ITM102 Ch 2 Notes PDF

Business processes refer to the manner in which work is organized, coordinated, and focused to produce a valuable product or service Business process ○ Flows of material, information, knowledge ○ Sets of activities, steps ○ May be tied to a functional area or be cross-funct...

Business processes refer to the manner in which work is organized, coordinated, and focused to produce a valuable product or service Business process ○ Flows of material, information, knowledge ○ Sets of activities, steps ○ May be tied to a functional area or be cross-functional ○ Sales and marketing Information technology improves business processes by improving the efficiency of existing processes through automating manual steps ○ Ex: Checking clients’ credit, Generating an invoice IT also improves business processes by:  ○ Changing the flow of information ○ Replacing sequential steps with parallel steps ○ Eliminating delays in decision-making ○ Supporting new business models Transaction processing systems(TPS) is a computerized system that performs and records the daily routine transactions that performs and records the daily routine transactions necessary to conduct business ○ Ex: sales order entry, hotel reservations, payroll, employee record keeping, and shipping ○ It allows managers to monitor the status of operations and relations with the external environment ○ Serve predefined, structured goals and decision-making Ex: The decision to grant credit to a customer is made by a lower-level supervisor according to predefined criteria. All that must be determined is whether the customer meets the criteria Business Intelligence is a contemporary term for data and software tools for organizing, analyzing, and providing access to data to help managers and other enterprise users make more informed decisions ○ Management information systems also designates a specific category of information systems serving middle management Provides reports on the firm’s current performance, based on data from TPS Provides answers to routine questions with predefined procedures for answering them Typically have little analytic capability  ○ Decision-support systems(DSS) focus on problems that are unique and rapidly changing, for which the procedure for arriving at a solution may not be fully predefined in advance Improved decision making Serve middle management Support nonroutine decision making May use external information as well as TPS/MIS data Model-driven DSS: Voyage-estimating systems Data-driven DSS: Target marketing ○ Executive support systems(ESS) help senior management address nonroutine decisions requiring judgment, evaluation, and insight because there is no agreed-on procedure for arriving at a solution Information from graphs and data is delivered to senior executives through a portal, which uses a web interface to present integrated personalized business content Incorporate data about external events, such as new tax laws or competitors, but they also draw summarized information from internal MIS and DSS Ex: Digital dashboard with a real-time view of the firm’s financial performance Enterprise applications are systems that span functional areas, focus on executing business processes across the firm, and include all levels of management ○ Firms use enterprise systems, aka Enterprise resource planning(ERP), to integrate business processes in manufacturing and production, finance  and accounting, sales and marketing, and human resources into a single software system Information previously fragmented in many different systems is stored in a single comprehensive data repository where it can be used by many different parts of the business Enable: Coordination of daily activities Efficient response to customer orders(production, inventory) Decision-making by managers about daily operations and longer-term planning ○ Firms use supply chain management (SCM) systems to help manage relationships with their suppliers. These systems help suppliers, purchasing firms, distributors, and logistics companies share information about orders, production, inventory levels, and delivery of products and services so they can source, produce, and deliver goods and services efficiently The ultimate objective is to get the right amount of their products from their source to their point of consumption in the least amount of time and at the lowest cost ○ Firms use customer relationship management (CRM) systems to help manage their relationships with their customers. CRM systems 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  This information helps firms identify, attract, and retain the most profitable customers; provide better service to existing customers; and increase sales ○ Knowledge management systems (KMS) enable organizations to better manage processes for capturing and applying knowledge and expertise. These systems collect all relevant knowledge and experience in the firm and make it available wherever and whenever it is needed to improve business processes and management decisions. They also link the firm to external sources of knowledge Include enterprise-wide systems for: Managing documents, graphics and other digital knowledge objects Directories of employees with expertise Intranets are simply internal company websites that are accessible only by employees Extranets are company websites that are accessible to authorized vendors and suppliers and are often used to coordinate the movement of supplies to the firm’s production apparatus Electronic business, or e-business refers to the use of digital technology and the Internet to execute the major business processes in the enterprise ○ E-business includes activities for the internal management of the firm and for coordination with suppliers and other business partners Electronic commerce, or e-commerce is the part of e-business that deals with the buying and selling of goods and services over the Internet  ○ It also encompasses activities supporting those market transactions, such as advertising, marketing, customer support, security, delivery, and payment E-government refers to the application of the Internet and networking technologies to digitally enable government and public sector agencies’ relationships with citizens, businesses, and other forms of government Collaboration is working with others to achieve shared and explicit goals. Collaboration focuses on task or mission accomplishment and usually takes place in a business or other organization and between businesses ○ Collaboration can be short-lived, lasting a few minutes, or longer term, depending on the nature of the task and the relationship among participants ○ Teams have a specific mission that someone in the business as signed to them. Team members need to collaborate on the accomplishment of specific tasks and collectively achieve the team mission Collaboration and teamwork are more important today than ever for a variety of reasons. ○ Changing nature of work: The nature of work has changed from factory manufacturing and pre-computer office work where each stage in the production process occurred independently of one another and was coordinated by supervisors. ○ Growth of professional work: Professional jobs require substantial education and the sharing of information and opinions to get work done. Each actor on the job brings specialized expertise to the problem, and all the actors need to take one another into account in order to accomplish the job  ○ Changing organization of the firm: For most of the industrial age, managers organized work in a hierarchical fashion. Orders came down the hierarchy, and responses moved back up the hierarchy. Today, work is organized into groups and teams, and the members are expected to develop their own methods for accomplishing the task ○ Changing scope of the firm: The work of the firm has changed from a single location to multiple locations—offices or factories throughout a region, a nation, or even around the globe ○ Emphasis on innovation ○ Changing culture of work and business: Most research on collaboration supports the notion that diverse teams produce better outputs faster than individuals working on their own Social business is the use of social networking platform to engage their employees, customers, and suppliers ○ Aims to deepen interactions and expedite information sharing ○ “Conversations” to strengthen bonds with customers, suppliers, and employees, increasing their emotional involvement in the firm ○ Requires information transparency as people need to share opinions and facts with others quite directly, without intervention from executives or others ○ Seen as a way to drive operational efficiency, spur innovation, and accelerate decision making  Command and control firms required lower-level employees to carry out orders without asking too many questions, with no responsibility to improve processes, and with no rewards for teamwork or team performance ○ Never communicated horizontally, always vertically, so management could control the process In a collaborative business culture, senior management establishes collaboration and teamwork as vital to the organization:  ○ Policies, products, designs, processes, and systems are much more dependent on teams at all levels of the organization to devise, to create, and to build ○ Teams are rewarded for their performance in a team ○ Middle managers build the teams, coordinate their work, and monitor their performance Tools and technologies for collaboration and social business: ○ Email and Instant messaging ○ Wikis ○ Virtual worlds ○ Virtual meeting systems Videoconferencing— some feature telepresence technology which is an integrated audio and visual environment that allows a person to give the appearance of being present at a location other than his or her true physical location ○ Cloud collaboration services(Google drive, google docs, etc) ○ Microsoft sharepoint and IBM notes  ○ Enterprise social networking tools Six steps in evaluating software tools: ○ Identify your firm’s collaboration challenges ○ Identify what kinds of solutions are available ○ Analyze available products costs’ and benefits ○ Evaluate security risks ○ Consult users for implementation and training issues ○ Evaluate product vendors