Utilizing Cutting-Edge Google Technologies

Introduction:

Google not only has the most powerful and used search engine, but also has been a leader in producing products that optimize productivity. The company was originally started at Stanford by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The company is named after the word googol, meaning 1 followed by 100 zeros. Small businesses are able to utilize many products and services from this amazing company. Many of you understand how successful this company is, just looking at the stock price per share in Google will allow you to assume this; at the time of this writing, Google stock is currently valued at $1,035.23. I should have invested in the company before their stock skyrocketed like I wanted to. Now, we will focus in on the key technologies Google has developed that help out small businesses.

Products and Services:

• Search Engine. In general, I think it’s kind of obvious that Google’s search engine is the best of their technologies regarding individual people. Google is known for their search engine, it’s the most popular search engine currently in use; Google controls over 50% of the industry. When Google first started, their main goal was to create a search engine. All other technologies followed when the company blew up.

• Gmail. In my opinion, Gmail is possibly the best of all Google technologies relevant to small businesses. The company defines Gmail as “Fast, searchable email with less spam.” Companies are able to purchase email addresses through Gmail ending with the company’s domain. Gmail works on any computer with a current internet connection. Here at the University of Northern Iowa, we used to host our own email but decided to outsource it to Google. I’ve been much more pleased with Gmail services. Gmail connects directly to your smartphone and shows a notification the second an email is received; this is my favorite part of the service.

• Drive. If you are not currently using Google Drive, you’re definitely missing out! Drive is a cloud service offered by Google to store your files. When your files are stored in the cloud, you will have access to them regardless where you are as long as you have access to the internet.

• Calendar. Successful people keep a schedule. With that being said, Google Calendar is an excellent option to select to utilize the benefits of a Calendar. Google will send you email reminders for scheduled events. Google Calendar allows you to keep track of your events easily. Calendar makes it easy to share events with friends.

• Chrome. In my opinion, Google Chrome is hands down the best web-browser. Chrome is extremely easy to use, it is user focused. This web-browser excels when paired with other Google technology. It benefits this browser due to the integration ability of all Google technologies.

• Maps. Google Maps drastically benefit companies that transport goods. With Maps, you’re able to receive step by step directions to any location.

• Sites. Google Sites is a beneficial technology, it allows you to build a very basic website. I would recommend a professionally built website over a simple Google Site.

• Adwords. In the last article we discussed the massive benefits of Google Adwords. Adwords allows you to advertise your business through Google’s search engine. This service is possibly the best way for an organization to drive traffic to their desired site. For more information on this topic, check out my article dedicated exclusively to this topic.

Conclusion:

Google offers many more technologies that businesses can benefit from. In my opinion, I listed the most important and versatile. If you’re looking for advanced technology at an extremely cheap price, I suggest you look into the wonderful products and services offered by Google!

Power of Google Adwords

Introduction:

An excellent option to drive traffic to your web-based store is search engine marketing campaigns. Recently, I completed my first search engine marketing campaign through Google Adwords. In this article I will summarize my experience and provide tips.

Setup:

After the various struggles regarding setup of my account, my Google Adwords campaign was very successful. The struggles I originally faced were rejection of ads and errors regarding payment options. After a quick call to Google Adwords support, they were able to resolve the problem within a couple days. After the problem was fixed, I was able to successfully drive traffic to my blog. To express my gratitude for the tremendous help Adwords support was, I gave them a shout-out through a tweet; a Google employee responded almost immediately thanking me.

Going Live:

   

During the first day of my campaign, I was unable to obtain any clicks and had very few impressions. My main goal at this point was to keep costs to a minimum per click by setting my cost per click low. In order to fix this, I researched the internet to find more keywords that would increase my number of impressions. A very important site that lead to many keywords was http://www.wordstream.com/popular-keywords/technology-keywords. This site lead me to finding my most important keyword that drove most of the traffic to my blog, technology news. I didn’t think that adding keywords was enough to drastically change the amount of impressions my ads were receiving. Between the first day and second day was when I made the most changes to my campaign. During the third day, I realized how important the key word technology news was by the unbelievable amount of impressions. The only negative of this keywords was that it was receiving a low quality score. In order to improve the quality score, I created an ad specifically for this keyword. Another improvement I made to increase the quality score was the creation of a blog post that better correlated with this important keywords. This move was the most important of my entire campaign. After creation of this content, my click through rate improved and I started getting more clicks. Throughout everyday of the campaign, I slowly increased my cost per click. By doing this, my amount of impressions and number of clicks were more in one hour than the entire first day. I concluded my Adwords campaign with 1,895 impressions and 24 clicks, this is a 1.27% click through rate. Overall, the constant monitoring and responding appropriately lead to the increased traffic and overall success to my Google Adwords Campaign.

