K201 Lecture Terms – Flashcards
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system
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a group of components that interact to achieve some purpose.
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IS
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a group of components that interact to produce info.
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MIS
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the management and use of information systems that help organizations achieve their strategies.
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The five-component model of an information system with an example
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Computer, hardware, software, data, procedures, and people. An example is when you use a computer to write a class report, you are using hardware (computer), software (Word), data (the words), procedures (the methods you use to start the program), and people (you).
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Why do businesses develop information systems? Also, point out some of the wrong reasons businesses sometimes cite for developing information systems.
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They develop information systems so they can achieve their goals and make their work more efficient. Some of the wrong reasons businesses cite for developing information systems include creating a Facebook page for the sole reason that "every other business has one."
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Most important component of the information system and why
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People, because the quality of your thinking is a large quality of the information system. You cannot change the computer in your brain, so to speak, but you can change the way you have programmed your brain to work.
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Explain how the five components of an information system are arranged in terms of ease of change and organizational disruption.
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The outermost components, hardware and people, are both actors; they can take actions. The software and procedure components are both sets of instructions: Software is instructions for hardware, and procedures are instructions for people. Finally, data (which is in the middle) is the bridge between the computer side on the left and the human side on the right.
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Difference between IT and IS
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IT pertains to the hardware, software, and data components. In contrast, an information system is an assembly of hardware, software, data, procedures, and people that produces information. You can buy IT, but not IS.
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Common definitions of information
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Knowledge derived from data; data presented in a meaningful context; data processed by summing, ordering, averaging, grouping, comparing, or other similar operations.
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Five characteristics of good information
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Accurate, timely, relevant, just sufficient, and worth its cost data.
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Process by which organizations develop their information systems
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They develop their information system based on what they believe is necessary for their business. For example, one business may have a strategy of lending low cost bikes to students. The only real information system necessary for their business is a machine provided by the bank for processing credit card transactions.
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Porter's Five Forces Model
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1. Bargaining Power of Customers 2. Threat of Substitutions 3. Bargaining Power of suppliers 4. Threat of New Entrants 5. Rivalry
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Four competitive strategies that firms can choose from according to Porter's model
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1. Strive to provide the lowest cost across the industry. 2. Strive to provide the lowest cost to an industry segment. 3. Strive to provide product differentiation across the industry. 4. Strive to provide product differentiation across the particular segments of the industry.
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Value
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The amount of money that a customer is willing to pay for a resource, product, or service.
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Margin
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The difference between the value that an activity generates and the cost of the activity.
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Value Chain
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A network of value-creating activities. That generic chain consist of five primary activities and four support activities.
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Primary activities in a generic value chain
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Inbound logistics, operations/manufacturing, outbound logistics, sales and marketing, and customer service.
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Support activities of a value chain
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Firm infrastructure, human resource management, technology, and procurement.
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The central idea of business process design
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The idea of the business process design is to span the value chain activities. They can vary in cost and effectiveness. In fact, the streamlining of business processes to increase margin (add value, reduce costs, or both) is key to competitive advantage.
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The purpose of a database
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It is to keep track of things.
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Database and its elements
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A self-describing collection of integrated records. A byte is a character is a character of data. Columns (fields) are where bytes are grouped into. Rows (records) are where columns or field are stored.
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Primary Key
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A column or group of columns that identifies a unique row in a table.
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Foreign Key
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A column or group of columns used to represent relationships. Values of the foreign key match values of the primary key in a different (foreign) table.
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Metadata
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Data that describe data. Just think of the design view of a table.
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DBMS and its functions and popular DBMS
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A program used to create, process, and administer a database. Its main functions are creating the database and its structure, processing the database, and administering the database. Some popular ones include DB2 from IBM, Access and SQL Server from Microsoft, and Oracle Database from the Oracle Corporation.
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Application Programs and their function
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A collection of forms, reports, queries, and application programs that process a database. Two of the functions of them include processing logic that is specific to a given business need, and to enable database processing over the Internet, such as when a user presses a submit button.
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Enterprise DBMS
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Products that process large organizational and workgroup databases. These products also support many, possibly thousands, of users and many different database applications.
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Personal DBMS
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Products that are designed for smaller, simpler database applications. Such products are used for personal or small workgroup applications that involve fewer than 100 users, and normally fewer than 15. Today, about the only remaining product is in this group is Microsoft Access.
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Elements of a data model and examples
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They are suppose to describe data and relationships that will be stored in the database. Much like blueprints for building architects, database designers create a data model before they start designing the database.
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How does normalization resolve data integrity problems?
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Normalization can eliminate data duplication in tables and the general goal of normalization is to construct tables such that every table has a single topic or theme, which may mean converting a poorly structured table into two or more well-structured tables.
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Problems with information silos
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Data duplication, data inconsistency, disjointed processes, limited information and lack of integrated information, isolated decisions lead to organizational inefficiencies, and increased expense.
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Fundamental problems of information silos and how they can be solved
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Information silos can cause data integrity problems. A way to fix a silo is to integrate the data into a single database and revise applications (and business processes) to use that database. If that isn't possible, another remedy is to allow the isolation, but to manage it to avoid problems.
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Four phases of the customer life cycle
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Marketing, customer acquisition, relationship management, and loss/churn
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Marketing
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Sends messages to the target market to attract customer prospects.
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Customer Acquisition
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When prospects order, they become customers who need to be supported.
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Relationship Management
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Increase the value of existing customers by selling them more product.
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Loss/Churn
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Whenever an organization losses customers the win-back processes categorize customers according to value and attempt to win back high-value customers.
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ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and primary purpose of an ERP system
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A suite applications called modules, a database, and a set of inherent processes for consolidating business operations into single, consistent, computing platform. The primary purpose of an ERP system is integration; an ERP system allows the left hand of the organization to know what the right hand is doing.
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The definition and functions of EAI (Enterprise Application Integration)
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An information system that supports cross-functional business processes by integrating existing functional applications. The functions include connecting system "islands" via a new layer of software/system, enabling existing apps to communicate and share data, integrating info, leveraging existing systems, and enabling a gradual move to ERP.
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Database component of an ERP solution
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Large organizational databases contain two types of program code. The first, called a trigger, is a computer program stored within the database that runs to keep the database consistent when certain conditions arise. The second, called a stored procedure, is a computer program stored in the database that is used to enforce business rules.
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Four challenges of implementing new enterprise systems
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Collaborative management, requirements gaps, transition problems, and employee resistance.
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How organizations should manage employee resistance to change?
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First, senior-level management needs to communicate the need for the change to the organization and reiterate this, as necessary throughout the transition process. Second, employees need to be trained and coached on the successful use of the new system. Third, employees may need to be given extra inducement to change to the new system.
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Business Intelligence
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The processing of operational and other data to create information that exposes patterns, relationships, and trends of importance to the organization.
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Business Intelligence Systems
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Information systems that process operational and other source data to identify patterns, relationships, and trends and to make predictions.
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Three primary activities in the BI Process
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Acquire Data (Data acquisition)- the process of obtaining, cleaning, organizing, relating, and cataloging source data. Analyzed Data (BI Analysis)- the process of creating business intelligence. Publish Results- the process of delivering business intelligence to the knowledge workers who need it.
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Functions of data warehouses
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Obtain data, cleanse data, organize and relate data, and catalog data.
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Common problems of using operational data
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Dirty data, missing values, inconsistent data, data not integrated, wrong granularity, and too much data.
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Features of a data mart
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It's a data collection, smaller than the data warehouse, that addresses the needs of a particular department or functional area of the business. An example is if you had a data mart for sales data then you could determine which products should be purchased together.
