Management within organization

Management:

Management is the process of guiding the development, maintenance, and allocation of resources
to attain organizational goals. Managers are the people in the organization responsible for
developing and carrying out this management process. Management is dynamic by nature and
evolves to meet needs and constraints in the organization’s internal and external environments.
In a global marketplace where the rate of change is rapidly increasing, flexibility and adaptability
are crucial to the managerial process. This process is based in four key functional areas of the
organization: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. Although these activities are
discussed separately in the chapter, they actually form a tightly integrated cycle of thoughts and
actions.

From this perspective, the managerial process can be described as (1) anticipating potential
problems or opportunities and designing plans to deal with them, (2) coordinating and allocating
the resources needed to implement plans, (3) guiding personnel through the implementation
process, and (4) reviewing results and making any necessary changes. This last stage provides
information to be used in ongoing planning efforts, and thus the cycle starts over again. The four
functions are highly interdependent, with managers often performing more than one of them at a
time and each of them many times over the course of a normal workday.

What Managers Do and Why

Good management consists of these four Which results

And leads to
activities: in

Leading
Planning
 Lead and motivate
employees to accomplish
 Set objectives and organizational goals
state mission
 Communicate with
 Examine employees
alternatives
 Resolve conflicts
 Determine needed
resources  Manage change

 Create strategies to
reach objectives
 Organizing


 Design jobs and  Controlling

specify tasks
 Create  Measure performance
organizational Organizational Achievement of
Compare performance Leads Leads
structure efficiency and organizational mission
to standards to to
effectiveness and objectives
 Staff positions Take necessary action
 Coordinate work to improve
activities performance
 Set policies and
procedures
 Allocate resources

Functions of Management Process: Planning,

Organizing, Leading, Controlling
Functions of management are a systematic way of doing things. Management
is a process to emphasize that all managers, irrespective of their aptitude or
skill, engage in some inter-related functions to achieve their desired goals.

4 Functions of management are planning, organizing, leading, and controlling

that managers perform to accomplish business goals efficiently.

First, managers must set a plan, organize resources according to the plan,
lead employees to work towards the plan, and control everything by
monitoring and measuring the plan’s effectiveness.

Management process/functions involve 4 basic activities;

1. Planning and Decision Making: Determining Courses of Action,

2. Organizing: Coordinating Activities and Resources,
3. Leading: Managing, Motivating and Directing People,
4. Controlling: Monitoring and Evaluating activities.

1. Planning and Decision Making – Determining Courses of Action

Looking ahead into the future and predicting possible trends or occurrences
that are likely to influence the working situation is the most vital quality and
manager’s job. Planning means setting an organization’s goals and deciding
how best to achieve them.

Planning is decision-making regarding the goals and setting the future

course of action from a set of alternatives to reach them.

The plan helps maintain managerial effectiveness as it works as a guide for

future activities. Selecting goals as well as the paths to achieve them is what
planning involves.

Planning involves selecting missions and objectives and the actions to

achieve them. It requires decision-making or choosing future courses of action
from among alternatives.

In short, planning means determining what the organization’s position and the
situation should be in the future and decide how best to bring about that
situation.

Planning helps maintain managerial effectiveness by guiding future

activities.

For a manager, planning and decision-making require an ability to foresee,

visualize, and look ahead purposefully.

2. Organizing – Coordinating Activities and Resources

Organizing can be defined as the process by which the established plans are
moved closer to realization.

Once a manager sets goals and develops plans, his next managerial
function is organizing human resources and other resources identified as
necessary by the plan to reach the goal.

Organizing involves determining how activities and resources are to be

assembled and coordinated.
The organization can also be defined as an intentionally formalized
structure of positions or roles for people to fill in an organization.

Organizing produces a structure of relationships in an organization, and it is

through these structured relationships, plans are pursued.

Organizing is part of managing, which involves establishing an intentional

structure of roles for people to fill in the organization.

It is intentional in the sense of making sure that all the tasks necessary to
accomplish goals are assigned to people who can do the best.

The purpose of an organizational structure is to create an environment for

the best human performance.

Staffing is related to organizing, and it involves filling and keeping filled the
positions in the organization structure.

This can be done by determining the positions to be filled, identifying the

requirement of the workforce, filling the vacancies, and training employees so
that the assigned tasks are accomplished effectively and efficiently.

3. Leading – Managing, Motivating, and Directing People

The third basic managerial function is leading. It is the skills of influencing

people for a particular purpose or reason. Leading is considered to be the
most important and challenging of all managerial activities.

Leading is influencing or prompting the organization member to work together

with the interest of the organization.

