Chapter 2 MIS

Sumamry

1.   Define and describe business processes and their relationship to information systems.

A business process is a logically related set of activities that define how specific business tasks are performed, and a business can be viewed as a collection of business processes. Business processes are concrete workflows of material, information, and knowledge. Information systems can help organizations achieve greater efficiencies by automating parts of these processes or by helping organizations redesign and streamline them. Firms can become more flexible and efficient by coordinating their business processes closely, and, in some cases, integrating these processes so they are focused on efficient management of resources and customer service.

2.   Describe the information systems supporting the major business functions: sales and     marketing, manufacturing and production, finance and accounting, and human resources.

At each level of the organization, information systems support the major functional areas of the business. Sales and marketing systems help the firm identify customers for the firm’s products or services, develop products and services to meet customers’ needs, promote the products and services, sell the products and services, and provide ongoing customer support. Manufacturing and production systems deal with the planning, development, and production of products or services, and control the flow of production. Finance and accounting systems keep track of the firm’s financial assets and fund flows. Human resources systems maintain employee records; track employee skills, job performance, and training; and support planning for employee compensation and career development.

3.         Evaluate the role played by systems serving the various levels of management in a business and their relationship to each other.

There are four major types of information systems in contemporary organizations serving operational, middle, and senior management. Systems serving operational management are transaction processing systems (TPS), such as payroll or order processing, that track the flow of the daily routine transactions necessary to conduct business. MIS and DSS provide middle management with reports and access to the organization’s current performance and historical records. Most MIS reports condense information from TPS and are not highly analytical. DSS support management decisions when these decisions are unique, rapidly changing, and not specified easily in advance. They have more advanced analytical models and data analysis capabilities than MIS and often draw on information from external as well as internal sources. ESS support senior management by providing data of greatest importance to senior management decision makers, often in the form of graphs and charts delivered via portals. They have limited analytical capabilities but can draw on sophisticated graphics software and many sources of internal and external information.

4.         Explain how enterprise applications and intranets promote business process integration and improve organizational performance.

Enterprise applications, such as enterprise systems, supply chain management systems, customer relationship management systems, and knowledge management systems are designed to support organization-wide process coordination and integration so that the organization can operate efficiently. They span multiple functions and business processes and may be tied to the business processes of other organizations. Enterprise systems integrate the key internal business processes of a firm into a single software system so that information can flow throughout the organization, improve coordination, efficiency, and decision making. Supply chain management systems help the firm manage its relationship with suppliers to optimize the planning, sourcing, manufacturing, and delivery of products and services. Customer relationship management uses information systems to coordinate all of the business processes surrounding the firm’s interactions with its customers to optimize firm revenue and customer satisfaction. Knowledge management systems enable firms to optimize the creation, sharing, and distribution of knowledge to improve business processes and management decisions.

Intranets and extranets use Internet technology and standards to assemble information from various systems and present it to the user in a Web page format. Extranets make portions of private corporate intranets available to outsiders.

5.   Assess the role of the information systems function in a business.

The information systems department is the formal organizational unit responsible for information technology services. The information systems department is responsible for maintaining the hardware, software, data storage, and networks that comprise the firm’s IT infrastructure. The information systems department consists of specialists, such as programmers, systems analysts, project leaders, and information systems managers, and is often headed by a CIO.

There are alternative ways of organizing the IT function within a firm. A very small company will not have a formal information systems group. Large companies will have a separate information systems department, which may be organized along several different lines, depending on the nature and interests of the firm. Each functional area of the business may have its own information systems department, overseen by a corporate CIO. The information systems function may be run as a separate department similar to the other functional departments. A third arrangement found in very large firms with multiple divisions and product lines is to have an information systems department for each division reporting to a high-level central information systems group and CIO.

Key Terms

Chief information officer (CIO) — senior manager in charge of the information systems function in the firm.

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems — business and technology discipline that uses information systems to coordinate all of the business processes surrounding the firm’s interactions with its customers in sales, marketing, and service.

Decision-support systems (DSS) — information systems at the organization’s management level that combine data and sophisticated analytical models or data analysis tools to support semistructured and unstructured decision making. 

