How Information Systems Are Transforming Business

You can see the results of this large-scale spending around you every day by observing how people conduct business. Changes in technology and new innova­tive business models have transformed social life and business practices. More than 269 million Americans have mobile phones (81 percent of the population), and 230 million of these people access the Internet using smartphones and tab­lets. Fifty-five percent of the entire population now uses tablet computers, whose sales have soared. Two hundred million Americans use online social networks; 175 million use Facebook, while 54 million use Twitter. Smartphones, social networking, texting, e-mailing, and webinars have all become essential tools of business because that’s where your customers, suppliers, and colleagues can be found (eMarketer, 2018).

By June 2017, more than 140 million businesses worldwide had dot-com Inter­net sites registered. Today, 220 million Americans shop online, and 190 million will purchase online. In 2017, FedEx moved about 16 million packages daily in 220 countries and territories around the world, mostly overnight, and the United Parcel Service (UPS) moved more than 28 million packages daily. Businesses are using information technology to sense and respond to rapidly changing customer demand, reduce inventories to the lowest possible levels, and achieve higher levels of operational efficiency. Supply chains have become more fast-paced, with companies of all sizes depending on just-in-time inventory to reduce their overhead costs and get to market faster.

As newspaper print readership continues to decline, in 2017 more than 180 million people read a newspaper online, and millions more read other news sites. Online digital newspaper readership is growing at 10 percent annually, about twice as fast as the Internet itself. About 128 million people watch a video online every day, 85 million read a blog, and 30 million post to blogs, creating an explosion of new writers and new forms of customer feedback that did not exist five years ago (eMarketer, 2018). Social networking site Facebook attracted 214 million monthly visitors in 2018 in the United States and more than 2 billion worldwide. Businesses are using social networking tools to connect their employees, customers, and managers worldwide. Most Fortune 500 companies now have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and Tum- blr sites.

E-commerce and Internet advertising continue to expand. Google’s U.S. online ad revenues surpassed $32 billion in 2017, and Internet advertising continues to grow at more than 20 percent a year in the United States, reaching more than $107 billion in revenues in 2018 (eMarketer, 2018).

New federal security and accounting laws requiring many businesses to keep e-mail messages for five years, coupled with existing occupational and health laws requiring firms to store employee chemical exposure data for up to 60 years, are spurring the annual growth of digital information at the estimated rate of 5 exabytes annually, equivalent to 37,000 new Libraries of Congress.

Source: Laudon Kenneth C., Laudon Jane Price (2020), Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm, Pearson; 16th edition.

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