Summary: Business Information Systems

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• 1 Information systems, strategy and governance

• 1.1 What is an IS

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• What are the key learning from McKinseys piece on modernizing IT for a digital era?

  Incrementalism vs end-to-end modernization
  - IT becomes a critical part of the company's DNA
  - under pressure of digital disruption
  
  executives face three critical steps for end-to-end modernization
  - define target state of IT architecture
  - decide which systems, people, and processes need to change
  - determine sequence and scope of these changes   
  
  Companies can't afford to work in the same old ways
  
  Technologies and processes are only becoming more sophisticated
  
  IT must join business to think systematically about how to phase in new digital technologies

• What is McKinsey's conclusion on IT?

  We need business leaders with great IT capabilities in our age of digital, automation and AI
  
  Organizations should move from siloed business units and departments to all-encompasing digital organisations
  
  Everyone will need to be involved with designing and implementing digital technologies for which information systems are the basis

• What is the difference between data and information?

  Data: raw observed facts of events like business transactions, symbolic epresentation of facts
  
  Information: processed data useful for the decision making process; data are the building blocks of information. Provides context
  
  Knowledge: ability to perform certain tasks by combining data with own information and experience

• What is metadata information? And what is its importance?

  Information about data/information
  
  Makes information more comprehensible to humans and computers
  Increases value of information
  Data becomes and stays information
  People can still use information, also after owner of the information leaves the company
  Improves sharing of information between people

• What is a system?

  A system is a set of elements. These elements are related to each other and, possibly, to elements from the universe of discourse and are joined for a specific purpose

• What is a business information system

  A BIS is a set of related components to collect, search, process, store and distribute information in order to support the coordination and control of the decision making process within an organization.

• What is a two-dimensional typology?

  Like a pyramid with layers:
  -Strategic: long term decisions, on group level, often based on unstructured information, what if analysis
  -Tactical: mid long term decisions, identify execution plans for group decisions, project anagement
  -Operations: daily operations and decisions, based on structured information, immediate results
  
  Functional domains:
  - sales and marketing
  - production and logistics
  - finance & accountancy
  - human resources

• What are operational information systems?

  Characteristics
  - operational processes are well structured, unambiguous and routinely
  - opterational decisions regard the short term, occur relatively often and contain little uncertainties
  - the required information on this level is: easy to determin,e independent of the individual, well structured, and occurs particularly within the organization
  
  Examples
  - Online transaction processing system (OLTP)
  - Enterprise resource planning systems (ERP)

• What information systems are used on the tactical level

  Users: middle management and executives
  Decisions: concering mid long term, less often, less routinely, more uncertainties or risks
  
  Required information
  - from operational level + data warehouses
  - less easy to determine, dependent of individual and moment, less structured
  
  Examples:
  Management Information Systems (MIS)
  Decision Support Systems (DSS)

• What are the components of a DSS

  Decision Support System
  - management level: data analysis for decision making
  - input: data, low volume and data warehouses, analytical models, data analysis tools
  - processing: interactive, simulation
  - output: special reports, decision analysis, answers to specific queries
  - users: middle and executive managers