MIS Chapter 1-4

When infinite quantities of facts are widely available to anyone who can use a computer.

Raw facts that describe the characteristics of an event or object.

Is data converted into a meaningful and useful context.

Is a data characteristic that stands for a value that changes or varies over time.

Is information collected from multiple sources such as suppliers, customers, competitors, partners, and industries that analyzes patterns, trends, and relationships for strategic decision making.

Includes the skills, experience, and expertise, coupled with information and intelligence, that creates a person's intellectual resources.

Are individuals valued for their ability to interpret and analyze information.

Records, measures, and reports monetary transactions

Deals with strategic financial issues including money, banking, credit, investments, and assets

Supports sales by planning, pricing, and promoting goods or services

Manages the process of converting or transforming or resources into goods or services

Performs the function of selling goods or services

The process where a business takes raw materials and processes them or converts them into a finished product for its goods or services.

The rate at which goods and services are produced based upon given total inputs.

A way of monitoring the entire system by viewing multiple inputs being processed or transformed to produce outputs while continuously gathering feedback on each part.

Information that returns to its original transmitter (input, transform, or output) and modifies the transmitter's actions.

A business function, like accounting and hr, which moves information about people, products, and processes across the company to facilitate decision making and problem solving.

A leadership plan that achieves a specific set of goals or objectives

Occurs when a company can significantly increase its market share by being first with a new competitive advantage.

The process of gathering information about the competitive environment, including competitors' plans, activities, and products, to improve a company's ability to succeed.

Analyzes the competitive forces within the environment in which a company operates to assess the potential for profitability in an industry. 

• 1) Threat of Substitute Products or Services
• (the power of the customers to purchase alternatives)

2) Supplier Power (the power of suppliers to drive up prices of materials)

3) Threat of New Entrants (the power of competitors to enter a market)

4) Buyer Power (the power of customers to drive down prices)

5) Rivalry among Existing Competitors (The power of competitors)

Costs that make customers reluctant to switch to another product or service.

Consists of all parties involved, directly or indirectly, in obtaining raw materials or a product.

Occurs when a company develops unique differences in its products or services with the intent to influence demand.

A standardized set of activities that accomplish a specific task, such as processing a customer's order.

Views a firm as a series of business processes that each add value to the product or service.

Shown at the bottom of the value chain, acquire raw materials and manufacture, deliver, market, sell, and provide after-sales services.

Acquires raw materials and resources and distributes to manufacturing as required

Transforms raw materials or inputs into goods and services.

Distributes goods and services to customers.

Promotes, prices, and sells products to customers.

Provides customer support after the sale of goods and services.

Along the top of the value chain, include firm infrastructure, hr management, technology development, and procurement. These support the primary value activities.

Includes the company format or departmental structures, environment, and systems.

Applies MIS to processes to add value

Purchases inputs such as raw materials, resources, equipment, and supplies.

Responsible for ensuring the security of business systems and developing strategies and safeguards against attacks by hackers and viruses.

Responsible for ensuring the speed, accuracy, availability, and reliability of the MIS.

Responsible for ensuring the ethical and legal use of information within a company.

Responsible for 1) overseeing all uses of MIS and 2) ensuring that MIS strategically aligns with business goals and objectives.

Responsible for collecting, maintaining, and distributing company knowledge.

1) The Five Forces Model (for evaluating industry attractiveness)

2) The three generic strategies (for choosing a business focus)

3) Value chain analysis (for executing business strategies)

1) Broad cost leadership

2) Broad differentiation

3) Focused strategy (niche)

• *Problem identification
• *Data collection
• *Solution generation
• *Solution test
• *Solution selection
• *Solution implementation

The science of fact-based decision making

Employees develop, control, and maintain core business activities required to run the day-to-day operations.

Operational decisions are considered structured decisions, which arise in situations where established processes offer potential solutions.

Employees are continuously evaluating company operations to hone the firm's abilities to identify, adapt to, and leverage change.

Managerial decisions are considered semistructured decisions; they occur in situations in which a few established processes help to evaluate potential solutions, but not enough to lead to a definite recommended decision. 

