23. Information systems: definition and examples

Cuban’s strategy to reach his business goals is to give fans the best possible experience, with a high-quality team on the court and excellent service at arena bars, barbecue stands, and souvenir shops. In the 2002 season, the “Mavs” filled the 19,200-seat American Airlines Center to 103,7 percent capacity, bringing in 2003 the best NBA city by The Sporting News.

Filling seats is critical. To track attendance, the Mavs became the first NBA team to put barcodes on tickets and then scan them in part to find out if group sales and community-organization giveaways were putting bodies in seats or just wasting tickets. The team’s business managers have found other uses for the for the attendance information as well. By enabling improved attendance forecasting for particular games, for example, the system has helped reduce beverage inventories by 50 percent.

Each of the 144 luxury suites in the Center is equipped with PCs that handle orders for merchandise, food, and beverages Wireless access from all seats in the arena is available so that fans can place orders directly from their seats. All 840 cash registers at concessions stands, restaurants, stores, and bars use a sophisticated point-of-sale system. In the big retail store in the ground floor, salespeople using hand-held computing devices ring up credit-card purchases when lines get too long. The system allows the Mavs to process credit-card transaction in only 3 seconds, because there is an always-on Internet connection to the processing facility. During a game, managers can see which concession stands are busy and which ones can be closed early to cut labor costs.

Technology also supports the Mavs on the court. The team has 10 assistant coaches, and each has a laptop computer and a hand-held computing device. Game film is streamed over the Web for coaches to view on the road or at home. A digital content management system developed in-house matches game footage with the precise, to-the-minute statistics provide for every play of every game by the NBA. The searchable database allows coaches to analyze the effectiveness of particular plays and combinations of players in different game situations.

In 2002, the Mavs started using hand-held computers to track the performance of each referee in every one of their games. The coaches can look at trends- for example, to see which referee favors a given team or which one calls more 3-second violations-and they can tell the team’s players. Another program logs different offensive and defensive schemes used against the Mavs. This system will let coaches make real-time adjustments using statistics from previous games.

Critical response activities supported: Decision making, increased sales, improved customer service inventory management, better utilization of capacity.

The Success Story of Campusfood.com. Campusfood.com’s recipe for success was a simple one: Provide interactive menus to college students, using the power of the Internet to enhance traditional telephone ordering of meals. Launched at the University of Pennsylvania, the company has taken thousands of orders for local restaurants, bringing pizza, hoagies, and wings to the Penn community.

Founder Michael Saunders began developing the site in 1997, while he was a junior at Penn, and with the help of some classmates, launched the site in 1998. After graduation, Saunders began building the company’s customer base.

This involved registering other schools, attracting students, and generating a list of local restaurants from which students could order food to be delivered. Currently, this activity is outsourced to a marketing firm, and schools nationwide are being added to the list. By 2003 there were more than 200 participating schools and more than 1 000 participating restaurants.

Financed through private investors, friends, and family members, the site was built on an investment of less than $1 million. (For comparison, another company, with services also reaching the college-student market has investment of $100 million.) Campusfood.com’s revenue is generated through transaction fees; the site takes a 5 percent commission on each order.

When you visit Campusfood.com, you can do the following: Search a list of local restaurants, their hours of operation, addresses, phone numbers, and other information. Browse an interactive menu, which shows each participating restaurant’s standard print menus, including the latest prices and a listing of every topping, every special, and every drink offered. Bypass busy-signals and place an order without being placed on hold, and avoid miscommunications on orders. Get access to more specials, including discounts and meal deals available online exclusively to Campusfood.com customers. Have access to electronic payment capabilities and your own account record (“My Account”). (Source: Prince, 2002 and campusfood.com.)

Critical response activities supported: customer service, improves cycle time, and innovative marketing method.