Business Strategy and Information Systems

Spring 2013 – Section 01

COURSE NUMBER: TIM-158

Class Number - 61214

COURSE TITLE: Business Strategy and Information Systems

Credits – 5 Units

INSTRUCTOR	Safwan Shah
Email	safwan@soe.ucsc.edu
Telephone mobile	408 507 9384
Telephone Office	831 …
Office (PS 310) Hours	Tu/Th after class or by appointment
TA (Teaching Associate)	Rui Wu (rwu15@ucsc.edu)
Lecture Times	TuTh 10 AM to 1145 AM
Lecture Location	Porter Acad 148
Class Webpage	https://courses.soe.ucsc.edu/courses/tim158/Spring13/01

PREREQUISITE(S): satisfaction of the Entry Level Writing and Composition requirements; course 50 or permission of instructor.

Instructor note – This class will require thoughtful participation and discussion around issues related to business and information systems. Primarily, this class is designed for seniors who have taken a majority of TIM courses. A certain level of commitment and dedication will be required to complete the case study and project requirements for this class.

Students hoping for a permission code should contact the instructor before the start of quarter. These may be issued in exceptional circumstances, but usually enrollment is restricted to those who meet this very minimal prerequisite.

CLASS FORMAT: Mixture of cases, readings, lectures.

REQUIRED READINGS: There will be articles, cases and web reading required for class participation (unless provided or specified the readings will be from the textbook).

TEXTBOOK - Corporate Information Strategy and Management, 8^th edition - Authors: Applegate, Austin and Soule

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: In addition to Class participation, an individual writing project called Business Case Assignment and a group project called Business Analysis Paper will be evaluated for a final grade.

OVERVIEW OF THE COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:

The course is designed to develop critical thinking on the role of information systems in shaping business strategy – from inception through growth, adaptation and survival. There is no aspect of modern business that is not touched by information systems – this course will dig deeper into a variety of issues, challenges and opportunities that are faced by a CIO (Chief Information Officer) of a company.

This course gives you a clear understanding on how information systems can become the rocket fuel for growth in a company. You will learn how to think strategically about information systems and how to operationalize any aspect of business process and opportunity. Special topics like cloud computing, big data, automated data centers, SAAS, IAAS, PAAS. … etc. will be discussed.

The pervasive focus of the class is towards developing strategic thinking to efficiently model and operationalize a business using information systems. This is not a programming or IT course, but rather a series of ideas on how the modern corporation is shaped and chiseled by the quality of its information systems

MODES OF LEARNING

We will take two perspectives: that of the CIO and that of the business innovator.

GRADING

Students will be graded on meaningful participation, written projects (business case and group analysis), quizzes and final exam.

BUSINESS CASE ASSIGNMENT – This is an individual assignment of roughly 10 pages (no more than 11 pages and no less than 10 pages) that each student will complete. It is primarily a writing assignment and your ability to think through Information Systems applications.

The primary objective is to develop a business case for using information technology to solve a problem. Students could choose from several possible areas –

For example - An idea for a silicon valley startup (education, social media, payments, biotech, social cause, …)

The specific problem you solve and how is it unique

The specific market segment you serve

Is the market scalable (how)

Your business and revenue model

Your competitive strategy (must utilize as aspects of IT/IS as levers)

Why now

Why you

Your revenue model

BUSINESS ANALYSIS PAPER – Select a large enterprise and analyze main aspects of its business using frameworks learned through the TIM 158 class. Separate detail to be provided. The BAP will involve forming a team of 2 or 3, identifying a large company to analyze, submitting a 20-30 page report, making a 5 minute presentation using multimedia (PowerPoint or ...) and doing all that with originality, depth of understanding and creativity.

CLASS BY CLASS SYLLABUS

Date

Topic

Case/Reading

Assessment

1

Tue, April 2

Introduction

IT Doesn’t Matter

2

Thu, April 4

Business Models

IBM (TBD)

3

Tue, April 9

IT and biz models

4

Thu, April 11

Amazon

5

Tue April 16

IT and Organization

6

Thu, April 18

Boeing (TBD)

Case draft due

7

Tue, April 23

Making case for IT

8

Thu, April 25

CareGroup

Team and Topic due

9

Tue, April 30

IT infrastructure

10

Thu, May 2

iPremier

Proposal due

11

Tue, May 7

Reliability and Security

12

Thu, May 9

Ford - Dell

Project prop due

13

Tue, May 14

Service Delivery

14

Thu, May 16

Cisco

15

Tue, May 21

IT Project delivery

16

Thu, May 23

Volkswagen

Prelim draft die

17

Tue, May 28

IT Governance

18

Thu, May 30

AtekPC

19

Tue, Jun 4

IT Leadership

20

Thu, Jun 6

Conclusion

Project Due

21

Thu, Jun 13

Final Exam

Final Exam

INSTRUCTOR BACKGROUND –

Safwan Shah - safwan@soe.ucsc.edu

Instructor

Safwan Shah is currently the CEO and founder of PayActiv, Inc., venture partner at Melbourne based Adventure Capital Pty Ltd., board member of Techlogix, a leading software and services company, advisor and investor for several startups, faculty mentor/lecturer at Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley and adjunct faculty at UC Santa Cruz. Safwan founded Infonox, a market leader in cloud based payment, underwriting and transaction services for banks, casinos, retail and money transfer businesses. Under Safwan’s leadership, Infonox annually served over 100M consumers and settled over $20 Billion. In 2009, Infonox was acquired by TSYS. Prior to that, Safwan held research positions at BioServe Space Technologies (a NASA center for commercial development of space), where a number of his experiments were part of US space shuttle missions.

Safwan has an MS/PhD from UC Boulder and is a graduate of Stanford Executive Program (SEP) from Stanford University, Graduate School of Business. Safwan is also a patron of the Charter Hill Society and is included in the UC Berkeley honor roll of major donors.

Instructors and Assistants

Safwan Shah (sshah3) (Instructor)

Rui Wu (rwu15) (Assistant)