 Welcome back, everyone. Today I'm going to be talking about business information system planning or how to think about the technology that your company needs. I've already talked a little bit in past lectures about how companies use technology and the types of technologies that they use and also a little bit about business information systems and how we think about the information that the business needs to be able to do whatever it is that business is trying to achieve. So I want you to think about the business plan that you created before. So whenever you're making your business plan, what were the goals that you were trying to achieve? So goals and who are your customers? And then basically based on the customers, what are the customers needs? We can say needs. And what product or service do you have? So what value are you giving to your customers? So once we've established those, we've established the business plan, now we can start to think about what kind of business information systems, what kind of technology do we need to support this business plan? So think about your goal. If your goal is to sell a video game, I don't know why I thought a video game, but a video game. So imagine that we are a video game company. Well, what kind of information services or systems or technologies are we going to need to be able to support that? Well, if we're a video game company, most likely you're going to need some sort of computer, okay, because you need a way to create the video game. Now you could create video games completely on your own using your own programming skills, right? So then maybe some soft skills or information would be something like programming, right? So programming, just information on how to do programming, information on how programming works. And then you'll need a computer to actually program on and what other kinds of information would you need? So if you're a video game company, most likely you're not just going to build your own system, you're probably going to use an engine that already exists, unless you're a very big video game company. So you'll need some software. Okay, so computer software computer is where we process the information, we potentially store the information, the software helps us to manipulate the information that we're dealing with. Okay, now, if you create your computer game on your computer, you have software that supports you or helps you, you are actually producing what you're going to produce is also software. Okay, so the software that you're producing is an actual video game that you need to install. Now, that software could be for a computer, it could be for Xbox, it could be for PlayStation, any of the video game platforms, right? So you are producing software for some platform. Okay, so computer software, and a lot of video game game companies today actually have a presence online, right? So they're also going to need the internet, because they want to actually connect with their fans, connect with their users, be able to distribute the information of the video games that they're actually creating, they want to distribute those outside. So internet, computer software internet, if we have the internet, it also implies that we have some sort of local network. Okay, so local network, that could just be like a basic access point that you have in your home. So whenever you go home, your phone probably connects to your wireless network. Most likely this video game company has at least something like that, maybe something a little bit more industrial. So a local network. Now, most video game designers don't work alone, video game companies are usually pretty big actually. So they probably also have more computers, more software, and different people using that software. Now, all of the people in the video game company are probably not video game producers, they're probably not the people who actually code the software. What they do is many different things. So you might have one department that would do, for example, marketing. Marketing is really important part for a video game, because if nobody knows about your game, nobody will play your game. So a marketing department, then you have let's say programmers, programmers. And then you also have testers. Everyone wants to be a video game tester. And then you have the producer. I'm writing sideways, I don't know why you have the story, story writers, right? And then you have maybe in the marketing team, copywriters, editors, things like that, editors, and then accounting and human resources. And then let's say CEO or upper management. Okay, upper management. So upper management, human resources, accounting, marketing, programmers, testers, producers, story writers, and I forget what that was, but basically, all the people associated with this, with this company. And there may be a lot more. Okay, so whenever you're actually planning a company, you have a lot of different jobs. Now, I really wish I didn't write this sideways. Whenever you're thinking about all of these different people, what needs do these people actually have? So for example, producers and story writers, they're basically the people that make how the video game is going to work. They're the ones that make the video game hopefully interesting, right? So the producers, story writers, what technologies are they going to need? Do they need software that helps them program? No, what they probably need is something that helps them actually write stories, right? So maybe they need access to other content, other video games, maybe they need access to books to a library, just any other information that way they can write good stories that are interesting for the video game designers. Maybe they also need input from customers, right? What do the customers actually want? What kind of stories do our customers want in these video games? Okay, so what kind of information support systems would help producers and story writers? Well, information support systems that allow them to get direct access to information about customers and other games about other stories, right? So basically just other information, they need access to that information. Now, can we put all information about other games in a database? You could, but that wouldn't give you the story or the flavor of the video game. It wouldn't give you the experience of the video game. You actually have to play the game to experience it. In our database, we could put a link to the game or a link to the information about the game or general, let's say metadata about the company or about the game. But we really, the story writers really need to experience what the game is to be able to get inspiration for maybe their games. Customers, we can get feedback from customers like, what did you like about the game? What did you not like about the game? But again, talking to people or hearing people's voices is a much more powerful way to get the experience of the person. So for example, imagine you read online, somebody said, I didn't like this game. Well, if you hear them say it, they might say, oh, I didn't like this game. That's much more frustrated, right? But if they say, oh, I didn't like this game, that's much more angry, right? And story writers can take that as feedback and say, actually, they seem very angry about the game or very frustrated about the game. And then we might want to update our game based on that information. So we need access to quite a different set of information to be able to produce interesting content for our users. Testers I'll come back to in a second, but like programmers, the ones who actually, let's say, make the game, they're the ones that are programming the game on whatever platform we're developing it for. What access or what information do they need? Well, they need to know how to code. They need