Exam 1 Chp 2 INFO

• -Workflows of material, information, knowledge
• -sets of activities, steps
• -maybe tied to functional area or be cross-functional
• businesses: can be seen as collection of business processes
• business processes may be assets or liabilities

• manufacturing and production
• -assembling the product
• sales and marketing
• -identifying customers
• finance and accounting
• -creating financial statements
• human resources
• -hiring employees

• 1. increasing efficiency of existing processes
• -automating steps that were manual
• 2. enabling entirely new processes that are capable of transforming the businesses
• -change flow of information
• -replace sequential steps with parallel steps
• -eliminate delays in decision making

• perform and record daily routine transactions necessary to conduct business
• -examples: sales order entry, payroll, shipping
• allow managers to monitor status of operations and relations with external environment
• serve operational levels
• serve predefined, structured goals and decision making

• serve middle management
• provide reports on firm's current performance, based on data form TPS
• provide answers to routine questions with predefined procedure for answering them
• typically have little analytic capability

• serve middle management
• support non-routine decision making. Example: what is impact on production schedule if December sales doubled?
• often use external information as well from TPS and MIS
• Model driven DSS
• -voyage-estimating systems
• Data driven DSS
• -intrawest's marketing analysis systems

• class of software applications
• analyze current and historical data to find patterns and trends and aid decision-making
• used in systems that support middle and senior management
• -data-driven DSS
• executive support systems (ESS)

• Support senior management
• address non-routine decisions
• -requiring judgment, evaluation, and insight
• incorporate data about external events (e.g. new tax laws or competitors) as well as summarized information from internal MIS and DSS
• Example: digital dashboard with real-time view on firm's financial performance: working capital, accounts receivable, accounts payable, cash flow, and inventory

• transaction processing systems: supporting operational level employees
• management information systems and decision-support systems: supporting managers
• executive support systems: supporting executives

• TPS: major source of data for other systems
• ESS: recipient of data from lower-level systems
• data may be exchanged between systems
• in reality, most businesses' systems are only loosely integrated (but they are getting better)

• systems for linking the enterprise
• span functional areas
• executive business processes across firm
• include all levels of management
• 4 major applications:
• -enterprise systems (ERP)
• -supply chain management systems
• -customer relationship management systems
• -knowledge management systems

• collects data from different firm functions and stores data in single central data repository
• resolves problem of fragmented, redundant data sets and systems
• enable: coordination of daily activities, efficient response to customer orders (production, inventory), provide valuable information for improving management decision making

• manage firm's relationships with suppliers
• share information about
• -orders, production, inventory levels, delivery of products and services
• Goal:
• -right amount of products to destination with least amount of time and lowest cost

• provide information to coordinate all of the business processes that deal with customers in sales, marketing, and service to optimize revenue, customer satisfaction, and customer retention
• integrate firm's customer-related processes and consolidate customer information from multiple communication channels

• support processes for acquiring, creating, storing, distributing, and applying, integrating knowledge
• -how to create, produce, distribute products and services
• collect internal knowledge and experience within firm and make it available to employees
• link to external sources of knowledge

• intranets:
• -internal company web sites accessible only by employees
• extranets:
• -company web sites accessible externally only to vendors and suppliers
• often used to coordinate supply chain

use of digital technology and internet to drive major business processes

• subset of e-business
• buying and selling goods and services through internet

using internet technology to deliver information and services to citizens, employees, and businesses

• Short-lived or long-term
• informal or formal (teams)
• Growing importance of collaboration:
• -changing nature of work
• -growth of professional work-"interaction jobs"
• -changing organization of the firm
• -changing scope of the firm 
• -emphasis on innovation
• -changing culture of work

• investments in collaboration technology can produce organizational improvements returning high ROI 
• Benefits:
• -productivity
• -quality
• -innovation
• -customer service
• -financial performance- profitability, sales, sales growth

• "Command and control" organizations- no value placed on teamwork or lower-level participation in decisions
• Collaborative business culture
• -senior managers rely on teams of employees
• -policies, products, designs, processes, systems rely on teams
• -managers purpose is to build teams

• email and instant messaging
• white boarding
• collabortive writing
• web presenting
• collaborative reviewing
• work scheduling
• document sharing/wikis
• file sharing
• mind mapping
• screen sharing
• large audience webinars
• audio conferencing 
• co-browsing 
• video conferencing

• social networking
• wikis
• virtual worlds
• internet-based collaboration environments
• -virtual meeting systems (telepresence)
• -google apps/ google sites
• -microsoft sharepoint
• -lotus notes

• space (or location)- remoste or colocated
• time- synchronous or asynchronous

• 1. what are your firm's collaboration challenges?
• 2. what kinds of solutions are available?
• 3. analyze available products' cost and benefits
• 4. evaluate security risks
• 5. consult users for implementation and training issues
• 6. evaluate product vendors

• formal organizational unit responsible for information technology services
• often headed by chief information officer (CIO)- other senior positions include chief security officer (CSO), chief knowledge officer (CKO), chief privacy officer (CPO)
• programmers
• systems analysts
• information systems managers

• representatives of other departments for whom applications are developed
• increasing role in system design, development

• strategies and policies for using IT in the organization 
• decision rights
• accountability
• organization systems function
• -centralized, decentralized, etc