Chapter 2 Flashcards
What are routine and more complex business processes.
Routine: fulfilling a customer order, receiving shipment.
More complex: developing a new product, deciding on a location of a new store, designing a new marketing campaign.
A business process is a network of …?
Activities, resources, facilities, information. These interact to achieve business function.
What are activities in a business process?
Activities transform resources and information of one type into resources and information of another type. Follow rules and procedures, can be manual, automated or a combination of both.
What are resources in a business process?
Resources are items of value, that an organization uses to provide value for its customers and successful outcomes for the owners. Examples: cash, cheques, workers, valued customers, suppliers inventory.
What are facilities in a business process.
Facilities are structures used within the business process. Resources can be stored in facilities. Examples: inventories, databases, equipment, factories, trucks.
What is the information in a business process?
Knowledge derived from data, data presented in a meaningful context, processed data. Activities use information to determine how to transform the inputs received into outputs produced. Business processes create, process, and store information.
What is data?
Date are recorded facts or figures. Not meaningful on it’s own, requires context.
What role does information play in business process?
Business process use, generate and store information(business process bring together important items of data in context). Business Processes bring together information so it can be understood at various levels.
How do activities use information systems?
Automate the generation of information.
Manipulate and store data and information.
Uncover new and novel methods (activities) to make the entire business process more efficient.
What are the characteristics of good information?
Accurate(correct and complete, crucial for management & decision making, cross check it to unsure accuracy)
Timely(produced in time for intended use)
Relevant(to context and subject)
Just barely sufficient (sufficient for the purpose for which generated, do not need additional, extraneous information)
Worth it’s cost( cost and value relationship)
What is automation of process activity?
Transfer work done by people to computers.
People follow procedures, computers follow software instructions
What is a business process?
A business process describes a set of activities that are necessary to complete a response to a stimulus applied to an organization.
Which three ways an organization can improve it’s performance?
Business process automation
Business process improvement
Business process transformation
What is business process automations?
It involves automating some aspects of a business process through the application of information technology.
Leaves the manual system essentially unchanged but. Makes processes more efficient by automating them.
BPA does not impact the way things are done, but rather how fast they are accomplished.
What is business process improvement?
BPI recommends that employees involved in the process should look for the ways to incrementally improve it. This approach takes an evolutionary view of the system. Changes are made to the way things are done, not just the computer system but the business process as well.