Managers develop overall business strategies, goals, and objectives as part of the company's strategic plan. 

Strategic decisions are highly unstructured decisions, occurring in situations in which no procedures or rules exist to guide decision makers toward the correct choice. 

A temporary activity a company undertakes to create a unique product, service, or result. 

Measurements that evaluate results to determine whether a project is meeting its goals.

• *Critical success factors (CSF)
• *Key performance indicators (KPI)

The crucial steps companies perform to achieve their goals and objectives and implement their strategies.

The quantifiable metrics a company uses to evaluate progress toward critical success factors. 

The proportion of the market that a firm captures. 

Measure the impact MIS has on business processes and activities, including customer satisfaction and customer conversion rates.

Usability, customer satisfaction, conversion rates, financial

Measure the performance of MIS itself, such as throughput, transaction speed, system availability information accuracy, and response time. 

The amount of information that can travel through a system at any point in time.

The amount of time a system takes to perform a transaction.

The number of hours a system is available for users.

The extent to which a system generates the correct result when executing the same transaction numerous times.

The time it takes to respond to user interactions such as a mouse click

The ease with which people perform transactions and/or find information.

Measured by satisfaction surveys, percentage of existing customers retained, and increases in revenue dollars per customer.

The number of customers an organization "touches" for the first time and persuades to purchase its products or services. This is a popular metric for evaluating the effectiveness of banner, pop-up, and pop-under ads on the Internet.

Such as ROI, cost-benefit analysis, and break-even analysis.

• Transactional information
• Online transaction processing (OLTP)
• Transaction processing system (TPS)

Encompasses all the information contained within a single business process or unit of work, and its primary purpose is to support the performance of daily operational or structured decisions.

The capture of transaction and event information using technology to 1) process the information according to defined business rules, 2) store the information, and 3) update existing information to reflect the new information.

The basic business system that serves the operational level (analysts) and assists in making structured decisions. 

The original transaction record

• Analytical information
• Online analytical processing (OLAP)
• Decision support systems (DSSs)
• What-if analysis
• Sensitivity analysis
• Goal-seeking analysis
• Optimization analysis

Encompasses all organizational information, and its primary purpose is to support the performance of managerial analysis or semistructured decisions.

The manipulation of information to create business intelligence in support of strategic decision making. 

Model information using OLAP, which provides assistance in evaluating and choosing among different courses of action. 

Checks the impact of a change in a variable or assumption on the model. 

A special case of what-if analysis, is the study of the impact on other variables when one variable is changed repeatedly.

Finds the inputs necessary to achieve a goal such as a desired level of output.

An extension of goal-seeking analysis, finds the optimum value for a target variable by repeatedly changing other variables, subject to specified constraints. 

• Executive information system (EIS)
• Visualization
• Consolidation
• Drill-down
• Slice-and-Dice

A specialized DSS that supports senior-level executives and unstructured, long-term, nonroutine decisions requiring judgement, evaluation, and insight. 

Refers to the level of detail in the model or the decision-making process. 

Produces graphical displays of patterns and complex relationships in large amounts of data. 

Tracks KPIs and CSFs by compiling information from multiple sources and tailoring it to meet user needs. 

The aggregation of data from simple roll-ups to complex groupings of interrelated information.

Enables users to view details, and details of details, of information.

The ability to look at information from different perspectives.

• Expert systems - playing chess
• Neural networks - credit card companies checking for fraud
• Genetic Algorithms - investment companies in trading decisions
• Intelligent agents - environmental scanning and competitive intelligence
• Virtual reality - working virtually around the globe

Various commercial applications of artificial intelligence.

Computerized advisory programs that imitate the reasoning processes of experts in solving difficult problems.

AKA artificial neural network, is a category of AI that attempts to emulate the way the human brain works. Neural networks analyze large quantities of information to establish patterns and characteristics in situations where the logic or rules are unknown.

A mathematical method of handling imprecise or subjective information. The basic approach is to assign values between 0 and 1 to vague or ambiguous information (0 = info not included, 1 = inclusion or membership)

An artificial intelligence system that mimics the evolutionary.