Creating a positive attitude towards the work and goals among the members
of the organization is called leading. It is required as it helps to serve the
objective of effectiveness and efficiency by changing the behavior of the
employees.

Leading involves several deferment processes and activates.

The functions of direction, motivation, communication, and coordination are

considered a part of the leading processor system.

Coordinating is also essential in leading.

Motivating is an essential quality for leading. Motivating is the management
process of influencing people’s behavior based on knowing what cause
and channel sustain human behavior in a particular committed direction.

Efficient managers need to be effective leaders.

Since leadership implies fellowship and people tend to follow those who offer
a means of satisfying their own needs, hopes, and aspirations,
understandably, leading involves motivation leadership styles and
approaches, and communication.

4. Controlling – Monitoring and Evaluating Activities

Monitoring the organizational progress toward goal fulfillment is called

controlling. Thus, monitoring progress is essential to ensure the
achievement of organizational goals.

Controlling is measuring, comparing, finding deviation, and correcting the

organizational activities performed to achieve the goals or objectives. Thus,
controlling consists of activities like; measuring the performance, comparing
with the existing standard and finding the deviations, and correcting the
deviations.

Control activities generally relate to the measurement of achievement or

results of actions taken to attain the goal.

Some means of controlling, like the budget for expenses, inspection records,
and the record of labor hours lost, are generally familiar.

It is rightly said, “planning without controlling is useless.” In short, we can say

the controlling enables the accomplishment of the plan.

Conclusion: Management is a process of interrelated functions.

All the management functions of its process are interrelated and cannot be
skipped.

The management process designs and maintains an environment in which

personnel’s, working together in groups accomplish efficiently selected
aims.

All managers carry out management’s main functions: planning, organizing,

staffing, leading, and controlling. But depending on the skills and position on
an organizational level, the time and labor spent in each function will differ.

Planning, organizing, leading, and controlling are the 4 functions, which work
as a continuous process.

Management Activities which Management has

to do
If you want to become a manager, then one of the common questions you
might have is – What are the management activities I will be asked to carry
out? Or what are the activities of managers in organizations? We answer both
these questions in detail.

A manager wears many hats and does many activities at a time. Some
managers have a team under them whereas others are more strategy and
client focused. Whatever be your management level in an organization, there
are overall 9 Management activities which you will have to do as a Manager.
Let us go through these 9 Activities of Management.

#1 Planning

The first Activity which a manager has to do is to plan. If you have many
things to manage, then it is better that first you sit down and chalk a plan so
that if things go haywire, you are ready.

Managers are people everyone looks up to for directions. So an unplanned

manager is a disaster for the company. Planning has to be done keeping the
future in mind and it is one of the important management activities.

#2 Delegating

Once a plan is ready, then it is not the manager who has to implement the
plans, but his subordinates are the ones responsible to implement the plan.
However, if the task has not been delegated then the work will fail. So a
manager who does not delegate effectively, Is poor in his management
activities.

Many times, employees complain that they were unaware of the tasks they
had to do because they were not communicated by the manager. Thus, to
delegate those tasks and to empower employees is the responsibility of the
management.

#3 Training

One of the most common management activities in any organization is to train

employees. New employees are always made to go through rigorous training
exercises. These training exercises are done not only to improve employee
capabilities but also to bring the employee in sync with the
companies vision and mission and work culture.

If a manager wants to delegate work to employees, then he should take out

time to train the employees as well. This will ensure that the employees know
what is expected of them and will work accordingly.

#4 Motivating
Business is very dynamic in nature and becomes hectic and stressful. At such
times, employees might lose their motivation. It is the job of the manager to
judge this and thereby spend time in motivating the employees.

There are multiple means of motivation in the hands of a manager which

includes the 3 R’s – Remuneration, recognition, and respect. Using these
methods and several other tactics, management can keep their employees
motivated which is one of the major management activities, especially in
larger organizations.

#5 Organizing

Organizing is a very qualitative process more than quantitative. The best

organizer is one who is able to multi-task. Take an Event Planner or an
Orchestra manager as an example. Both these people are managing multiple
things at a time. And all the things run in an organized manner.

Thus, after planning and delegating, organizing becomes one of the crucial
management activities for any management of any firm.
#6 Managing Operations

In the consumer durables and FMCG market, operations can run at a massive
scale. At one end production is happening, at another end sale, and the third
end is taken by finance and collections. Running such huge operations
requires a manager who is sound in operational activities.

In operations, you need to understand the whole process and ensure that the
process is running in a standard manner. One of the management activities is
to form standard operating procedures which can help the organization in
scaling up.

