MIS 390 Lesson 1
What are the strategic business objectives of information systems?
Specifically, business firms invest heavily in information systems to achieve six strategic business objectives: operational excellence, business models, customer and supplier intimacy, improved decision making, competitive advantage, and survival.
What academic disciplines are used to study information systems?
computer science, operations research, sociology, economics, psychology, management science
How do data and information differ?
data are simply facts; information is a body of facts in a format suitable for decision making
What are the three main factors impacting information systems?
Management, Organization, Technology
How is networking and telecommunications technology defined?
Networking and telecommunications technology, consisting of both phys-ical devices and software, links the various pieces of hardware and transfers data from one physical location to another.
What are three major new information system trends?
New information system trends include the emerging mobile digital platform, big data, and cloud computing.
How is computer hardware defined?
Computer hardware is the physical equipment used for input, processing, and output activities in an information system. It consists of the following: computers of various sizes and shapes (including mobile handheld devices); various input, output, and storage devices; and telecommunications devices that link computers together.
What is computer literacy?
Computer literacy, in contrast to information systems literacy, focuses primarily on knowledge of information technology.
How does computer science contribute to an understanding of information systems?
Computer science is concerned with establishing theories of computability, methods of computation, and methods of efficient data storage and access.
How is computer software defined?
Computer software consists of the detailed, preprogrammed instructions that control and coordinate the computer hardware components in an information system.
How is data management technology defined?
Data management technology consists of the software governing the organization of data on physical storage media.
What are examples of business processes?
Developing a new product, generating and fulfilling an order, creating a marketing plan, and hiring an employee are examples of business processes, and the ways organizations accomplish their business processes can be a source of competitive strength.
What is a feedback loop?
Feedback consists of analyzing information from the output state to help management evaluate or refine the input. The activity of continuous evaluation of output creates a loop that enables organizations or systems to self-regulate. This is referred to as a feedback loop.
What are the five changes to MIS that are of paramount importance?
IT innovations, new business models, e-commerce expansion, management changes, and changes in firms and organizations.
How do information systems impact operational excellence?
Information systems and technologies are some of the most important tools available to managers for achieving higher levels of efficiency and productivity in business operations, especially when coupled with changes in business practices and management behavior.
How do information systems impact decision making?
Information systems and technologies have made it possible for managers to use real-time data from the marketplace when making decisions.
Why are information systems so essential for running and managing a business today?
Information systems are a foundation for conducting business today. In many industries, survival and the ability to achieve strategic business goals are difficult without extensive use of information technology.
How can information systems help businesses become more competitive?
Information systems enable the firm to increase its revenue or decrease its costs by providing information that helps managers make better decisions or that improves the execution of business processes.
What is the relationship between information systems and business processes?
Information systems enable the firm to increase its revenue or decrease its costs by providing information that helps managers make better decisions or that improves the execution of business processes.
How does an information system work?
Information systems transform raw data into useful information through three basic activities: input, processing, and output.
What is information technology?
Information technology (IT) consists of all the hardware and software that a firm needs to use in order to achieve its business objectives.
Why are complementary assets essential for ensuring that information systems provide genuine value for organizations?
Information technology investments alone cannot make organizations and managers more effective unless they are accompanied by supportive values, structures, and behavior patterns in the organization and other complementary assets.
What is input in IS?
Input captures or collects raw data from within the organization or from its external environment.
What is a business model?
It describes how a company produces, delivers, and sells a product or service to create wealth.
What are the three important characteristics of a digital firm?
1) Significant Business relationships are enabled or mediated by digital technologies, 2) Core business processes are facilitated through digital networks and span the entire organization, 3) Technology enablement to create new business models
What is a digital firm?
A digital firm is one in which nearly all of the organization's significant business relationships with customers, suppliers, and employees are digitally enabled and mediated. Core business processes are accomplished through digital networks spanning the entire organization or linking multiple organizations.
What is socio-technical view?
A socio-technical view of systems considers both technical and social features of systems and solutions that represent the best fit between them. Optimal organizational performance is achieved by jointly optimizing both the social and technical systems used in production. Technology must be changed and designed in such a way as to fit organizational and individual needs.
What is an information system?
An information system can be defined technically as a set of interrelated components that collect (or retrieve), process, store, and distribute information to support decision making and control in an organization. In addition to supporting decision making, coordination, and control, information systems may also help managers and workers analyze problems, visualize complex subjects, and create new products.
