Chapter 2 Flashcards
What is a business process?
ongoing collection of related activities or tasks that in a specific sequence create a product or a service of value to the organization, its business partners, and its customers.
What are the main components of a business process?
- inputs (raw materials)
- resources (people, equipment)
- outputs (products/services generated from process)
Describe several business processes carried out at your university.
Student admissions and registrations, processing financial aid applications
Pick one of the processes described in Question 2 or 3, and identify its inputs, outputs, customer(s), and resources. How does the process create value for its customer(s)?
Student admissions
- Inputs: students sending applications
- Resources: computers, academics department
- Outputs: acceptance and rejection
The process creates value for customers because it will shape whether they are accepted in their program or not.
Define a cross-functional business process, and provide several examples of such processes.
Cross-functional processes: no single functional area is responsible for their execution
example: sales and marketing
What are the two main types of cross-functional processes
Procurement process: all tasks involved in acquiring needed materials from external vendor
- The need for material (purchase requisition)
- Purchase order
- Vendor ships the materials, received by warehouse
- Vendor send invoice, received by accounting department
- Payment to vendor
Fulfillment process: processing customer orders
- Customer purchase
- Sales validate purchase and create sales order
- Data communication and order progress
- Warehouse preparation and shipment
- Invoice sent to customer
- Customer payment
3 areas of IS
executing the process: providing the means to complete the task
capturing and storing process data: process data or transaction data, need to be entered into the system only once
monitoring performance: evaluating information about the process, and detecting problems in the process
What is business process reengineering?
strategy for making an organization’s business processes more productive and profitable.
to examine their business processes from a “clean sheet” perspective and then determine how they can best reconstruct those processes to improve their business functions.
What is business process improvement? What is an example?
less radical, less disruptive and more incremental approach to BPR with the goal of reducing variation in the process outputs
example: six sigma
5 basic phases of BPI
Define phase: the present state of process activities, resources, inputs, outputs, customer requirements
Measure phase: identification of measure metrics (time, cost) and collection of data on evolution of these metrics over time
Analysis phase: examination of present state and collected data to find problems in the process. benchmarking, comparing performance to competitors
Improve phase: find possible solutions, map possible results, and implement best solution
Control phase: establish process metrics and monitoring improved process
What is business process management?
a management system that includes methods and tools to support the design, analysis, implementation, management, and continuous optimization of core business processes throughout the organization.
What are the characteristics of the modern business environment?
combination of social, legal, economic, physical and political factors in which businesses conduct their operations
Discuss some of the pressures that characterize the modern global business environment.
Market pressures
- Globalization: integration and interdependence of economic, social, cultural and ecological facets of life, made possible by rapid advances in information technology.
- The changing nature of the workforce (more diversified, at home)
- Powerful consumers (expectations, more knowledgeable)
Technology pressures
- Technological innovation and obsolescence
- Information overload
Societal/political/legal pressures
- Social responsibility (org. or ind.): willing to spend time or money to address various social problems
- Environment
- Facilities design and management: IT professionals are expected to help create green facilities
- Carbon management: IT executives help develop systems to monitor carbon
- Canadian and international environmental laws: which IT products to buy, how to dispose of them, carbon footprint
Identify some of the organizational responses to these pressures. Are any of these responses specific to a particular pressure? If so, then which ones?
Strategic systems: provides advantages that enable them to increase their market share and profits to better negotiate with suppliers and prevent competitors from entering their markets
Customer focus: provide superb customer service to make the difference between attracting and retaining customers vs losing them to competitors
Make-to-order: strategy of producing customized (made to individual specifications) products and services.
Mass customization: producing a large quantity of items, but customizing them to match the needs and preferences of individual customers
E-commerce: process of buying, selling, transferring, or exchanging products, services, or information through computer networks (the Internet)
E-business: servicing customers, collaborating with business partners, and performing electronic transactions within the organization
What are strategic information systems?
provide a competitive advantage by helping an organization to implement its strategic goals and improve its performance and productivity.
Either achieve a competitive advantage or reduce a competitive disadvantage