The process within a genetic algorithm of randomly trying combinations and evaluating the success (or failure) of the outcome.

A special-purpose knowledge-based information system that accomplishes specific tasks on behalf of its users. 

A software that will search several retailer websites and provide a comparison of each retailer's offerings including price and availability.

A computer-simulated environment that can be a simulation of the real world or an imaginary world. 

Aka Front-office processes, result in a product or service received by an organization's external customer. Include fulfilling orders, communicating with customers, and sending out bills and marketing information.

Aka back-office processes, are invisible to the external customer but essential to the effective management of the business; they include goal setting, day-to-day planning, giving performance feedback and rewards, and allocating resources. 

A patent that protects a specific set of procedures for conducting a particular business activity. 

Business processes, such as manufacturing goods, selling products, and providing service, that make up the primary activities in a value chain.

The activity of creating a detailed flowchart or process map of a work process that shows its inputs, tasks, and activities in a structured sequence. 

A graphic description of a process, showing the sequence of process tasks, which is developed for a specific purpose and from a selected viewpoint.

Represents the current state of the operation that has been mapped, without any specific improvements or changes to existing processes. 

Show the results of applying change improvement opportunities to the current (As-Is) process model.

The swim lane layout arranges the steps of a business process into a set of rows depicting the various elements.

Includes the tasks, activities, and responsibilities required to execute each step in a business process. 

Attempts to understand and measure the current process and make performance improvements accordingly.

The process of computerizing manual tasks, making them more efficient and effective and dramatically lowering operational costs. 

Improves business process efficiencies by simplifying or eliminating unnecessary steps.

Occur when resources reach full capacity and cannot handle any additional demands; they limit throughput and impede operations.

Occurs when a task or activity is unnecessarily repeated, for example, if both the sales department and the accounting department check customer credit.

The time required to process an order, is a common KPI for operations management. 

The analysis and redesign of workflow within and between enterprises.

Focus on evaluating and improving processes that include both person-to-person workflow on evaluating and improving processes that include both person-to-person workflow and system-to-system communications.

Implies that organizations that cannot adapt to the new demands placed on them for surviving in the information age are doomed to extinction.

A new way of doing things that initially does not meet the needs of existing customers.

Produces an improved product customers are eager to buy, such as a faster car or larger hard drive. 

Links documents, allowing users to move from one to another simply by clicking on a hot spot or link.

The Internet protocol web browsers use to request and display web pages using universal resource locators.

The address of a file or resource on the web such as www.apple.com is the domain name.

A program that runs within another application such as a website.

A term to refer to the World Wide Web during its 1st few years of operation between 1991 and 2003

Ecommerce refers only to online transactions and Ebusiness includes Ecommerce along with all activities related to internal and external business operations such as servicing customer accounts. 

Occurs when a new radical form of business enters the market that reshapes the way companies and organizations behave.

Refers to the depth and breadth of details contained in a piece of textual, graphic, audio, or video information.

Measures the number of people a firm can communicate with all over the world. 

The ability of an organization to tailor its products or services to the customers' specifications.

Occurs when a company knows enough about a customer's likes and dislikes that it can fashion offers more likely to appeal to that person, say by tailoring its website to individuals or groups based on profile information, demographics, or prior transactions. 

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, describes niche-market ebusiness strategies as capturing the long tail, referring to the tail of a typical sales curve.

Agents, software, or businesses that provide a trading infrastructure to bring buyers and sellers together.

The introduction of ebusiness brought about disintermediation, which occurs when a business sells directly to the customer online and cuts out the intermediary.

Here steps are added to the value chain as new players find ways to add value to the business process.

Refers to the creation of new kinds of intermediaries that simply could not have existed before the advent of ebusiness, including comparison shopping sites such and bank account aggregation services such as Citibank.

Measures advertising effectiveness by counting visitor interactions with the target ad, including time spent viewing the ad, number of pages viewed, and number of repeat visits to the advertisement.

Allows a business to generate commissions or referral fees when a customer visiting the website clicks on a link to another merchant's website.

A box running across a website that advertises the products and services of another business. 

