Business Process and Information Systems Flashcards
What are business processes?
Sets of activities, routines, steps
Flows of material, information, knowledge
May be tied to functional area or be cross-functional
They can be assets or liabilities
What are the basic types of processes?
Structured and Dynamic Processes
What is a structured process?
They are standardized processes that support operational and structured managerial decisions and activities.
They are formally defined and documented.
There are rarely any exceptions to the process and changing the structure is very slow.
Examples include customer returns.
What is a dynamic process?
They are fluid processes that are less specific and support less structured managerial decisions and activities.
They are informal and exceptions are expected to happen often.
They can change structure quickly and easily.
Examples include social networking, and any ill-defined ambiguous situation.
What are the scopes of the processes?
Workgroups, Enterprises, Healthcare Exchange
What are workgroups?
They support one or more workgroup process with 10-100 users. They have formalized procedures. Problem solutions within a group and they can duplicate data. Somewhat hard to change these.
Examples include Doctor’s Office/Medical Practices
What are enterprises?
Support one or more enterprise processes with 100-1000+ users. Formalized procedures with problem solutions that affect the enterprise itself. They eliminate workgroup data duplication and are difficult to change.
Examples such as a Hospital.
What are inter-enterprises?
Support one or more inter-enterprise processes with 1000+ users. Systems procedures formalized and problem solutions affect multiple organizations. They can resolve problems of duplicated enterprise data and are very difficult to change.
How can information systems improve process quality?
Increase the ratio of outputs to inputs. Change the process structure (change order of tasks) or change the process resources (change computer/software) or change both. You can also automate things.
What is an information silo?
Condition that exists when data is in separated information systems.
What are the problems with information silos?
Duplicated, inconsistent, and isolated data. Disjointed processes, lack of integrated enterprise information, inefficient as decisions are made in isolation, and overall a more expensive cost of organization.
How do information systems eliminate the problems of information silos?
Integrate data into a single database and revise applications
What are some processes that have been tried to develop Process, IS, and applications
BPM: A technique used to create new business processes and make new changes to existing processes.
SDLC: A process that can be used to develop both information systems and applications.
SCRUM: A new development process that was created, in part, to overcome problems created when using SDLC. Scrum is generic that it can be used for the development of all three, business processes, IS, and applications.