Levels of management:
The term “Levels of Management’ refers to a line of demarcation between
various managerial positions in an organization. The number of levels in
management increases when the size of the business and work force
increases and vice versa. The level of management determines a chain of
command, the amount of authority & status enjoyed by any managerial
position. The levels of management can be classified in three broad
categories:

1. Top level / Administrative level

2. Middle level / Executory
3. Low level / Supervisory / Operative / First-line managers

Managers at all these levels perform different functions. The role of

managers at all the three levels is discussed below:
1. Top Level of Management
It consists of board of directors, chief executive or managing director. The top management is the
ultimate source of authority and it manages goals and policies for an enterprise. It devotes more
time on planning and coordinating functions.

The role of the top management can be summarized as follows -

a. Top management lays down the objectives and broad policies of the enterprise.
b. It issues necessary instructions for preparation of department budgets, procedures,
schedules etc.
c. It prepares strategic plans & policies for the enterprise.
d. It appoints the executive for middle level i.e. departmental managers.
e. It controls & coordinates the activities of all the departments.
f. It is also responsible for maintaining a contact with the outside world.
g. It provides guidance and direction.
h. The top management is also responsible towards the shareholders for the performance
of the enterprise.

2. Middle Level of Management

The branch managers and departmental managers constitute middle level. They are responsible
to the top management for the functioning of their department. They devote more time to
organizational and directional functions. In small organization, there is only one layer of middle
level of management but in big enterprises, there may be senior and junior middle level
management. Their role can be emphasized as -

a. They execute the plans of the organization in accordance with the policies and directives
of the top management.
b. They make plans for the sub-units of the organization.
c. They participate in employment & training of lower level management.
d. They interpret and explain policies from top level management to lower level.
e. They are responsible for coordinating the activities within the division or department.
f. It also sends important reports and other important data to top level management.
 g. They evaluate performance of junior managers.
h. They are also responsible for inspiring lower level managers towards better performance.

3. Lower Level of Management

Lower level is also known as supervisory / operative level of management. It consists of
supervisors, foreman, section officers, superintendent etc. According to R.C. Davis, “Supervisory
management refers to those executives whose work has to be largely with personal oversight and
direction of operative employees”. In other words, they are concerned with direction and
controlling function of management. Their activities include -

a. Assigning of jobs and tasks to various workers.

b. They guide and instruct workers for day to day activities.
c. They are responsible for the quality as well as quantity of production.
d. They are also entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining good relation in the
organization.
e. They communicate workers problems, suggestions, and recommendatory appeals etc to
the higher level and higher level goals and objectives to the workers.
f. They help to solve the grievances of the workers.
g. They supervise & guide the sub-ordinates.
h. They are responsible for providing training to the workers.
i. They arrange necessary materials, machines, tools etc for getting the things done.
j. They prepare periodical reports about the performance of the workers.
k. They ensure discipline in the enterprise.
l. They motivate workers.
m. They are the image builders of the enterprise because they are in direct contact with the
workers.

Management Planning:
Planning begins by anticipating potential problems or opportunities the organization may
encounter. Managers then design strategies to solve current problems, prevent future problems,
or take advantage of opportunities. These strategies serve as the foundation for goals, objectives,
policies, and procedures. Put simply, planning is deciding what needs to be done to achieve
organizational objectives, identifying when and how it will be done, and determining who should
do it. Effective planning requires extensive information about the external business environment
in which the firm competes, as well as its internal environment.

There are four basic types of planning: strategic, tactical, operational, and contingency. Most of
us use these different types of planning in our own lives. Some plans are very broad and long
term (more strategic in nature), such as planning to attend graduate school after earning a
bachelor’s degree. Some plans are much more specific and short term (more operational in
nature), such as planning to spend a few hours in the library this weekend. Your short-term plans
support your long-term plans. If you study now, you have a better chance of achieving some
future goal, such as getting a job interview or attending graduate school. Like you, organizations
tailor their plans to meet the requirements of future situations or events.
Management Controlling:
The fourth key function that managers perform is controlling. Controlling is the process of
assessing the organization’s progress toward accomplishing its goals. It includes monitoring the
implementation of a plan and correcting deviations from that plan

The Control Process

Performance standards are the levels of performance the company wants to attain. These goals
are based on its strategic, tactical, and operational plans. The most effective performance
standards state a measurable behavioral objective that can be achieved in a specified time frame.
For example, the performance objective for the sales division of a company could be stated as
“$200,000 in gross sales for the month of January.” Each individual employee in that division
would also have a specified performance goal. Actual firm, division, or individual performance
can be measured against desired performance standards to see if a gap exists between the desired
level of performance and the actual level of performance. If a performance gap does exist, the
reason for it must be determined and corrective action taken.

