Chapter Two Flashcards
Operational Level
Employees develop, control and maintain core business activities required to run the day-to-day operations.
Operational Decisions
Affect how the firm is run day-to-day.
Structured Decisions
Arise in situations where established processes offer potential solutions.
Managerial Level
Employees are continuously evaluating company operations to hone the firm’s abilities to identify, adapt to, and leverage change.
Managerial Decisions
Concern how the organization should achieve goals and objectives set by strategy.
Semi-Structured Decisions
Occur in situations in which a few established processes help to evaluate potential solutions, but not enough to lead to a definite recommended decision.
Strategic Level
Managers develop overall business strategies, goals and objectives as part of the company’s strategic plan.
Strategic Decisions
Involve higher-level issues concerned with the overall direction of the organization.
Unstructured Decisions
Occurring in situations in which no procedures or rules exist to guide decision makers toward the correct choice.
Project
Temporary activity a company undertakes to create a unique product, service or result.
Metrics
Measurements that evaluate results to determine whether a project is meeting its goals.
CSF
Critical Success Factors: the crucial steps companies perform to achieve their goals and objectives and implement their strategies.
KPI
Key Performance Indicators: the quantifiable metrics a company uses to evaluate progress towards CSFs.
Best Practices
The most successful solutions or problem-solving methods that have been developed by a specific organization or industry.
Efficiency MIS Metrics
Measure the performance of the MIS itself, such as throughput, transaction speed and system availability.
Effectiveness MIS Metrics
Measure the impact MIS has on business processes and activities, including customer satisfaction and customer conversion rates.
Throughput
The amount of information that can travel through the system at any point in time.
Information Accuracy
The extent to which a system generates the correct results when executing the same transaction numerous times.
Usability
The ease with which people perform transactions and/or find information.
Benchmarks
Baseline values the system seeks to attain.
Benchmarking
Process of continuously measuring system results, comparing those results to optimal system performance (benchmark values), and identifying steps and procedures to improve system performance.
Model
Simplified representation or abstraction of reality.
Transactional Information
Encompasses all the information contained within a single process or unit of work, and its primary purpose is to support the performance of daily operational or structured decisions.
Online Transaction Processing (OLTP)
The capture of transaction and event information using technology to 1) process the information according to defined business rules, 2) store the information, and 3) update existing information to reflect the new information.
Transaction Processing System (TPS)
Basic business system that serves the operational level (analysts) and assists in making structured decisions.
Source Documents
Original transaction record along with details.
CRUD
Creating, reading, updating, and deleting.
Analytical Information
Encompasses all organizational information, and its primary purpose is to support the performance of managerial analysis or semi-structured decisions.
Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)
Manipulation of information to create business intelligence in support of strategic decision making
Decision Support Systems (DSS)
Model information using OLAP, which provides assistance in evaluating and choosing among different courses of action. Analyze complex relationships between large amounts of data to discover patterns, trends and exception conditions.
Executive Information System (EIS)
Specialized DSS that supports senior-level executives and unstructured, long-term, non routine decisions.
Granularity
Refers to the level of detail in the model or decision-making process.
Visualization
Produces graphical displays of patterns and complex relationships in large amounts of data.
Infographic
A representation of information in a graphic format designed to make the data easily understandable at a glance.
Pie Chart
Type of graph in which a circle is divided into sectors that represent a proportion of the whole.
Bar Chart
A chart or graph that presents grouped data with rectangular bars with lengths proportional to the values they represent.
Histogram
A graphical display of data using bars of different heights. Similar to a bar chart, but groups numbers into ranges.
Sparkline
A small, embedded line graph that illustrates a single trend. Do not use axes or labels; context comes from the related content.
Time-series Chart
A graphical representation showing change of a variable over time. Used for data that changes continuously.
Digital Dashboard
A common tools that supports visualization.
Consolidation
The aggregation of data from simple roll-ups to complex groupings of interrelated information.
Drill-Down
Enables users to view details, and details of details, of information.
Slice-and-Dice
The ability to look at information from different perspectives.
Pivot
Rotates data to display alternative presentations of the data.
Artificial Intelligence
Simulates human thinking and behavior, such as the ability to reason and learn.
Algorithm
A set of instructions that complete a task.
Intelligent Systems
Various commercial applications of artificial intelligence.
Machine Learning
Type of AI that enables computers both to understand concepts in the environment and to learn.