Recommendations:

   

The first strategic recommendation I would make for future campaigns is to develop more intriguing ads that correlate better with the keywords. Doing this will highly increase the quality score of the keywords. With a higher quality score, your ad position will be positioned better for a cheaper price. Based on this, your campaign will be more successful.The second strategic recommendation I would make for future campaigns is to rely less on a very small number of keywords. In my campaign that just concluded, I relied mostly on two keywords that were responsible for 1,221 (64.4%) of my impressions and 17 (70.8%) of my clicks. It would be important to treat all other keywords in a similar manner, create content on the site and display ads aimed at improving the click through rate and number of impressions. By implementing these two strategic recommendations, I could have had an even more successful campaign.

   

Conclusion:

Google Adwords support is extremely beneficial towards the success of your campaign; they were always there to help and made excellent recommendations. The key to my campaign was my constant monitoring and interpretation of the data provided. By doing this, I was able to create content, ads, and keywords that drastically improved my success. Due to this wonderful experience, I plan to utilize this amazing technology in the future.

Web-Based Business Development

In this article, you will learn multiple tips on how to implement and maintain a thriving online store. The web-based stores and e-commerce industry is in growth stages. Companies that have a way to sell product online are much more successful.

In my previous article covering the importance of a company’s website, I briefly explained the topic of e-commerce. To review, e-commerce is the purchase and sell of products and services over electronic devices. There are many advantages to selling products via the web. Oftentimes, customers must be located within your geographical area; e-commerce allows you to overcome this limitation. By selling products online, you are able to reach customers located all around the world. Your overall customer base will grow substantially. An e-commerce website will allow customers to purchase products 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Now that you understand many benefits of developing a web-based business, my next plan of action is to give you some useful tips to successful implementation.

• Promote your business heavily through owned media. Owned media is a channel of media that your organization has direct control over. Examples of owned media are Facebook accounts, Twitter accounts, company website and blogs.
• Provide user-friendly experience. The easier your site is to use, the more likely a customer is to make a purchase and return to your site. Your site should make shopping online feel like a positive experience.
• Determine payment methods and gateways. The most difficult part of developing a web-based store is determining payment gateways. Stores need to set up an account with their bank that allows transferred credit card money or use companies like Paypal to handle this process for them. Paypal allows for secure transfers of money made through the internet.
• Conduct A/B testing to determine best page layout. Determining the best layout will help your company provide the best customer service.
• Mix it up. If you frequently use the search engine Google, you will have noticed they change up the logo occasionally. Changing up your background often will drive traffic to your site. Developing an interactive logo is also an excellent decision.
• Develop a site that matches the products you sell. The entire site should promote people to buy your product. If your site doesn't correlate with your products, perception of your credibility will diminish.
• Drive traffic to your site. Use online advertising to drive traffic to your website. You can create videos promoting the products you sell with a link taking customers directly to your site. Using search engine marketing campaigns, email marketing, and banner ads are all excellent ways to drive traffic to your web-based store.
• Quality product photos. Customers want to know precisely what they are purchasing. If you post deceiving photos of products, customers are likely to return the product and never visit your site again.

With these excellent tips, you should be able to develop a successful web-based business. These are only suggestions, implementing them is all up to you!

Security Technology

Introduction:

In the previous article, we focused on how databases are important to success within a company. With the increased dependence on databases, it is crucial to ensure the data is protected from hackers. Without security of your systems, all advantages are non-existent and your technology within your organization becomes a disadvantage. If your database is easily compromised, nobody will want their private information stored within your system. This is detrimental to retail and e-commerce operations.