Feedback is essential to the process of control. Most companies have a reporting system that
identifies areas where performance standards are not being met. A feedback system helps
managers detect problems before they get out of hand. If a problem exists, the managers take
corrective action. Toyota uses a simple but effective control system on its automobile assembly
lines. Each worker serves as the customer for the process just before his or hers. Each worker is
empowered to act as a quality control inspector. If a part is defective or not installed properly,
the next worker won’t accept it. Any worker can alert the supervisor to a problem by tugging on
a rope that turns on a warning light (i.e., feedback). If the problem isn’t corrected, the worker can
stop the entire assembly line.

Managerial Roles

In carrying out the responsibilities of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling, managers
take on many different roles. A role is a set of behavioral expectations, or a set of activities that a
person is expected to perform. Managers’ roles fall into three basic categories: informational
roles, interpersonal roles, and decisional roles. In an informational role, the manager may act as
an information gatherer, an information distributor, or a spokesperson for the company. A
manager’s interpersonal roles are based on various interactions with other people. Depending on
the situation, a manager may need to act as a figurehead, a company leader, or a liaison. When
acting in a decisional role, a manager may have to think like an entrepreneur, make decisions
about resource allocation, help resolve conflicts, or negotiate compromises.

Managerial Decision Making

In every function performed, role taken on, and set of skills applied, a manager is a
decision maker. Decision-making means choosing among alternatives. Decision-
making occurs in response to the identification of a problem or an opportunity. The
decisions managers make fall into two basic categories: programmed and
nonprogrammed. Programmed decisions are made in response to routine situations
that occur frequently in a variety of settings throughout an organization. For
example, the need to hire new personnel is a common situation for most
 organizations. Therefore, standard procedures for recruitment and selection are
developed and followed in most companies.

Many Roles Managers Play in an Organization

Role
Description
Example
Information Roles
Monitor

 Seeks out and gathers information relevant to the organization

 Finding out about legal restrictions on new product technology

Disseminator

 Provides information where it is needed in the organization

 Providing current production figures to workers on the assembly line

Spokesperson

 Transmits information to people outside the organization

 Representing the company at a shareholders’ meeting

Interpersonal Roles
Figurehead

 Represents the company in a symbolic way

 Cutting the ribbon at ceremony for the opening of a new building

Leader

 Guides and motivates employees to achieve organizational goals

 Helping subordinates to set monthly performance goals

Liaison

 Acts as a go-between among individuals inside and outside the organization

 Representing the retail sales division of the company at a regional sales meeting
 Decisional Roles
Entrepreneur

 Searches out new opportunities and initiates change

 Implementing a new production process using new technology

Disturbance handler

 Handles unexpected events and crises

 Handling a crisis situation such as a fire

Resource allocator

 Designates the use of financial, human, and other organizational resources

 Approving the funds necessary to purchase computer equipment and hire personnel

Negotiator

 Represents the company at negotiating processes

 Participating in salary negotiations with union representatives

Infrequent, unforeseen, or very unusual problems and opportunities require nonprogrammed

decisions by managers. Because these situations are unique and complex, the manager rarely has
a precedent to follow. The earlier example of the Norfolk Southern employee, who had to decide
the best way to salvage a five-mile-long piece of railroad track from the bottom of Lake
Pontchartrain, is an example of a nonprogrammed decision. Likewise, when Hurricane Katrina
was forecast to make landfall, Thomas Oreck, then CEO of the vacuum manufacturer that bears
his name, had to make a series of nonprogrammed decisions. Oreck’s corporate headquarters
were in New Orleans, and its primary manufacturing facility was in Long Beach, Mississippi.
Before the storm hit, Oreck transferred its computer systems and call-center operations to backup
locations in Colorado and planned to move headquarters to Long Beach. The storm, however,
brutally hit both locations. Oreck executives began searching for lost employees, tracking down
generators, assembling temporary housing for workers, and making deals with UPS to begin
distributing its product (UPS brought food and water to Oreck from Atlanta and took vacuums
back to the company’s distribution center there). All of these decisions were made in the middle
of a very challenging crisis environment.

Whether a decision is programmed or non-programmed, managers typically follow five steps in

the decision-making process:
1. Recognize or define the problem or opportunity. Although it is more common to focus on problems
because of their obvious negative effects, managers who do not take advantage of new opportunities
may lose competitive advantage to other firms.
2. Gather information so as to identify alternative solutions or actions.
3. Select one or more alternatives after evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of each possibility.
4. Put the chosen alternative into action.
5. Gather information to obtain feedback on the effectiveness of the chosen plan.