A count of the number of people who visit one site and click on an advertisement that takes them to the site of the advertiser.

A small file deposited on a hard drive by a website containing information about customers and their browsing activities.

A technique that induces websites or users to pass on marketing message to other websites or users, creating exponential growth in the message's visibility and effect. 

Through this they can observe the exact pattern of consumer's navigation through a site. 

A plan that details how a company creates, delivers, and generates revenues on the Internet.

The original term for a company operating on the internet.

Generate revenues by providing digital content such as news, music, photos, or videos.

Provide specialized information on behalf of producers of goods and services and their potential customers.

Bring together buyers and sellers of products and services (like ebay and amazon)

Operate central website for users to access specialized content and other services.

Provide services such as photo sharing, video sharing, online backup and storage (mapquest, youtube)

Process online sales transactions

A company that provides access to the internet for a monthly fee (AT&T)

Converts an audio broadcast to a digital music player. 

Help companies manage the creation, storage, editing, and publication of their website content.

The scientific classification of organisms into groups based on similarities of structure or origin. 

is the set of ideas about how all information in a given context should be organized.

The next generation of internet use - a more mature, distinctive communications platform characterized by new qualities such as collaboration, sharing, and free.

• 1. Content sharing through open sourcing
• 2. User-contributed content
• 3. Collaboration inside the organization
• 4. Collaboration outside the organization

consists of nonproprietary hardware and software based on publicly known standards that allows third parties to create add-on products to plug into or interoperate with the system. 

Contains instructions written by a programmer specifying the actions to be performed by computer software.

Refers to any software whose source code is made available free for any third party to review and modify.

Created and updated by many users (like wikipedia and youtube)

One of the most popular forms of user-generated content where buyers post feedback on sellers.

A set of tools that supports the work of teams or groups by facilitating the sharing and flow of information. 

Is collaborating and tapping into the core knowledge of all employees, partners, and customers.

• The most common form of collective intelligence found inside the organization is knowledge management which involves capturing, classifying, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing information assets in a way that provides context for effective decisions and actions.

Supports the capturing, organization, and dissemination of knowledge (ie know-how) throughout an organization.

Consists of anything that can be documented, archived, and codified, often with the help of MIS

The knowledge contained in people's heads.

Refers to the wisdom of the crowd (most common form of collective intelligence found outside the organization).

Communication such as email in which the message and the response do not occur at the same time. 

Communication that occurs at the same time such as IM or chat.

Maps group contacts (personal and professional) identifying who knows each other and who works together. 

Similar to taxonomy except that crowdsourcing determines the tags or keyword-based classification system.

Allows users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks.

The practice of sending brief posts (140-200 characters) to a personal blog, either publicly or to a private group of subscribers who can read the posts as IMs or as a text msgs.

A web format used to publish frequently updated works, such as blogs, news headlines, audio, and video, in a standardized format.

describes how products in a network increase in value to users as the number of users increases.

A website or web application that uses content from more than one source to create a completely new product or service.

A set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications. A programmer then puts these building blocks together.

A component of Web 3.0 that describes things in a way that computers can understand.

Involves the use of strategies and technologies to transform governments by improving the delivery of services and enhancing the quality of interaction between the citizen-consumer within all branches of government.

The ability to purchase goods and services through a wireless internet-enabled device.

Govern the ethical and moral issues arising from the development and use of information technologies, as well as the creation, collection, duplication, distribution, and processing of information itself (with or without the aide of computer technology)

A technological solution that allows publishers to control their digital media to discourage, limit, or prevent illegal copying and distribution.

Examines the organizational resource of information and regulates its definitions, uses, value, and distribution ensuring it has the types of data/information required to function and grow effectively.

A method or system of government for information management or control.

is the act of conforming, acquiescing, or yeilding information

An ethical issue that focuses on who owns information about individuals and how information can be sold that focuses on who owns information about individuals and how information can be sold and exchanged.

Refers to the ability of a company to identify, search , gather, seize, or export digital information in responding to a litigation, audit, investigation, or information inquiry.