Cost:

Most of the cost occurred when implementing a new technology is spent on maintenance of the system, approximately 70% of total cost.

Technology for Security:

- Firewall: A firewall is a system develop to monitor network traffic in order to prevent unauthorized users from accessing the database.

- Backup: In the event that your company is compromised, you want the option to completely shut down the current database; this will prevent the hacker from accessing your information. Through this process you will lose all data unless you have your information backed up. When your data is backed up, it is easy to reestablish your database.

Forms of attacks:

There are many attacks on your system that can occur. A denial of service attack is when an attacker prevents intended users access to computer resources. This is similar to a distributed denial of service attack. A distributed denial of service attack is when multiple remotely controlled systems prevent intended users from accessing computer resources. These computers flood the target with network traffic causing it to be too busy to respond to legitimate users. A denial of service attack doesn't have access to your system.

A much worse form of attack is an intrusion. An intrusion means the attack has access to the system and can control it. If your system becomes compromised, all data stored within the database is at risk. This will destroy your credibility with customers.

Ways to deal with Attack:

There are many successful ways to deal with small attacks. The most important is advanced preparation. Preparation includes investing in high quality infrastructure, use of sophisticated firewall technology, ensuring employees are aware of emergency procedures, continuously update emergency procedures, and hiring employees to watch network traffic 24/7 of the system. Don’t fall victim to thinking that it won’t happen to you.

In the aftermath of an attack, a company’s primary concern should be to ensure you’re prepared for a possible attack in the future. You company should inform all stakeholders of the attack that took place, how your company responded, and the procedure taken to prevent another attack in the future; this will reestablish some integrity.

Conclusion:

The key to dealing with the attack is advanced preparation. Firewall and backup is extremely beneficial to your information systems security. System maintenance will be approximately 70% of total system cost. It is essential to your business to have secure systems. Don’t fall victim to thinking your company won’t be attacked.

Database Management & Theory

Introduction:

In this article, we will examine one of the most important technologies known to man. This technology is responsible for an incredible amount of increased efficiency and progression. The technology I’m talking about is databases. Now you’re wondering why this technology is possibly the the most important. Currently, I am in a class exploring this topic at the University of Northern Iowa; the class I’m taking is Database Management and Theory.

Definition:

So, what is a database? A database is an organized collection of data. A database is often considered by many non-technical people to be the same as a database management system (DBMS). The difference is that a DBMS is the program that manipulates the data within a database. Databases are extremely important because they are responsible for storing large amounts of data essential to an organization’s success. Within a database, it is extremely simple to create, read, update, and delete data; these four tasks are often called CRUD by database analysts. If data is stored, your company will easily be able to track information. An example would include your ability to track member information within a student organization database. Without this data organized in your database, the information would be much more difficult to obtain.

Query Language:

If data is stored within one database, you company won’t have to worry about duplicate information; this will improve data integrity, meaning it’s more credible. You will be able to search, query, your database by using a standardized programming language known by most tech people. The ANSI standard programming language I am speaking of is structured query language (SQL).

Various DBMS:

In the next section, we will examine some of the most popular database management systems. The main two I will examine are the two I’m most familiar with due to my database management and theory class. These two DBMS are Microsoft Access and Oracle.

The first, Microsoft Access is an amazing program for how incredibly inexpensive it is. Microsoft incorporates Access within the Office Suite. The main expense incurred when implementing an Access database is the labor required. The main disadvantage is that it’s set up for very few users. I wouldn't recommend this DBMS if your organization has more than five people with access to the data.

The second, Oracle is an excellent option for a very large database. Oracle is very likely to be found within very large organizations unlike Access. Oracle is much more efficient and secure when a large amount of people have access to the information. The disadvantages include its incompatibility with other programs, management complexity, and limited functions.

Conclusion:

A database is an organized collection of data. The difference between a database and database management system is the DBMS is a program that manipulate the collection of data. Structured Query language is an ANSI certified programming language. Access databases are useful when a small number of people have access to the data; Oracle is more efficient when a large number of people have access. All-in-all databases are one of the most powerful pieces of technology relevant to success within an organization.