It can be easy (and dangerous) for managers to get stuck at any stage of the decision-making
process. For example, entrepreneurs can become paralyzed evaluating the options. For the Gabby
Slome, the cofounder of natural pet food maker Ollie, the idea for starting the company came
after her rescue dog began having trouble digesting store-bought pet food after living on scraps.
Slome decided that the pet food industry, a $30 billion a year business, was ripe for a natural
food alternative. She laments, however, that she let perfect be the enemy of the very good by
indulging in “analysis paralysis.”

The Decision-Making Process

Strategic Management:

Strategic management is the ongoing planning, monitoring, analysis and

assessment of all necessities an organization...

In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of
the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based
on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which
the organization operates. Strategic management provides overall direction to an enterprise and
involves specifying the organization's objectives, developing policies and plans to achieve those
objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the plans. Academics and practicing
managers have developed numerous models and frameworks to assist in strategic decision-making
in the context of complex environments and competitive dynamics. Strategic management is not
static in nature; the models often include a feedback loop to monitor execution and to inform the next
round of planning.
Michael Porter identifies three principles underlying strategy

 creating a "unique and valuable [market] position"

 making trade-offs by choosing "what not to do"
 creating "fit" by aligning company activities with one another to support the chosen strategy
Corporate strategy involves answering a key question from a portfolio perspective: "What business
should we be in?" Business strategy involves answering the question: "How shall we compete in
this business?
Management theory and practice often make a distinction between strategic management
and operational management, with operational management concerned primarily with
improving efficiency and controlling costs within the boundaries set by the organization's strategy

There are five types of strategies:

 Strategy as plan – a directed course of action to achieve an intended set of goals; similar to the
strategic planning concept;
 Strategy as pattern – a consistent pattern of past behavior, with a strategy realized over time
rather than planned or intended. Where the realized pattern was different from the intent, he
referred to the strategy as emergent;
 Strategy as position – locating brands, products, or companies within the market, based on the
conceptual framework of consumers or other stakeholders; a strategy determined primarily by
factors outside the firm;
 Strategy as ploy – a specific maneuver intended to outwit a competitor; and
 Strategy as perspective – executing strategy based on a "theory of the business" or natural
extension of the mindset or ideological perspective of the organization.

Features of Strategy

1. Strategy is Significant because it is not possible to foresee the future. Without a perfect foresight,
the firms must be ready to deal with the uncertain events which constitute the business
environment.
 2. Strategy deals with long term developments rather than routine operations, i.e. it deals with
probability of innovations or new products, new methods of productions, or new markets to be
developed in future.
3. Strategy is created to take into account the probable behavior of customers and competitors.
Strategies dealing with employees will predict the employee behavior.

ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the integrated management of main business processes,
often in real time and mediated by software and technology. ERP is usually referred to as a category
of business management software—typically a suite of integrated applications—that an organization
can use to collect, store, manage, and interpret data from many business activities. ERP Systems
can be local based or Cloud-based. Cloud-based applications have grown in recent years due to
information being readily available from any location with internet access.
ERP provides an integrated and continuously updated view of core business processes using
common databases maintained by a database management system. ERP systems track business
resources—cash, raw materials, production capacity—and the status of business commitments:
orders, purchase orders, and payroll. The applications that make up the system share data across
various departments (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc.) that provide the
data.[1] ERP facilitates information flow between all business functions and manages connections to
outside stakeholders.
Enterprise system software is a multibillion-dollar industry that produces components supporting a
variety of business functions. Though early ERP systems focused on large enterprises, smaller
enterprises increasingly use ERP systems.
The ERP system integrates varied organizational systems and facilitates error-free transactions and
production, thereby enhancing the organization's efficiency. However, developing an ERP system
differs from traditional system development.[4] ERP systems run on a variety of computer
hardware and network configurations, typically using a database as an information repository
ERP systems typically include the following characteristics:

 An integrated system
 Operates in (or near) real time
 A common database that supports all the applications
 A consistent look and feel across modules
 Installation of the system with elaborate application/data integration by the Information
Technology (IT) department, provided the implementation is not done in small steps
 Deployment options include: on-premises, cloud hosted, or SaaS
Advantages:
The most fundamental advantage of ERP is that the integration of a myriad of business processes
saves time and expense. Management can make decisions faster and with fewer errors. Data
becomes visible across the organization. Tasks that benefit from this integration include:

 Sales forecasting, which allows inventory optimization.