Passed to protect minors from accessing inappropriate material on the internet.

The abuse of pay-per-click, pay-per-call, and pay-per-conversion revenue models by repeatedly clicking on a link to increase charges or costs for the advertiser.

A computer crime where a competitor or disgruntled employee increases a company's search advertising costs by repeatedly clicking on the advertiser's link.

Requires a user to agree to follow it to be provided access to corporate email, information systems, and the internet.

A contractual stipulation to ensure that ebusiness participants do not deny (repudiate) their online actions. 

The electronic defacing of an existing website.

A problem that occurs when someone registers purposely misspelled variations of well-known domain names. 

the theft of a website's name that occurs when someone, posing as a site's administrator, changes the ownership of the domain name assigned to the website to another website owner.

Sends a massive amount of email to a specific person or system that can cause that user's server to stop functioning.

An antispamming approach where the receiving computer launches a return attach against the spammer, sending email messages back to the computer that originated the suspected spam.

Tracks people's activities by such measures as number of keystrokes, error rate, and number of transactions processed.

Refers to a period of time when a system is unavailable

A computer attach where an attacker accesses a wireless computer network, intercepts data, uses network services, and/or sends attack instructions without entering the office or organization that owns the network.

Allows internet advertisers to display advertisements without the consent of the computer user.

A special class of adware that collects data about the user and transmits it over the internet without the user's knowledge or permission.

Break into other people's computer systems and may just look around or may steal and destroy information

Have criminal intent when hacking

Find hacking code on the internet and click-and-point their way into systems to cause damage or spread viruses.

Work at the request of the system owners to find system vulnerabilities and plug the holes.

Open a way into the network for future attacks

Attacks from multiple computers that flood a website with so many requests for service that it slows down or crashes.

Change their form as the propagate

ides inside other software, usually as an attachment or a downloadable file.

Spreads itself, not only from file to file, but also from computer to computer. Worms do not need to attach themselves to anything to spread (like a virus does).

A special class of adware that collects data about the user and transmits it over the internet without the user's knowledge or permission.

A process by which a user misleads a system into granting unauthorized rights, usually for the purpose of compromising or destroying the system. 

Attack computer systems by transmitting a virus hoax, with a real virus attached. By masking the attack in a seemingly legitimate message, unsuspecting users more readily distribute the message and send the attack on to their co-workers and friends, infecting many users along the way

Includes a variety of threats such as viruses, worms, and trojan horses

Consists of altering the contents of packets as they travel over the internet or altering data on computer disks after penetrating a network. 

A program or device that can monitor data traveling over a network.

The forging of the return address on an email so that the message appears to come from someone other than the actual sender.

Fake blogs created solely to raise the search engine rank of affiliated websites.

Legitimate users who purposely or accidentally misuse their access to the environment and cause some kind of business-affecting incident.

Through this hackers use their social skills to trick people into revealing access credentials or other valuable information.

Details how an organization will implement the information security policies.

The category of computer security that addresses the protection of data from unauthorized disclosure and confirmation of data source authenticity.

A technique to gain personal information for the purpose of identity theft, usually by means of fraudulent emails that look as though they came from legitimate businesses.

Is a masquerading attack that combines spam with spoofing.

A phishing expedition in which the emails are carefully designed to target a particular person or organization.

A phone scam that attempts to defraud people by asking them to call a bogus telephone number to "confirm" their account information.

A program that secretly takes over another computer for the purpose of launching attacks on other computers.

A group of computers on which a hacker has planted zombie programs.

Uses a zombie farm, often an organized crime association, to launch a massive phishing attack.

The science that studies encryption, which is the hiding of messages so that only the sender and receiver can read them.

• The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) introduced an AES designed to keep government information secure.

This uses 2 keys: a public key that everyone can have and a private key for only the recipient.

A trusted 3rd party that validates user identities by means of digital certificates (like VeriSign)

A data file that identifies individuals or organizations online and is comparable to a digital signature.

Hardware and/or software that guard a private network by analyzing incoming and outgoing information for the correct markings.

Features full-time monitoring tolls that search for patterns in network traffic to identify intruders.