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Assignment #1. Chapter 2 Questions MBA: 1) 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? Main management groups within a business are operational management (employees, staff), middle management and senior, top-management. Accordingly there are three major types of information systems – transaction processing system (TPS), management information systems (MIS) and decision-support system (DSS), executive support system (ESS).
A TPS is a computerized system that performs and records the daily routine transactions necessary to conduct business, e. g. payroll, hotel reservations, shipping, sales orders etc. TPS provides the information to MIS for middle management for summarizing, reporting and monitoring without high analytics. DSS for middle management support management decisions that are unique and rapidly changing using information not only from TPS and MIS, but also from external resources and more advanced analytical models and data analysis capabilities.
ESS support top-management by providing data that are often in the form of graph and charts delivered via portals using many sources of internal summarized information from MIS and DSS and external information as well. 2) You have been hired to work with 10 salespeople from different branches of a national business in creating an online training site for new Sales employees. Identify six collaboration tools that are available to help the team work together. Which single tool would be the most helpful for the project, in your opinion, and why?
Six management collaboration tools are: 1. Internet-based collaboration environment – support workgroup collaboration, provide space to store team documents, group calendars, audio-visual tools for communications and video conference, e. g. MS Office Live Meeting, WebEx, Oovoo. 2. E-mail and instant messaging (IM) – major communication and collaboration tools supporting interaction jobs. 3. Cell Phones and Smartphones – basic part of a firm’s telecommunications infrastructure for professionals and employees whose need to talk with one another, with customers, partners, managers.
BlackBarry, Nokia E-series, IPhone and many others can help not only to talk, but also read corporate mail. 4. Social networking – can serve for entertainment , just share their interests and interact(Facebook, MySpace) and help business professionals to find jobs, partners, employees (LinkedIn, Xing). Also Social networking tools are quickly becoming a corporate tool for sharing ideas and collaboration within the firm. 5. Wikis – What I Know Is… – online encyclopedias and types of Web sites that make easy for users to contribute and edit the text content and graphics ( Wikipedia, Investopedia.
Etc).. 6. Virtual worlds – online platforms, where people can interact with other in kind of virtual reality, can do there online meetings, trainings etc. (Second Life) The most helpful tool, in my opinion, is still e-mail, as a most common, easy and wide spreaded. This is official business tool for communication and collaboration between all team members wherever they are, in all continents and all time belts. Second can be phones (smartphones), as a supporting tool. 3) Your aunt has asked you for your suggestions to make her business, a local sandwich shop, more efficient.
Describe at least three types of business processes that a sandwich shop have. Can any be better coordinated through the use of information systems? Three minimum necessary business processes for sandwich shop. 1. Ordering the sandwich components 2. Making the sandwiches 3. Selling the sandwiches Indeed that these processes can be better coordinated with the use of information system. For example, many steps of business processes like order generating, getting the receipt, payments, “asking” for quantity, even keeping the customer loyal can be executing through the Information system. ) Describe the role of IT governance within the firm. IT governance includes the strategy and policies for using information technology within the company. It specifies the decision rights and framework for accountability o ensure that the use of information technology supports the organization’s strategies and objectives. Firms with superior IT governance will have clearly thought out the answers on the questions like: What decisions must be made to ensure effective management and use of information technology? Who should make these decisions? How will it be made and monitored? ) Describe at least two benefits of using enterprise systems. Enterprise systems – ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning has many benefits: * Collect data from various key business processes in manufacturing, production, accounting, sales, marketing etc and store the data in a single central data repository. * Information is not fragmented in different small systems, can be easily shared within the firm, free flow the information * Implementing the EPR system is often organizing the business processes and can help understand better the essence of the processes. Support the decision making for middle and top management, can help eliminate the routine for the blue collars. 6) What is the connection between organizations, information systems, and business processes? Within each organization are business processes. A business process is a logically related set of activities that defines how specific business tasks are performed, and it represents a unique way in which an organization coordinates work, information and knowledge.
Managers need to pay attention to business processes because they determine how well the organization can execute its business, and they may be a source of strategic advantage. Many business processes are cross-functional, and there are business processes specific to each of the major business functions (manufacturing, sales, marketing, accounting, HR etc. ). Information systems automate parts of business processes and they can help organizations redesign and streamline these processes.