to know the best ways to use use different pieces of hardware, use different pieces of information, basically. So they need knowledge about coding, they need knowledge of the platform, they need access to look up anything they don't know about the platform. They also need to know what other programmers are doing. Usually programmers work in teams or on pieces of code. There's a lot of different models for programming, but basically you might have individual programmers, there's one big project, and then they each take a small piece and then contribute back small pieces, right? So you don't usually just have one programmer doing everything. Usually you have a lot of programmers working on individual pieces to different problems. So the programmers need to be able to coordinate. Now most likely the easiest way for them to coordinate is using a computer and software that helps them to coordinate everything that they're contributing back to the product, or in this case to the game. So programmers need access to information about coding, access to information about the platform, access to other programmers or other information in the system, also access to what the story writers and producers are intending. What is the goal of the story writer? What emotion or what feeling should the programmers be projecting in certain scenes? Now marketing and counting, I'll put them together. What information do they need? Well, they need a little bit of information from the story writers about what the game is going to be. They need information from the producers about what the game looks like, that way they can figure out how to sell the game, okay? So accounting, marketing, how much is this going to cost, right? That's what the major thing is, are we going to make money on this or not? And then marketing, how are we going to sell? What information do I need to be able to sell? So these different groups already need to talk to each other quite a bit. There needs to be some sort of communication between these groups in terms of, yeah, I need information from each of these groups to be able to make my marketing plan, my accounting plan, etc. Now, upper management, there's a lot we can talk about with that, so I'll skip it for now. Human resources. What information or what technology can help human resources? Well, human resources need to know, do we have enough programmers? Do we have enough story writers? Do we have the best story writers? Do we have enough people where we need human resources at? So human resources needs a way to keep track of who's doing good work, who's doing bad work, who's the most efficient, who's the least efficient? Do we need more help in different areas, things like that? So they need an account of basically all of the different departments to be able to say whether the company is working as efficiently as possible. Okay, and then testers. What do testers need? Information from basically every department possibly accept accounting, but they also need money from accounting. So they need to be paid by the accountants, and they need to know about marketing, because they need to know how is this game being marketed and does this game actually match the marketing. They need to know about the programmers because they have to report bugs and other issues to programmers. They need to know about the producer and the story writers. What was the intention of the game? What feeling were the producers trying to get across and did they achieve that? So really, testers need to be able to share information with all of these groups. Okay. Now, most of the time, not most of the time, but a lot of times companies are very segregated. Groups or departments don't talk to each other well. So they're very, very separated, especially the bigger the company, the more the separation tends to happen. The smaller company, it usually doesn't happen quite so much, but still can happen. Now, what we should think about is, think about this is a video game company. This is a technology based company. So how can they be as efficient as possible in communicating to produce their product and then get their product out to customers? Right? So we didn't even really talk about the needs of customers yet, but all of the departments inside this company need to talk to each other. And then the goal is to get a product out that the customers actually want to buy. Okay. So computers, each of these departments have computers, definitely. They're probably going to be communicating with at least email, possibly something like KakaoTalk, Telegram, WhatsApp, whatever. But a lot of technology companies also have in-house applications like Slack, Trello, possibly GitHub. The programmers are probably using some sort of support technology for their programming to contribute code. Accountants are going to be using special accounting software to make sure that we don't go over budget. The marketing department is going to be using all sorts of online and offline tools to be able to produce and good marketing and reach as many customers as possible. Producers and storywriters are going to be using video editing, image editing, drawing software, Photoshop, everything plus storywriters, maybe even Microsoft Word to produce a draft of their story or Google Docs online if they want to collaborate. So definitely they need computers, they need software, lots of different types of software, internet or some sort of local network and usually both. And this is basically their communication channel. So internet, local network allows all of the computers to be able to talk to each other. That way they can pass information back and forth depending on what they need and what the requirements are. Now, lots of technologies can support this, but it always comes back to basically a computer or now a tablet or a cell phone software running on that like lots of different services. We'll talk about services next and then some sort of backbone for that information. And you see this in almost every business. Most businesses have at least a few computers and a local network and that local network is almost always connected to the internet. Whether it's a Kimbap shop or whether it's a huge video game company, you have the same basic setup because the internet is the best way to share information. Now, the marketing team in a video game company is going to be much, let's say, more well adapted to marketing online than maybe a Kimbap shop is, but the way they use the tools will be different, but the tools that they use will be very, very similar. So this is the first part to actually thinking about what kinds of business information systems or just technologies do we need? And hopefully what you got from this is that there's a basic set, I guess, of technologies that are fairly generic. Now, the type of computer you get, there's lots of different types of computers. They do a lot of different things, but basically we have computer software, some sort of communication network. I also want you to think about the different groups inside your business. Think about your business plan. What groups would we need inside that business? Like what departments? And how would they need to communicate? Now, how they need to communicate? If they have a local network and some software, maybe a chat application, is that enough communication? Or do they also need to be able to keep track of documents or keep track of software or keep track of who did different tasks? So think about all of the different departments and what their requirements are for communicating with each other. So that's it today for business information systems and helping to understand what kind of technologies or what kind of systems are needed to be able to communicate. Next, we'll talk more about services that are offered. So thank you very much.