Hire the Professionals: IT Consulting

Introduction:

We previously mentioned people within an organization that are vital to information systems. There is another route your company can take other than hiring expensive tech professionals. Depending on the size of your company, it might be a better idea to hire IT consulting firms.

IT Consulting Industry:

The IT consulting industry consists of all companies that help clients develop custom applications, integrate various hardware and software infrastructure, and on-site management of computer systems. The industry is very fragmented, meaning they have many firms currently competing for business. This is true because the largest firm in the industry, IBM, holds a mere 5.9% of the industry leaving 94.1% to others. A fragmented industry is extremely beneficial to your organization. The reason this is beneficial, consulting firms are unable to completely set their own price due to this high competition. It is also beneficial because there will be many segments within the industry. With a higher segmentation of the industry, you can ensure there are consulting firms that specialize in specific technologies and areas that are more important to your organization. An example of this would be the company LightEdge, they are a company within this industry; their segmentation, the area they specialize in, within the IT Consulting industry is cloud computing and data centers. Participates in the IT consulting industry range from small specializing firms owned by an entrepreneur to very large public firms.

Major Players in the Industry:

This section is dedicated to defining the top 5 biggest players in the industry by market share. These 5 companies are only responsible for 15.4% of the entire industry.

1. International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), 5.9% market share

2. Hewlett-Packard Company (HP), 3.7% market share

3. EMC Corporation, 2.6% market share

4. Booz Allen Hamilton, 1.8% market share

5. Accenture PLC, 1.4% market share

Reasons to Hire Consulting Firm:

Businesses often hire IT consulting firms when they are merging with another company. They do this in order to speed up the merging process. Merging two companies existing systems is an extremely difficult and time consuming process. IT consultants will provide you with the extra brains needed for the job. Sometimes firms need to hire consultants in order to develop a new application. This is often true for an entrepreneur in need of basic technology such as database development or the building of a company website. Companies will also hire consulting firms to develop data centers within their organization to store your company’s data.

Conclusion:

Hiring a consulting firm to help you in times of struggle or high demand is a wonderful idea, I strongly suggest it.

Your Most Important Hire

Introduction:

Now that you have a good understanding of various new technologies that allow businesses to excel, you now need to know who will manage these technologies. There are certain people to hire that will research new technologies, install and manage them. Hiring a person with a degree in management information systems might be the best decision your business ever takes. In this article, I will explain how a small business can benefit from hiring a person from this area of study. Now, lets take a look at this area of study.

MIS at a Glance:

Many people don’t understand what MIS is or even know that it’s an acronym for Management Information systems. MIS professionals have a passion for learning about how technology can improve businesses or even someone’s life in general.

Management Information Systems is a degree from the college of business. According to Mays Business School at Texas A&M University, MIS is the study of people, technology, organizations and the relationships among them. Information systems are crucial to businesses today due to the increased productivity, communication, reduction of error, and so on. Without the use of technology, it is extremely difficult for a company to be successful. MIS helps improve areas of business including accounting, finance, management, marketing, operations, and many others improve efficiency and reduce errors.

MIS Skills:

Classes students take for a degree in Management Information Systems will be a combination of business core classes (accounting, finance, management, marketing, etc.), technical classes (information systems management, application development, systems development life cycle, database theory and management, etc.), and basic liberal arts core classes that are taken by all students throughout your university.

MIS Jobs:

- Business Analyst
- Database Analyst
- Systems Analyst
- Project Manager
- Application Developer
- Web Developer
- Network Administrator
- Technical Support
- Information Technology Consultant

Main Employers of MIS Professionals:

- Advertising Agencies
- Banks and Credit Unions
- Consulting Firms
- Government Agencies
- Hospitals
- Insurance Companies
- IT Companies
- Manufacturing Companies
- Nonprofit Organizations
- Universities

Conclusion:

Any business will be able to benefit from having an MIS professional on staff. These tech people are very versatile; they can perform almost any position’s duties within your organization. Main skills obtained by this professional are business and technical. If you are looking to gain a competitive advantage through the use of technology and don’t know where to start, I recommend hiring a management information systems professional!