 Chronological history of every transaction through relevant data compilation in every area of
operation.
 Order tracking, from acceptance through fulfillment
 Revenue tracking, from invoice through cash receipt
 Matching purchase orders (what was ordered), inventory receipts (what arrived),
and costing (what the vendor invoiced)
ERP systems centralize business data, which:

 Eliminates the need to synchronize changes between multiple systems—consolidation of

finance, marketing, sales, human resource, and manufacturing applications
 Brings legitimacy and transparency to each bit of statistical data
 Facilitates standard product naming/coding
 Provides a comprehensive enterprise view (no "islands of information"), making real–time
information available to management anywhere, anytime to make proper decisions
 Protects sensitive data by consolidating multiple security systems into a single structure
Benefits
 ERP creates a more agile company that adapts better to change. It also makes a company more
flexible and less rigidly structured so organization components operate more cohesively,
enhancing the business—internally and externally.
 ERP can improve data security in a closed environment. A common control system, such as the
kind offered by ERP systems, allows organizations the ability to more easily ensure key
company data is not compromised. This changes, however, with a more open environment,
requiring further scrutiny of ERP security features and internal company policies regarding
security.
 ERP provides increased opportunities for collaboration. Data takes many forms in the modern
enterprise, including documents, files, forms, audio and video, and emails. Often, each data
medium has its own mechanism for allowing collaboration. ERP provides a collaborative
platform that lets employees spend more time collaborating on content rather than mastering the
learning curve of communicating in various formats across distributed systems.[57]
 ERP offers many benefits such as standardization of common processes, one integrated
system, standardized reporting, improved key performance indicators (KPI), and access to
common data. One of the key benefits of ERP; the concept of integrated system, is often
misinterpreted by the business. ERP is a centralized system that provides tight integration with
all major enterprise functions be it HR, planning, procurement, sales, customer relations, finance
or analytics, as well to other connected application functions. In that sense ERP could be
described as "Centralized Integrated Enterprise System (CIES)”
Disadvantages:
 Customization can be problematic. Compared to the best-of-breed approach, ERP can be seen
as meeting an organization's lowest common denominator needs, forcing the organization to find
workarounds to meet unique demands.
 Re-engineering business processes to fit the ERP system may damage competitiveness or
divert focus from other critical activities.
 ERP can cost more than less integrated or less comprehensive solutions.
 High ERP switching costs can increase the ERP vendor's negotiating power, which can increase
support, maintenance, and upgrade expenses.
 Overcoming resistance to sharing sensitive information between departments can divert
management attention.
 Integration of truly independent businesses can create unnecessary dependencies.
 Extensive training requirements take resources from daily operations.
 Harmonization of ERP systems can be a mammoth task (especially for big companies) and
requires a lot of time, planning, and money.
  Critical challenges include disbanding the project team very quickly after implementation,
interface issues, lack of proper testing, time zone limitations, stress, offshoring, people's
resistance to change, a short hyper-care period, and data cleansing.

The business value of ERP

It’s impossible to ignore the impact of ERP in today’s business world. As enterprise data and
processes are corralled into ERP systems, businesses can align separate departments and
improve workflows, resulting in significant bottom-line savings. Examples of specific business
benefits include:
 Improved business insight from real-time information generated by reports
 Lower operational costs through streamlined business processes and best practices
 Enhanced collaboration from users sharing data in contracts, requisitions, and purchase
orders
 Improved efficiency through a common user experience across many business functions
and well-defined business processes
 Consistent infrastructure from the back office to the front office, with all business activities
having the same look and feel
 Higher user-adoption rates from a common user experience and design
 Reduced risk through improved data integrity and financial controls
 Lower management and operational costs through uniform and integrated systems

Artificial Intelligence:
WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a wide-ranging branch of computer science concerned with building
smart machines capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence.

WHAT ARE THE FOUR TYPES OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?

 Reactive Machines
 Limited Memory
 Theory of Mind
 Self-Awareness
WHAT ARE EXAMPLES OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?
 Siri, Alexa and other smart assistants
 Self-driving cars
 Robo-advisors
 Conversational bots
 Email spam filters
 Netflix's recommendations
Norvig and Russell go on to explore four different approaches that have
historically defined the field of AI:

1. Thinking humanly
2. Thinking rationally
3. Acting humanly
4. Acting rationally
The first two ideas concern thought processes and reasoning, while the others
deal with behavior. Norvig and Russell focus particularly on rational agents
that act to achieve the best outcome, noting "all the skills needed for the
Turing Test also allow an agent to act rationally."

