1. DATA WAREHOUSE ACCESS CONTROL You are the CEO of a large organization that imple. mented a data warehouse for internal analysis of corporate data. The operations manager has written you a memo advocating opening the data warehouse to your suppliers and customers. Explain any merit to this proposal. What are the control issues, if any? 2. PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION Your organization is planning to implement an ERP system. Some managers in the organization favor the big bang approach. Others are advocating a phased-in approach. The CEO has asked you, as project leader, to write a memo summarizing the advantages and disadvantages of each approach and to make a recommendation. This is a traditional organization with a strong internal hierarchy. The company was acquired in a merger two years ago, and the ERP project is an effort on the part of the parent company to standardize business processes and reporting across the organization. Prior to this, the organization had been using a general ledger package that it acquired in 1979. Most of the transaction processing is a combination of manual and batch processing. Most employees think that the legacy system works well. At this point, the implementation project is behind schedule. 3. OLTP VERSUS OLAP SERVERS For each of the following processes, state whether OLTP or OLAP is appropriate, and why. a. An order entry system that retrieves customer information, invoice information, and inventory information for local sales. b. An order entry system that retrieves customer information, invoice information, inventory information, and several years of sales information about both the customer and the inventory items, c. An order entry system that retrieves customer information, invoice information, inventory information, and information to compare the current sale to sales across several geographic regions. d. An order entry system that retrieves customer information, invoice information, inventory information, and accounts receivable information for sales within one marketing region. e. An insurance company requires a system that will allow it to determine total claims by region, whether a relationship exists between claims and meteorological phenomena, and why one region seems to be more profitable than another. f. A manufacturing company has only one factory, but that factory employs several thousand people and has nearly $1 billion in revenue each year. The company has seen no reason to make comparisons about its operations from year to year or from process to process. Its information needs focus primarily on operations, but it has maintained backup of prior-ycar operations activities. Examination of prior-year financial reports has shown that the company, while profitable, is not growing, and return on investment is decreasing. The owners are not satisfied with this situation. 4. SELECTING A CONSULTANT You are the chief information officer for a midsized organization that has decided to implement an ERP system. The CEO has met with a consulting ERP firm based on a recommendation from a personal friend at his club. At the interview, the president of the consulting firm introduced the chief consultant
