Information, technotechnologies and systems for organizational performance

Question 1

what are the 3 decision making levels in a business

Answer 1

strategic( CEO CFO, BOD) - long term decisions

Management level ( managers ) - mix of long and short term decisions

operational ( employees)- short term decision making

Question 2

why do organizations require information systems (2 reasons)

Answer 2

1.to support day to day business operations via processing and storing transactions,

2. and to support the managerial activities of planning, decision making, performance measurement, and control

Question 3

what is a system

Answer 3

A set of interacting components that operate together to accomplish a purpose.

Question 4

what are information systems

Answer 4

a combination of hardware software and communications capability, where information is collected processed and stores

Question 5

what is information technology

Answer 5

t.he equipment used to capture, store, transmit or present information. IT provides a large part of the information systems infrastructure

Question 6

what are benefits of information systems 2

Answer 6

• well stored and collected information can aid in better decision making and give a competitive advantage

-quick and efficient access to information helps in faster decision making and can lead to things like first mover advantage

Question 7

what are the 3 component parts of a system?

Answer 7

1. inputs
2. processes
3. outputs

Question 8

what are Transaction processing systems

Answer 8

systems that are used to capture all the day-to-day
routine transactions within a business. These will mostly be of use to the managers at an
operational level ( e.g a cashier till that can take payment transactions and process the money into business bank account

Question 9

what are Customer relationship management (CRM) Systems

Answer 9

A CRM helps to manage customer data, the business can use it to track and organise its contacts with both existing and potential future customers.

Question 10

what is a Executive information systems (EIS)

Answer 10

EIS provide board level with summarised information for strategic decisions. e.g dashboard , animated chart , done for strategic decisions such as mergers accuisition.

Question 11

what are Decision support systems (DSS)

Answer 11

DSS provide information in a flexible format to facilitate “what if’ analysis. These will often be
used to assist resource planning at a management / tactical level. e.g make or buy decisions , should we make in house or outsource , etc

Question 12

what is a Management Information System

Answer 12

Management Information System (MIS) is a generic term used to describe any system which provides information for use in the decision making at all levels within an organisation. can be accessed from all levels in business

Question 13

what are expert systems

Answer 13

Expert systems provide access and assistance with tax legislation, Companies Act requirements etc

Question 14

what is an Enterprise resource planning systems (ERPS)

Answer 14

An ERP software system is a set of integrated applications or modules for managing a company’s core business processes – including finance and accounting, supply chain, HR, procurement, sales, inventory management, and more. these will all be separate modules in the system

whatever work is done gets updated in the central hub so hr work will be recorded kin the accounting system in real time however they can’t access each others departments

Question 15

what are Costs of information systems (7)

Answer 15

The Equipment or Software cost
* Implementation/Maintenance
* Training Costs
* Management and Staff time required (Opportunity cost)
* Expert Knowledge/time required
* System security
* Costs associated with a reduction in the size of the workforce

Question 16

what are benefits of information systems (5)

Answer 16

• Management and Staff time saved
• Increased knowledge and expertise
• Improvement in customer experience
• Reduction in other costs e.g. bad debts
• Increased quality of information - more likely to be ‘ACCURATE’

Question 17

what are some examples of privacy and security threats

Answer 17

risk of natural disasters, malfunction of computer hardware or software, computer viruses, hackers, electronic eavesdropping, or human errors

Question 18

what is the internet used for in business

Answer 18

The internet is an electronic communications network that connects computer networks, individual users and organisational computer facilities around the world

Question 19

what controls must a business have in order to reduce these privacy and security risks (2)

Answer 19

• General controls - includes controls over the IT environment such as access controls, segregation of duties, and business continuity planning.
• Application controls - refers to transaction processing controls automatically performed by
  the system such as, completeness checks, data validity checks, and authorisation checks

Question 20

how can information be shared (title)

Question 21

what is a network

Answer 21

computers which are connected and can send information together are networked and form a network

Question 22

what is the intranet

Answer 22

a cluster of computers can be networked together to form an organization-wide network. this is intranet and can be used to share information internally. they are private networks

Question 23

what is the extranet

Answer 23

An extranet is a secure extension of a company’s private intranet. It can be accessed by authorised outsiders such as suppliers and/or customers using things like usernames and passwords

Question 24

what is the internet

Answer 24

a global public network connecting millions of computers

Question 25

what is cloud computing

Answer 25

cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale.