Patrick Winston, the Ford professor of artificial intelligence and computer

science at MIT, defines AI as "algorithms enabled by constraints, exposed by
representations that support models targeted at loops that tie thinking,
perception and action together."
While these definitions may seem abstract to the average person, they help
focus the field as an area of computer science and provide a blueprint for
infusing machines and programs with machine learning and other subsets of
artificial intelligence.

Limited Memory
Limited memory artificial intelligence has the ability to store previous data
and predictions when gathering information and weighing potential decisions
— essentially looking into the past for clues on what may come next. Limited
memory artificial intelligence is more complex and presents greater
possibilities than reactive machines.

Limited memory AI is created when a team continuously trains a model in

how to analyze and utilize new data or an AI environment is built so models
can be automatically trained and renewed. When utilizing limited memory AI
in machine learning, six steps must be followed: Training data must be
created, the machine learning model must be created, the model must be able
to make predictions, the model must be able to receive human or
environmental feedback, that feedback must be stored as data, and these these
steps must be reiterated as a cycle.

There are three major machine learning models that utilize limited memory
artificial intelligence:

 Reinforcement learning, which learns to make better predictions

through repeated trial-and-error.
 Long Short Term Memory (LSTM), which utilizes past data to help
predict the next item in a sequence. LTSMs view more recent
information as most important when making predictions and
discounts data from further in the past, though still utilizing it to
form conclusions
 Evolutionary Generative Adversarial Networks (E-GAN), which
evolves over time, growing to explore slightly modified paths
based off of previous experiences with every new decision. This
model is constantly in pursuit of a better path and utilizes
simulations and statistics, or chance, to predict outcomes
throughout its evolutionary mutation cycle.

Theory of Mind
Theory of Mind is just that — theoretical. We have not yet achieved the
technological and scientific capabilities necessary to reach this next level of
artificial intelligence.

The concept is based on the psychological premise of understanding that

other living things have thoughts and emotions that affect the behavior of
one’s self. In terms of AI machines, this would mean that AI could
comprehend how humans, animals and other machines feel and make
decisions through self-reflection and determination, and then will utilize that
information to make decisions of their own. Essentially, machines would
have to be able to grasp and process the concept of “mind,” the fluctuations
of emotions in decision making and a litany of other psychological concepts
in real time, creating a two-way relationship between people and artificial
intelligence.
 Self-awareness
Once Theory of Mind can be established in artificial intelligence, sometime
well into the future, the final step will be for AI to become self-aware. This
kind of artificial intelligence possesses human-level consciousness and
understands its own existence in the world, as well as the presence and
emotional state of others. It would be able to understand what others may
need based on not just what they communicate to them but how they
communicate it.

Artificial General Intelligence

The creation of a machine with human-level intelligence that can be applied
to any task is the Holy Grail for many AI researchers, but the quest for AGI
has been fraught with difficulty.

The search for a "universal algorithm for learning and acting in any
environment," isn't new, but time hasn't eased the difficulty of essentially
creating a machine with a full set of cognitive abilities.

AGI has long been the muse of dystopian science fiction, in which super-
intelligent robots overrun humanity, but experts agree it's not something we
need to worry about anytime soon.

7 Dangerous Risks of
Artificial Intelligence
RISKS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
 Automation-spurred job loss
 Privacy violations
 'Deepfakes'
 Algorithmic bias caused by bad data
 Socioeconomic inequality
 Market volatility
 Weapons automatization
Is Artificial Intelligence A Threat?
As AI grows more sophisticated and ubiquitous, the voices warning against
its current and future pitfalls grow louder. Whether it's the
increasing automation of certain jobs, gender and racial bias issues stemming
from outdated information sources or autonomous weapons that operate
without human oversight (to name just a few), unease abounds on a number
of fronts. And we’re still in the very early stages.

IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE A THREAT?

The tech community has long-debated the threats posed by artificial intelligence. Automation of
jobs, the spread of fake news and a dangerous arms race of AI-powered weaponry have been
proposed as a few of the biggest dangers posed by AI.

Destructive superintelligence — aka artificial general intelligence that’s

created by humans and escapes our control to wreak havoc — is in a category
of its own. It’s also something that might or might not come to fruition
(theories vary), so at this point it’s less risk than hypothetical threat — and
ever-looming source of existential dread.

Mitigating the risks of AI

Many believe the only way to prevent or at least temper the most malicious
AI from wreaking havoc is some sort of regulation.

“I am not normally an advocate of regulation and oversight — I think one

should generally err on the side of minimizing those things — but this is a
case where you have a very serious danger to the public,” Musk said at
SXSW.

