeting, forecasting, reporting and financial analytics. Wal-Mart has mastered inventory management. While these decisions occur in different management contexts and in different functional areas, at their core is a critical software -- database software -- that allows companies to engage in informed decision making.
About half of the course is dedicated to examining contemporary business applications of databases such as Business Intelligence systems that enable companies to analyze data that resides in a database, and make decisions based on the insight gleaned from that information. Knowledge Management systems enable company-wide sharing of knowledge to enable innovation and improve processes and efficiency. Performance Management systems help to translate broad strategic goals in to performance metrics and goals for individual employees that can be integrated in to the company's processes. The course covers several such applications using case studies, and guest speakers from industry.
275 Strategic Information Systems [ITM Course]
Focuses on the strategic and competitive implications of IT, the Internet and e-business for firms, industries and countries. Topics include: globalization, strategy and time-based competition; strategy and IT, information systems planning; alignment of IT with business strategy; assessing the value of IT; business transformation and IT; IT as a strategic industry; country strategies and national IT policy; strategy and IT in the network era.
276 Networks and Telecommunications
This course is designed for MBA students who would like to gain a better
understanding of the fundamentals of networking technology and applications.
277 Managing Electronic Business
Focusing on the intersection of business and technology, this course helps business managers to understand the strategic issues and managerial implications of doing business in the information age. Studies how new technologies such as the Internet can be used to enhance strategic advantage in established companies as well as opportunities for new ventures. Central issues are business models, electronic markets, information flows in supply chains, business-technology integration, diagnosis of project failures, technology finance, real options applied to e-business projects, ROI analysis of technology investments, and new venture opportunities of emerging technologies (such as Wi-Fi, wireless). These issues are illustrated with case studies, selective readings, and lively executive speakers.
278 Information Systems Project Management [ITM Course]
Concentrates on project management techniques in the context of information systems projects: organizing, planning, budgeting, scheduling, management, leadership, and control. Special emphasis is placed on issues of system implementation and management of organizational change.
290 Digital Strategy&Markets
Topics to be covered include:
• Organizational and market impact of Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis
• Theory and applications of social networks on the Internet
• Open source development and collective intelligence
• Web 2.0 and the transformation of the music industry
• Piracy, net neutrality and other policy implications
The target audience for this course are general managers with interests spanning one or more of IT consulting, competitive strategy, marketing, and entrepreneurship.
290 Managing Innovation: The Intersection of Business and Technology
To manage in a global and increasingly “flat” world, business leaders must become effective business architects; they must be able to fuse business and technology concepts to deliver differentiation, competitive advantage, and relevant innovation. The class will explore the impact of innovation to business practices, and will introduce business architecture concepts such as component business modeling, application architectures and business case writing. The class will have a mixture of lectures, teamwork exercises, guest speakers and case studies. 5 week course/2 units
290 IT-Enabled Oper Innov
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290 Business Intelligence for Analytical Decisions
The goal of business intelligence is to assist managers in recognizing patterns and making intelligent use of massive amounts of electronic data collected via the internet, e-commerce, electronic banking, point-of-sale devices, bar-code readers, and intelligent machines. Topics include clustering for market segmentation, association rules for collaborative filtering, tree-structured classification and regression, subset selection in regression, and neural network methods. Examples of successful applications in areas such as credit ratings, fraud detection, database marketing, customer relationship management, investments, and logistics are covered. The course is practically-oriented and includes many hands-on exercises in Excel.