CIS 301 - Management Information Systems

8) Amazon's use of the Internet as a platform to sell books more efficiently than traditional bookstores illustrates a use of information services for

A) low-cost leadership.

Information Systems Model according to The General Systems Theory (I/O Model)

Systems elements, relationships, functions, goals etc...

. The dimensions of information systems are management, organizations, and information technology.

TRUE

10. Decision-support systems help managers make decisions that are unique, rapidly changing, and not easily specified in advance.

TRUE

T F 1. A business model describes how a company produces, delivers, and sells a product or service to create wealth.

TRUE

T F 1. From the point of view of economics, information systems technology can be viewed as a factor of production that can be substituted for traditional capital and labor.

TRUE

T F 10. The idea driving synergies is that when the output of some units can be used as inputs to other units, the relationship can lower cost and generate profits.

TRUE

T F 2. Online collaboration tools eliminate the need for global firms to have synchronous collaboration

TRUE

T F 3. Customers are one of the competitive forces that affect an organization's ability to compete.

TRUE

T F 5. Managers need TPSs to monitor the status of internal operations and the firm's relations with the external environment.

TRUE

T F 6. Decision-support systems use internal information as well as information from external sources

TRUE

T F 6. In the value chain model, primary activities are most directly related to the production and distribution of the firm's products and services that create value for the customer.

TRUE

T F 7. Extranets allow firms to work easily with third-party suppliers and vendors

TRUE

T F 8. In a demonstration of network economics, the more people that use Adobe software and related products, the greater the value of the software.

TRUE

T F 8. Information supplied by an enterprise system is structured around cross-functional business processes

TRUE

T F 9. A substantial part of management responsibility is creative work driven by new knowledge and information.

TRUE

T F 9. Supply chain management systems are more externally oriented than enterprise systems.

TRUE

Non-typical business problems with causes and effects that are rapidly changing are typically handled by which type of information system?

DSS (Decision-support systems )

General Business Information Value Chain chart

Data vs. Information, Cost & Value-Benefits Analysis

T F 1. You would use an MIS to help decide whether to introduce a new product line.

FALSE

T F 10. Knowledge workers assist with paperwork at all levels of the firm.

FALSE

T F 2. Information technology (IT) consists of all the hardware that a firm needs to use in order to achieve its business objectives, whereas information systems consist of all the software and business processes needed.

FALSE

T F 2. The competitive forces model was created for today's digital firm

FALSE

T F 3. Information systems literacy describes the behavioral approach to information systems, whereas computer literacy describes the technical approach.

FALSE

T F 3. Transaction processing systems are most commonly used by the senior management level of an organization.

FALSE

T F 4. In an efficient customer response system, digital answering systems are used to monitor and respond to customer inquiries

FALSE

T F 4. Management information systems typically support nonroutine decision making.

FALSE

T F 5. Strong linkages to customers and suppliers decrease switching costs.

FALSE

T F 5. There are four major business functions: Sales and marketing; manufacturing and production; finance and accounting; and information technology.

FALSE

T F 6. Business processes are logically related tasks for accomplishing tasks that have been formally encoded by an organization.

FALSE

T F 7. ESSs are designed to serve the middle management of the organization.

FALSE

T F 7. The use of Internet technologies allows companies to more easily sustain competitive advantage.

FALSE

T F 8. Studies have consistently shown that firms who invest greater amounts in information technology receive greater benefits than firms that invest less.

FALSE

T F 9. The term business ecosystem describes the interplay between the various organizational forces within a firm.

FALSE

What is the difference between Intranets and Extranets?

Intranets are private networks only accessible to an organizations staff. Extranets are controlled private internet extended to authorized users (partners, vendors and suppliers/ authorized customers) outside the company.

Which type of system would you use to determine the five suppliers with the worst record in delivering goods on time?

MIS (Management information systems )

Based on the examples in the chapter, if you were asked to formulate a plan for a regional drive-in restaurant chain's efforts to use information technology to develop a loyal customer base, what would be the best use of information technology from the list below?

Use IT to achieve customer intimacy.

What is the most important function of an enterprise application?

enabling business functions and departments to share information

Which of the following types of system helps expedite the flow of information between the firm and its suppliers and customers?

extranet

4) Business processes are collections of

A) informal practices and behaviors. B) formalized and documented practices. C) routines. D) rights and privileges (All of the above)

Which of the following are key corporate assets?

A) intellectual property, core competencies, and financial and human assets

2) An organization is a

A) stable, formal social structure that takes resources from the environment and processes them to produce outputs. B) formal, legal entity with internal rules and procedures that must abide by laws C) collection of social elements (all of the above)

4. The Agency Cost Theory of the Impact of Information Technology on the Organization

Agency theory: Firm is nexus of contracts among self-interested parties requiring supervision. Firms experience agency costs (the cost of managing and supervising). IT can reduce agency costs, making it possible for firms to grow without adding to the costs of supervising, and without adding employees.