Weak AI
Machines can still make their own decisions based on reasoning and past sets of data.
Strong AI
Refers to the field of AI that works toward providing brain-like powers to AI machines
Expert Systems
Computerized advisory programs that imitate the reasoning processes of experts in solving difficult problems.
Case-Based Reasoning
A method whereby new problems are solved based on the solutions from similar cases solved in the past.
Machine Vision
Ability of a computer to “see” by digitizing an image, processing the data it contains, and taking some kind of action.
Machine Vision Sensitivity
The ability of a machine to see in dim light or to detect weak impulses at invisible wavelengths.
Machine Vision Resolution
The extent to which a machine can differentiate between objects.
Neural Network
AI that attempts to emulate the way a human brain works.
Fuzzy Logic
A mathematical method of handling imprecise or subjective information.
Deep Learning
A process that employs specialized algorithms to model and study complex datasets. Used to establish relationships among data and datasets.
Genetic Algorithm
An AI system that mimics the evolutionary, survival-of-the-fittest process to generate increasingly better solutions to a problem.
Mutation
Process within a genetic algorithm of randomly trying combinations and evaluating the success (and failure) of the outcome.
Intelligence Agent
A special-purpose knowledge-based information system that accomplishes specific tasks on behalf of its users.
Shopping Bot
Software that will search several retailer websites and provide a comparison of each retailer’s offerings including price and availability.
Virtual Reality
A computer-simulated environment that can be a simulation of the real world or an imaginary world.
Augmented Reality
The viewing of the physical world with computer-generated layers of information added to it.
Google Glass
A wearable computer with an optical head-mounted display (OHMD).
Virtual Workplace
A work environment that is not located to any one physical space.
Haptic Interface
Uses technology allowing humans to interact with a computer through bodily sensations and movements.
Customer-facing Processes
Result in a product or service received by an organization’s external customer.
Business-facing Processes
Are invisible to the external customer but essential to the effective management to the business.
Business-Process Patent
A patent that protects a specific set of procedures for conducting a particular business activity.
Core Processes
Business processes that make up the primary activities in a value chain.
Static Process
Uses a systematic approach in an attempt to improve business efficiency and effectiveness.
Dynamic Process
Continuously changing and provides business solutions to ever-changing business operations.
Business Process Modeling (Mapping)
The activity of creating a detailed flowchart or process map of a work process that shows its inputs, tasks and activities in a structured sequence.
Business Process Model
A graphic description of a process, showing the sequence of process tasks, which is developed for a specific purpose and from a selected viewpoint.
Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN)
A graphical notation that depicts the steps in a business process.
BPMN Event
Anything that happens during the course of a business process.
BPMN Activity
A task in the business process.
BPMN Gateway
Used to control the flow of a process.
BPMN Flow
Displays the path in which the process flows.
As-Is Process Models
Represent the current state of the operation that has been mapped, without any specific movements or changes to existing processes.
To-Be Process Models
Show the results of applying change improvement opportunities to the current (As-Is) process model.
Swim Lane
Layout that arranges the steps of a business process into a set of rows depicting the various elements.
Workflow
Includes the tasks, activities and responsibilities required to execute each step in a business process.
Workflow Control Systems
Monitor processes to ensure tasks, activities, and responsibilities are executed as specified.
Operational Business Processes
Static, routine, daily business processes such as stocking inventory, checking out customers, or daily opening and closing processes.
Operational Analytics
Makes analytics part of the business process.
Business Process Improvement
Attempts to understand and measure the current process and make performance improvements accordingly.
Automation
Process of computerizing manual tasks, making them more efficient and effective and dramatically lowering operational costs.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Use of software with AI and machine learning capabilities to handle high-volume, repeatable tasks that previously required a human to perform.
Managerial Business Processes
Are semidynamic, semiroutine, monthly business processes such as resource allocation, sales strategy, or manufacturing process improvements.
Streamlining
Improves business process efficiencies by simplifying or eliminating unnecessary steps.
Bottleneck
Occur when resources reach full capacity and cannot handle any additional demands.
Redudancy
Occur when a task or activity is unnecessarily repeated.
Cycle Time
Time required to process an order.
Strategic Business Processes
Dynamic, non-routine long-term business processes such as financial planning, expansion strategies, and stakeholder interactions.
Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
The analysis and redesign of workflow within and between enterprises.