Electronic business (e-business) — the use of the Internet and digital technology to execute all the business processes in the enterprise. Includes e-commerce as well as processes for the internal management of the firm and for coordination with suppliers and other business partners.

Electronic commerce (e-commerce) — the process of buying and selling goods and services electronically, involving transactions using the Internet, networks, and other digital technologies.

End users — representative of departments outside the information systems group for whom applications are developed.

Enterprise applications — a system that can coordinate activities, decisions, and knowledge across many different functions, levels, and business management systems, and knowledge management systems.

Enterprise systems — integrated enterprise-wide information systems that coordinate key internal processes of the firm.

Executive support systems (ESS) — information systems at the organization’s strategic level designed to address unstructured decision making through advanced graphics and communications.

Finance and accounting information systems — systems used to keep track of the firm’s financial assets and fund flows.

Human resources information systems — systems that maintain employee records, track employee skills, job performance, and training; and support planning for employee compensation and career development.

Information systems department — the formal organizational unit that is responsible for the information systems function in the organization.

Information systems managers — leaders of the various specialists in the information systems department.

Interorganizational system — information systems that automate the flow of information across organizational boundaries and link a company to its customers, distributors, or suppliers.

Knowledge management systems (KMS) — systems that support the creation, capture, storage, and dissemination of firm expertise and knowledge. 

Management information systems (MIS) — the study of information systems focusing on their use in business and management.

Manufacturing and production information systems — systems that deal with the planning, development, and production of products and services and with controlling the flow of production.

Portal — Web interface for presenting integrated personalized content from a variety of sources. Also refers to a Web site service that provides an initial point of entry to the Web.

Programmers — highly trained technical specialists who write computer software instructions.

Sales and marketing information systems — systems that help the firm identify customers for the firm’s products or services, develop products and services to meet their needs, promote these products and services, sell the products and services, and provide ongoing customer support.

Supply chain management (SCM) systems — information systems that automate the flow of information between a firm and its suppliers to optimize the planning, sourcing, manufacturing, and delivery of products and services.

Systems analysts — the analysis of a problem that the organization will try to solve with an information system.

Transaction processing systems (TPS) — computerized systems that perform and record the daily routine transactions necessary to conduct the business; they serve the organization’s operational level.

Review Questions

1.     What are business processes? What role do they play in organizations? How are they enhanced by information systems?

A business is a formal organization whose aim is to produce products or provide services for a profit.  Every business, large or small, has these four major functions:  Manufacturing and production; sales and marketing; human resources; and finance and accounting.

2.     List and describe the information systems serving each of the major functional areas of a business.

3.     A business process is a logically related set of activities that define how specific business tasks are performed. 

4.     Business processes for the manufacturing and production area include: product assembling, quality checking, and producing bills of materials.

5.     For the sales and marketing area, business processes include identifying customers, making customers aware of the product, and selling the product.

6.     For finance and accounting, business processes includes paying creditors, creating financial statements, and managing cash accounts.

7.     For human resources, business processes include hiring employees, evaluating employees’ job performance, and enrolling employees in benefits plans.

8.     What are the characteristics of transaction processing systems? What role do they play in a business?

Transaction processing systems (TPS) are computerized systems that perform and record the daily routine transactions necessary to conduct the business; they serve the organization’s operational level. The principal purpose of systems at this level is to answer routine questions and to track the flow of transactions through the organization.

·                         At the operational level, tasks, resources, and goals are predefined and highly structured.

·       Managers need TPS to monitor the status of internal operations and the firm’s relations with the external environment.

·       TPS are also major producers of information for the other types of systems.

·       Transaction processing systems are often so central to a business that TPS failure for a few hours can lead to a firm’s demise and perhaps that of other firms linked to it.

9.     What are the characteristics of MIS? How do MIS differ from TPS? From DSS?

Middle management needs systems to help with monitoring, controlling, decision-making, and administrative activities.

·       MIS provide middle managers with reports on the organization’s current performance..

·       MIS summarize and report the company’s basic operations using data supplied by TPSs.

·       MIS serve managers primarily interested in weekly, monthly, and yearly results, although some MIS enable managers to drill down to see daily or hourly data if required.