Which of the following choices may lead to competitive advantage: (1) new products, services, and business models; (2) charging less for superior products; (3) responding to customers in real time?

All of them

2) Which type of system would you use to change a production schedule if a key supplier was late in delivering goods?

B) TPS (Transaction processing systems)

5) An example of a professional bureaucracy is a

B) school system.

What is the connection between organizations, information systems, and business processes?

Business processes refer to the manner in which work activities are organized, coordinated, and focused to produce a specific result. Information systems can help organizations achieve great efficiencies by automating part of these processes or by helping organizations rethink and streamline those processes.

10) The Internet raises the bargaining power of customers by

C) making information available to everyone.

7) Which of the following is NOT one of the competitive forces?

C) external environment

9) An information system can enable a company to focus on a market niche through

D) intensive customer data analysis.

chart representing a typical Enterprise system. Describe at least two benefits of using enterprise systems.

Enterprise systems integrate the firm's key business processes in sales, production, finance, logistics, and human resources into a single software system so that information can flow throughout the organization, improving coordination, efficiency, and decision making. These systems help create a more uniform organization in which everyone uses similar processes and information, and measures their work in terms of organization-wide performance standards. The coordination of the firm's key business processes allows the firm to respond more rapidly to customer demands.

Why N. Carr statement that" whatever advantages firms build using IT can be easily copied by competitors" is not true? Explain what in this case creates the competitive advantages:

IT itself do not create competitive advantages. It's the use of IT, the "Know How", i.e. how do we use IT that creates the competitive advantages

How is Internet technology useful from a network economics perspective? Give examples

In network economics, the cost of adding a participant in the network is negligible, while the gain in value is relatively much larger. The Internet itself is an example of a successful implementation of network economics - the more people participate, the more valuable and essential a commodity it is. the costs of the online firm are already set, adding someone else is cheap, while the benefit is great

3. How do Information Systems affect the levels of hierarchy - Flattering Organizations:

Information systems can reduce the number of levels in an organization by providing managers with information to supervise larger numbers of workers and by giving lower-level employees more decision-making authority.

What is the difference between "Information Systems literacy" and "Computer literacy"? Explain:

Information systems literacy: Broad-based understanding of information systems that includes behavioral knowledge about organizations, management and individuals using information systems as well as technical knowledge about computers Computer literacy: Knowledge about information technology, focusing on understanding how computer technologies work,

Enabling management to make better decisions regarding organizing and scheduling sourcing, production, and distribution is a central feature of

SCMs

chart representing Interrelationships among systems: b) Identify and discuss the major types of information systems that serve the main management groups within a business. What are the relationships among these systems?

The four major categories of information systems are: 1. Transaction processing systems, such as payroll or order processing, track the flow of the daily routine transactions that are necessary to conduct business. 2. Management information systems (MIS) provide the management control level 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. 3. Decision-support systems (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. 4. Executive support systems (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. TPS are a major source of data for other systems, especially MIS and DSS. ESSs primarily receive data from lowerlevel systems. In contemporary digital firms, the different types of systems are closely linked to one another. This is the ideal. In traditional firms these systems tend to be isolated from one another, and information does not flow seamlessly from one end of the organization to the other.

Apple Computer dominates the online legal music sales industry primarily because of a failure of recording label companies to

adopt a new business model.

3) All of the following are major features of organizations that impact the use of information systems EXCEPT for

agency costs

1) The interaction between information systems and organizations is influenced

by many factors, including structure, politics, culture, and environment.

1) Which of the following is an example of a cross-functional business process?

creating a new product

The fundamental set of assumptions, values, and ways of doing things that has been accepted by most of a company's members is called its

culture

chart representing the Technical microeconomic definition of the organization

in the microeconomics definition of organizations, capital and labor are transformed by the firm through the production processes into products and services. the products and services are consumed by the environment which supplies additional capital and labor in exchange making it a loop.

Overproduction or underproduction of goods and services, misallocation of resources, and poor response times are the results of a firm's having

inadequate information.

The three activities in an information system that produce the information organizations use to control operations are

input, processing, and output.

Executive support systems are information systems that support the

long-range planning activities of senior management.

The term "management information systems" designates a specific category of information systems serving

middle management functions.

In a business hierarchy, the level that is responsible for monitoring the daily activities of the business is

operational management.

The move of retail banking to use ATMs after Citibank unveiled its first ATMs illustrates the use of information systems to achieve which business objective?

survival

From a business perspective, raw data is transformed systematically during various stages, transforming it into valuable information, in a process called

the information value chain.

6) The costs incurred when a firm buys on the marketplace what it can't make itself are referred to as

transaction costs.

3) Which systems are typically a major source of data for other systems?

transaction processing systems