Laudon & Laudon Chapter 11: Improving Decision Making and Managing Knowledge

List and explain the stages of decision-making

1. Intelligence - Discover problems, identify why they occur, understand problems in firm 2. Design - Identify workable solutions and explore them with model testing. 3. Choice - Choose the best decision from a group of alternatives. 4. Implementation - Test the final decision in the firm and monitor its effectiveness.

Neural Network

A computer algorithm system based on the human brain and using connections to link questions and answers in the fastest way. Foundation of machine learning systems.

Genetic Algorithms

Algorithms which performs actions based on learning techniques which mimic evolutionary processes, like natural selection or mutation.

Group Decision Support Systems

An interactive computer-based system for facilitating the solution of unstructured problems by a set of decision makers working together as a group in the same location or in different locations. Provide tools and technologies geared explicitly toward group decision making.

Intelligent Agents

Artificial intelligence programs which parse the web to provide optimized search results or data analysis. Mostly used in shopping and news formats.

Case based reasoning

Artificial intelligence technology that represents knowledge as a database of cases and solutions.

Business Performance Management

Attempts to systematically translate a firm's strategies (e.g., differentiation, low-cost producer, market share growth, and scope of operation) into operational targets. Measured with information drawn from the firm's enterprise database systems.

What is the difference between Power Users and Casual Users of BI?

Casual users are consumers of BI output, while intense power users are the producers of reports, new analyses, models, and forecasts.

CAD

Computer Aided Drafting systems improve the quality and precision of product design by performing much of the design and testing work on the computer. Process of building a digital model of a system saves time and money and the process can be repeated.

What are the 6 elements of the Business Intelligence environment

Data from the business Intelligence infrastructure Analytics toolset Managerial users and methods Delivery platform User interface.

What are analytic functionalities provided by BI

Data mining of text is the most common to create databases based on raw information about customers and business processes Data mining of web history, to predict potential customers and their spending habits or interests.

Pivot tables

Data processing tool that allows the user to organize a database by sorting, searching, and manipulating data based on queries or algorithms. Turns data into information.

Enterprise Knowledge management systems

General purpose, firm-wide systems that collect, store, distribute, and apply digital content and knowledge.

Prediction Analytics

Get information from data and use it to predict patterns and trends in the future. Statistically should be 65-90 percent accurate.

Information Systems for groups

Group information systems increase meeting size and productivity because individuals contribute simultaneously rather than one at a time. Promotes collaboration by guaranteeing anonymity so that attendees focus on evaluating the ideas themselves without fear of personally being criticized or of having their ideas rejected based on the contributor.

Enterprise Content Management Systems

Help organizations manage structured and semistructured knowledge, providing corporate repositories of documents, reports, presentations, and best practices and capabilities for collecting and organizing e-mail and graphic objects.

Knowledge Work systems and requirements

Information systems that aid knowledge workers in the creation and integration of new knowledge into the organization.

What are the 4 stages of decision making?

Intelligence Design Choice Implementation

Business benefits of intelligent techniques in decision making

Intelligent Techniques aid decision makers by taking individual and collective knowledge, discovering patterns and behaviors in large quantities of data, and generating solutions to problems that are too large and complex for human beings to solve on their own

Do intelligent agents replace people or not? Explain. How about in CRM or SCM?

Intelligent agents are designed to operate without any human interference. There are some systems that have replaced humans with intelligent agents but not all people can be replaced. For example Siri on the iPhone has replaced human phone operators. Other examples exist such as automated phone calling systems or shopping bots.

Expert System

Knowledge-intensive computer program that captures the expertise of a human in limited domains of knowledge.

Balance Scorecard

Measures financial, business process, customers, learning and growth. Key performance indicators are used to measure each dimension.

Fuzzy logic

Non-precise logic for decisions that need a degree of wiggle room, like thermostats turning temperature up or down at intervals.

Types of BI users and types of associated BI systems

Over 80 percent of the audience for BI consists of casual users who rely largely on production reports. Senior executives tend to use BI to monitor firm activities using visual interfaces like dashboards and scorecards. Middle managers and analysts are much more likely to be immersed in the data and software, entering queries and slicing and dicing the data along different dimensions. Operational employees will, along with customers and suppliers, be looking mostly at prepackaged reports.

Sensitivity Analysis

Predict a range of outcomes when one or more variables are changed multiple times helps decision makers with goal seeking, such as what if employee wages are lowered.

Business Intelligence (BI)

Process of using tools for consolidating, analyzing, and providing access to data to improve decision making. Includes software, online analytical processing, data mining.

Business analytics

The data brought by using business intelligence tools. Aims to capitalize on trends in the markets or optimize processes within the organization.

Knowledge management and value

The set of processes developed in an organization to create, gather, store, maintain, and disseminate the firm's knowledge.

Location Analytics

Using data from mobile phones, computer IP addresses, and maps to tie location data to utility. Ex: Google Maps shows traffic based on GPS movement of phones in cars.

Structured decisions

are repetitive and routine, and involve a decision-making process that has been used before

Unstructured decisions

non-routine, and not based off any other previously made decision structure.

Semi-structured decisions

only part of a decision has an obvious answer, and some previous knowledge can be applied