What are complementary assets?
Complementary assets are those assets required to derive value from a primary investment.
What does an information system consist of?
Computer hardware and mobile devices, software, data, networking and telecommunications technologies, procedures, people
How do information systems impact a firms survival?
Business firms also invest in information systems and technologies because they are necessities of doing business. Sometimes these "necessities" are driven by industry-level changes.
What are business processes?
Business processes refer to the set of logically related tasks and behaviors that organizations develop over time to produce specific business results and the unique manner in which these activities are organized and coordinated.
How are information systems transforming business?
Businesses are using information technology to sense and respond to rapidly changing customer demand, reduce inventories to the lowest possible levels, and achieve higher levels of operational efficiency. Organizations are trying to become more competitive and efficient by digitally enabling their core business processes and evolving into digital firms.
Why do businesses use information systems?
Businesses today use information systems to achieve six major objectives: operational excel-lence; new products, services, and business models; customer/supplier intimacy; improved decision making; competitive advantage; and day-to-day survival.
List and describe six reasons why information systems are so important for business today.
Businesses today use information systems to achieve six major objectives: operational excellence; new products, services, and business models; customer/supplier intimacy; improved decision making; competitive advantage; and day-to-day survival.
What is information and data?
By information we mean data that have been shaped into a form that is meaningful and useful to human beings. Data, in contrast, are streams of raw facts representing events occurring in organizations or the physical environment before they have been organized and arranged into a form that people can understand and use.
How have information systems changed the way businesses operate and their products and services?
Organizations are digitally enabling their core business processes and evolving into digital firms to become more competitive and efficient.
Why do organizations use information systems?
Organizations are using IS to solve problems.
What is output in IS?
Output transfers the processed information to the people who will use it or to the activities for which it will be used. Information systems also require feedback, which is output that is returned to appropriate members of the organization to help them evaluate or correct the input stage.
What is the single most important MIS theme?
Perhaps the single most important theme in the book, reflected in case studies and exercises, is that managers need to consider the broader organization and management dimensions of information systems to understand current problems as well as to derive substantial above-average returns from their information technology investments.
What is processing in IS?
Processing converts this raw input into a meaningful form.
What is information systems literacy?
The broader understanding of information systems, which encompasses an understanding of the management, organizational, and technical dimensions of systems.
What are IS's technology components?
The dimension consists of computer hardware, software, data management technology, and networking/telecommunications technology (including the Internet).
What is the value fo an information system to a business?
The value of an information system to a business, as well as the decision to invest in any new information system, is, in large part, determined by the extent to which the system will lead to better management decisions, more efficient business processes, and higher firm profitability.
What are business functions?
The major business functions, or specialized tasks performed by business organizations, consist of sales and marketing, manufacturing and production, finance and accounting, and human resources
What are the major areas of complementary assets firms need in order to realize value from their information technology investments?
The major complementary investments that firms need to make to realize value from their information technology investments include organizational assets, managerial assets, and social assets.
What are IS's management components?
The management dimension of information systems involves issues such as leadership, strategy, and management behavior.
What are the management dimensions of information systems?
The management dimension of information systems involves issues such as leadership, strategy, and management behavior.
What are IS's organization components?
The organization dimension of information systems involves issues such as the organization's hierarchy, functional specialties, business processes, culture, and political interest groups.
What are the organization dimensions of information systems?
The organization dimension of information systems involves issues such as the organization's hierarchy, functional specialties, business processes, culture, and political interest groups.
How do the academic disciplines involved with information systems contribute to an understanding of information systems?
The study of information systems deals with issues and insights contributed from technical and behavioral disciplines. The disciplines contributing to the technical approach focus on formal models and capabilities of systems. The disciplines contributing to the behavioral approach focusing on the design, implementation, management, and business impact of systems are psychology, sociology, and economics.
What are the technology dimensions of information systems?
The technology dimension consists of computer hardware, software, data man-agement technology, and networking/telecommunications technology (including the Internet).
What do new information systems trends include?
They include emerging mobile digital platform, big data, and cloud computing.
What activities in an IS system produce the information that organizations need?
Three activities in an information system produce the information that organizations need to make decisions, control operations, analyze problems, and create new products or services. These activities are input, processing, and out-put.
How do information systems impact competitive advantage?
When firms achieve one or more of these business objectives—operational excellence; new products, services, and business models; customer/supplier intimacy; and improved decision making—chances are they have already achieved a competitive advantage.