·       MIS generally provide answers to routine questions that have been specified in advance and have a predefined procedure for answering them.

·       MIS systems generally are not flexible and have little analytical capability.

·       Most MIS use simple routines, such as summaries and comparisons, as opposed to sophisticated mathematical models or statistical techniques.

MIS differs from TPS in that MIS deals with summarized and compressed data from the TPS and sometimes analysis of that summarized data.

While MIS have an internal orientation, DSS will often use data from external sources, as well as data from TPS and MIS. DSS supports “right now” analysis rather than the long-term structured analysis of MIS. MIS are generally not flexible and provide little analytical capabilities. In contrast, DSS are designed for analytical purposes and are flexible.

10.  Why are organizations trying to integrate their business processes? What are the four key enterprise applications?

An organization operates in an ever-increasing competitive and global environment,

The four key enterprise applications are:

·       enterprise systems

·       supply chain management systems

·                          customer relationship management systems

·       knowledge management systems

11.  What are enterprise systems? How do they benefit businesses?

Enterprise systems integrate the key business processes of an organization into a single central data repository. This makes it possible for information that was previously fragmented in different systems to be shared across the firm and for different parts of the business to work more closely together. This changes the work flow of an organization:

12.  What is supply chain management? How do they benefit businesses?

Supply chain management systems help businesses manage relationships with their suppliers. Objective of SCM: get the right amount of products from the companies’ source to their point of consumption with the least amount of time and with the lowest cost. SCM is important to a business because through its efficiency it can coordinate, schedule, and control the delivery of products and services to customers.

Business benefits include:

·       Decide when and what to produce, store, and move

·       Rapidly communicate orders

·       Track the status of orders

·       Check inventory availability and monitor inventory levels

·       Reduce inventory, transportation, and warehousing costs

·       Track shipments

·       Plan production based on actual customer demand

·       Rapidly communicate changes in product design

13.  What are customer relationship management systems? How do they benefit businesses?

Customer relationship management systems enable a business to better manage its relationships with existing and potential customers.  With the growth of the Web, potential customers can easily comparison shop for retail and wholesale goods and even raw materials, so treating customers better has become very important.

14.  What is the role of knowledge management systems in the enterprise?

Knowledge management systems enable organizations to better manage processes for capturing and applying knowledge and expertise

·  KMS support processes for acquiring, storing, distributing, and applying knowledge, as well as processes for creating new knowledge and integrating it into the organization.

·  KMS include enterprise-wide systems for managing and distributing documents, graphics, and other digital knowledge objects; systems for creating corporate knowledge directories of employees with special areas of expertise; office systems for distributing knowledge and information; and knowledge work systems to facilitate knowledge creation.

·  KMS use intelligent techniques that codify knowledge and experience for use by other members of the organization and tools for knowledge discovery that recognize patterns and important relationships in large pools of data.

15.  Describe how the information systems function supports a business. What roles are played by programmers, systems analysts, information systems managers, and the chief information officer (CIO)?

information systems department is responsible for maintaining the hardware, software, data storage, and networks that comprise the firm’s IT infrastructure.The information systems department consists of specialists, such as programmers, systems analysts, project leaders, and information systems managers.

Programmers are highly trained technical specialists who write the software instructions for computers.

Systems analysts constitute the principal liaisons between the information systems groups and the rest of the organization. The systems analyst’s job is to translate business problems and requirements into information requirements and systems.

Information systems managers are leaders of teams of programmers and analysts, project managers, physical facility managers, telecommunications mangers, or database specialists.

Chief information officer (CIO) is a senior manager who oversees the use of information technology in the firm.

16.  Describe alternative ways of organizing the information systems function in a business.

There are alternative ways of organizing the IT function within a firm.

·       A very small company will not have a formal information systems group.

·       Large companies will have a separate information systems department, which may be organized along several different lines, depending on the nature and interests of the firm.

·       Decentralized arrangement where each functional area of the business has its own information systems department, overseen by a corporate CIO.

·       The information systems function may be run as a separate department similar to the other functional departments.

·       Very large firms with multiple divisions and product lines may choose to have an information systems department for each division reporting to a high-level central information systems group and CIO.