“It needs to be a public body that has insight and then oversight to confirm
that everyone is developing AI safely. This is extremely important.”

Ford agrees — with a caveat. Regulation of AI implementation is fine, he

said
Ford agrees — with a caveat. Regulation of AI implementation is fine, he
said, but not of the research itself.
“You regulate the way AI is used,” he said, “but you don’t hold back
progress in basic technology. I think that would be wrong-headed and
potentially dangerous.”

Toyota Woven City:

Woven City is an opportunity to, “come together to heal, to grow, to
learn, Woven City is an opportunity to, “come together to heal, to
grow, to learn, and to create new possibilities for a collective future.”
Click to learn more about the vision directly from Akio Toyoda,
president of Toyota Motor Corporation, and members of the Woven
City team!d to create new possibilities for a collective future.” Click to
learn more about the vision directly from Akio Toyoda, president of
Toyota Motor Corporation, and members of the Woven City team!

Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, is building the world’s first “smart city”
in Japan.

Woven City, located near the base of Mt. Fuji, will be a 175-acre, fully
autonomous community designed to test new technologies like automated
driving, robotics, and artificial intelligence (AI) in a real-world environment.

The prototype "city of the future" will be built from the ground up on the site
of the former Higashi-Fuji Plant, which drew its decades-long car-making
history to a close in December 2020.

Woven City as a Living Laboratory

The idea of Woven City is that all the people, buildings, and vehicles can
communicate with each other via real-time data and embedded sensors. This
connectivity will allow Toyota to test out how advanced AI technology works
in the real world, with minimal risk.

The city's fully connected ecosystem is powered by clean energy sources like
solar energy, hydrogen fuel cells, and geothermal energy.
Woven City will have three types of streets interwoven with one other on the
ground level: one dedicated to pedestrians, one for people with personal
mobility vehicles, and one for automated driving.

Residents of this city of the future will be transported by zero-emissions,

autonomous cars, and Toyota will likely use the e-pallet autonomous delivery
vehicles the company designed for the Tokyo Olympics to transport goods
throughout the city.

Cities Custom-Built for Autonomous Cars

Experts predict that more than 33 million autonomous vehicles will be sold
globally in 2040 – but today, even the most advanced self-driving cars still
require some degree of human supervision.

For the full adoption of autonomous cars, cities need to be fully wired to
funnel massive amounts of data to the vehicles. Sensors and cameras scattered
throughout roads, traffic lights, and buildings can supply that data to cars,
including everything from weather patterns to cyclist behaviors. Once
autonomous cars have that data, they can process it and use it to safely
navigate the city.

Right now, modern-day cities aren't set up this way – and that's why Toyota is
building its sensor-laden Woven City from the ground up. The new
community will allow the car company to try out a completely new city
infrastructure so they can create safer systems.

Toyota broke ground on Woven City in February 2021. The city will eventually
have a population of over 2,000 researchers and residents who will test and
develop a range of technologies.

Japanese manufacturing giant Toyota has begun work

on a new smart city near the base of Mount Fuji, which
will feature interwoven streets and prioritised space for
pedestrians and autonomous cars.
Ground was broken at the site of the new “Woven
City” this week, where the former Higashi-Fuji Plant site
of Toyota Motor East Japan is being transformed into a
new smart city.
According to the developers, the new city will feature
three types of street all linked together. One will be
designated for self-driving vehicles only, while the other
two will be set aside for pedestrians and pedestrians
with mobility vehicles respectively. Underground routes
will enable good to be delivered without disrupting other
road users.
According to Metro, driverless cars (specifically
Toyota’s e-Palettes) will make up the majority of the
project’s transport infrastructure, providing ride-sharing
capabilities, as well as acting as delivery vehicles and
even mobile hotels.
In addition, the streets are to be covered with sensors
in order to facilitate the autonomous vehicles, which
could perform tasks such as taking out rubbish and
even reminding residents of upcoming doctor’s
appointments.
nitially, the Woven City will house around 360
residents, mainly senior citizens, though there are
plans to increase the population to 2,000. This will
mainly be made up of Toyota employees, according to
the developers.
“The Woven City project officially starts today,” said
Toyota President Akio Toyoda. “Taking action as one
has decided is never an easy task.
“I must express my deepest gratitude to all who have
provided their whole-hearted support and cooperation
to the project through today. The unwavering themes of
the Woven City are ‘human-centered,’ ‘a living
laboratory’ and ‘ever-evolving.’
“Together with the support of our project partners, we
will take on the challenge of creating a future where
people of diverse backgrounds are able to live happily.”