Academic Writing: Analysis Of Information System Strategy (Essay Sample)

Information Systems Strategy
First Name Last Name
Institution
Table of Contents
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Introduction  PAGEREF _Toc465532441 \h
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Literature Review  PAGEREF _Toc465532442 \h
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Company Background  PAGEREF _Toc465532443 \h
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Justification for International Expansion  PAGEREF _Toc465532444 \h
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Information Systems infrastructure and online Newspaper Production  PAGEREF _Toc465532445 \h
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Deploying a Scalable Information Systems infrastructure for online publication  PAGEREF _Toc465532446 \h
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Information Systems Infrastructure  PAGEREF _Toc465532447 \h
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Hardware  PAGEREF _Toc465532448 \h
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Software  PAGEREF _Toc465532449 \h
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Network  PAGEREF _Toc465532450 \h
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Data  PAGEREF _Toc465532451 \h
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Facilities  PAGEREF _Toc465532452 \h
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Human Resources  PAGEREF _Toc465532453 \h
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Challenges for Information Systems Infrastructure  PAGEREF _Toc465532454 \h
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Secure Systems  PAGEREF _Toc465532455 \h
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Conclusion  PAGEREF _Toc465532456 \h
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Works Cited  PAGEREF _Toc465532457 \h
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Introduction
Over the last two decades, information technology coupled with the advent of the Internet has revolutionized the newspaper print industry. Even though the elements that constitute news, have not changed at all, the reception and delivery of news items have changed significantly. Two decades ago, it was common to see journalists using newspaper clippings and manual typewriters trying to gather news items, but today, this has all changed.
If we could take a sneak preview into our media publishing history. During the era of the 50’s to 80’s when we had the mainframe systems, typewriters were the in thing and we thought to work in any newspaper publishing industry, you must have had typewriting skills. However, technological revolution continued to play a role and come the early 80’s when IBM developed the personal computer, the publishing industry thought they were now in their prime, because, they could easily produce publications with graphics at much ease. The systems were also susceptible to constant damage and frequent damages. There were also other risks, apart from the machines easily braking down a situation attributed to new technology that had not been perfectly and the lack of skilled service technicians to handle technical faults for the machines. Therefore, the publishing industry had to wait for the endless after sales support to get their machines back and running. However, honestly speaking, this was not the case.
At the beginning of the new millennium, mobile phones and tablet devices were not popular, however, a decade later these particular gadgets have transpired as mainstream office productivity tools. With today’s technology in collaboration with increasing broadband speed, it is common to spot journalists capturing news as it happens in real-time and relaying it live to the media outlet.
However, such a modern development is not a mean task and requires significant resource investment in areas such as human resources and information technology infrastructure. It was only recently between the early nineties to the beginning of the new millennium (1992-2016), when the new media courtesy of the internet and web 2.0 collaboration tools that brought in new ways of publishing including blog spots whereby the audience could be easily allowed to air their views so that they can be cross-examined by the subject news item. Such developed has ushered in transparency in corporate practices and also played a pivotal role in instill democracy to the political landscape. However, some of the risks involved in this particular era of collaboration tools was that information could be easily hacked and leaked, whereby, the regulators and the government could come in and sabotage the work of the press.
It is therefore under this rationale that my brief is going to center into the role played by information systems support in online publications, and we are going to use “ParaPoint” Publishers as our case study on how the company can venture into the Canadian Market.
Literature Review
Company Background
ParaPoint is one of the leading UK publications that focus on Crowd sourcing and Gamification niche. The publications are usually online, and they come in either monthly or annual basis. The publications are only available in English, and due to increasing business competition, the company wants to spread its risk and venture into the Canadian market.
Justification for International Expansion
The state of global hardcopy newspaper publication is on a steady decline. According to 2015 world, press trends survey that combines and analyzes data from more than 70 countries that account for more than 90 percent of the entire newsprint publication value, it is being revealed that the future is online (Gallaugher, 2010).
Statistics indicate that roughly 80 percent of Smartphone users preview their gadgets within 15 minutes immediately after waking up. These same consumers also spend almost two hours daily with their mobile devices, translating into 37 percent of media time. These statistics compares favorably well when compared with other media channels such as print (31 minutes), radio (44 minutes), desktop (70 minutes) and television (81 minutes).
The reports also indicated that mobile App usage represented roughly 50 percent of the consumer’s mobile engagement, whereby leading news outlets recorded around 30 percent of their revenues being derived exclusively from mobile platforms. It is therefore apparently clear that international online expansion program for ParaPoint is eminent. However, online development initiatives are cost intensive ventures and may sometimes come with several roadblocks and bottlenecks.
Information Systems infrastructure and online Newspaper Production
Modern information communication systems provide which includes online publishing applications and mobile device portals, enables journalists and audience to report while viewing news items in real time as it happens. Previously, such an accomplishment was only possible in “movies”. Journalists have begun to embrace opportunities accorded by the internet, and as a result, countless of weblogs and other web 2.0 collaborative platforms have emerged (Obaso, 2015).
With such collaboration in place, bloggers and other aspiring journalists can scrutinize mainstream media outlets and pinpoint errors. In the same manner, individuals who are made the subject of news articles, are given an opportunity to respond online, whereby the “subject” can post supplementary information to support his context or even counter certain points. However, for such collaboration to transpire into a reality, there must be an Information Systems Infrastructure in place (Mueller et al., 2009).
Deploying a Scalable Information Systems infrastructure for online publication
A web-based organization must rely on information systems infrastructure to support their business processes, decision making, and competitive strategy.
Business processes are simply the activities that organizations undertake to attain their business goals. Some of these aims may be the core processes and supporting processes. In the case of our context of ParaPoint the core processes are disseminating news items online while the supporting processes can be the collaboration tools such as Twitter feeds, Facebook comments, or even the payment system gateway (Jung et al., 2015).
Modern information systems infrastructure presents current approaches towards streamlining an organization's operational process. With a robust system in place, the company’s different department and satellite offices geographically disbursed can coordinate and share tactical, operational strategies. The various satellite offices can share about previous successful case studies. Since the company, will have an online presence, it becomes easier to connect with some of their customers who might have traveled to an overseas destination, because, what these clients require is simply a tablet machine, mobile phone, or a conventional desktop system to view news feed from ParaPoint portal.
Besides, other operational processes such as sales and marketing become easier to administer, since there exist quite many online sales and marketing campaigns. For instance, the company can use social media to market its services. The company may also use banners, paid per click adverts, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and third party referral links. With a growing online community due to an influx of Smartphone’s and tablets coupled with cheaper and faster broadband connections, it is easy for ParaPoint to widen its customer base within a short span of time. The company can also take advantage of its online presence to lure Canadian consumers who are living in the Diaspora. As a result, most of the traffic from the Diaspora can always be channeled via ParaPoint UK whereby if there is a high conversion rate, there shall be more sales for the advertisers, and due to the laws of demand and supply, ParaPoint advertising space will transpire as one of the most lucrative in the industry. Such a ...