Question 25

benefits of cloud computing : 3

Answer 25

-reduced IT costs

-safe storage - as data can be backed up in the cloud

-Improved access- information can be accessed form anywhere

Question 26

what is the use of wifi in business

Answer 26

Wireless technology enables the linking of devices (typically laptop computers, smartphones and other personal handheld devices) to networks wherever WiFi networks are available.

Question 27

what is data visualization

Answer 27

• process of reporting information in a graphical or pectoral format to make the key pieces of information easier to extract

Question 28

to be effective what 3 features should data visualization tools have

Answer 28

• have results that are essential for decision making
• the tool must be displayed quickly and stay up to date with changes
• the tool must be supported with enough quality data

Question 29

what is Anthonys hierarchy

Answer 29

he made a hierarchy that classified the information used at differnent stages of management for planning, decision making and control

Question 30

what are the levels and what do they mean

Answer 30

• strategic level (top of hierarchy )- the process of deciding on objectives of the organisation
• tactical- (middle)managers make sure that resources are obtained and used effectively and efficiently to achieve the organisational objectives
• operational (bottom)is the process of ensuring that specific tasks are carried out effectively and efficiently.

Question 31

what are open systems

Answer 31

refer to systems that interact with other systems or the outside environment

Question 32

what are closed systems

Answer 32

refer to systems having relatively little if not no interaction with other systems or the outside environment

Question 33

what are internal sources of management information

Answer 33

The accounts (nominal ledger, sales ledger, purchase ledger), particularly relevant for sales,
costs and inventory valuation information
* Original budget
* Supplier and customer databases
* Meetings (formal and informal)
* Inventory management system
* Payroll department/system

Question 34

what are direct data capture costs

Answer 34

include money spent on scanning, bar code systems, completion of forms (time, paper etc)

Question 35

what are the costs of internal sources

Answer 35

Direct data capture costs
processing costs
indirect costs

Question 36

what are processing coasts

Answer 36

If information is generated internally then there will be processing costs such as the costs of data input personnel and costs of staff who check/summarise input data

Question 37

what are indirect costs

Answer 37

producing internally generated information, including lost output from not being able to employ more production staff if budget is taken up with data personnel. Also, if too much information is produced there is a danger that inefficient decisions are made as staff get “blinded” by the data

Question 38

what is big data

Answer 38

Big Data involves capturing and processing data on a vast scale and converting it into information that is able to be utilised by the organisation. Analysis of big data can uncover unexpected relationships and provide new insights into business performance

Question 39

what is structured data

Answer 39

Structured data is stored within defined fields, often
with defined lengths, within a defined record, in a file of similar records.

Question 40

what is unstructured data

Answer 40

Unstructured data may be ‘tagged’ using metadata to make organising and analysing the data easier

Question 41

what is metadata

Answer 41

Metadata describes other data, for example using keywords thatdescribe the content.

Question 42

what are Doug Laneys 3 characteristics of big data

Answer 42

volume
velocity
variety

Question 43

what is volume

Answer 43

More data than ever before is being collected. This is driven by social media andtransactional-based data recorded by large organisations, for example data captured from Point of Sale systems and loyalty cards. Internal systems also provide large pools of data
able to contribute to big data

Question 44

what us velocity

Answer 44

refers to the speed at which data is being streamed into the organisation, in real time. Transactions may be constant, particularly for multi-national organisations and those with significant ecommerce presence

Question 45

what is variety

Answer 45

Big Data includes data from many different systems which will be in many different formats. Structured data will include transaction files. Unstructured data will include social media posts, which are likely to include images, video and audio recordings. There may also be email messages, and SMS (text messages). ‘Making sense’ of these many different
sources and formats may require significant investment.

Question 46

how do companies use big data

Answer 46

• Companies who identified the potential of Big Data ahead of competitors have obtained competitive advantage. Netflix use big data to shape recommendations to customers, and to
  improve streaming video.
• Big Data can be used to identify and / or analyse opportunities to increase revenues by improving product offerings, or reducing costs through process efficiencies. Tesco uses Big Data, including data collected under their Clubcard loyalty programme, to target offers to specific customers.
• Organisations can build a more complete picture of their customers gained from multiple sources including transactions, website visits, social media posts and emails.
• Although Big Data, by definition, is big and complex, systems need to ensure information is able to be made available and acted upon quickly. A system that is slow and cumbersome will likely present competitors with an opportunity to act first.

Question 47

what is data analytics

Answer 47

The process of using fields within the source data itself, rather than predetermined formats, to collect, organise and analyse large sets of data to discover patterns and other useful information which an organisation can use for its future business decisions

Question 48

what are the uses of big data and analytics for planning

Answer 48

Big Data can help make budget estimates more accurate by providing missing data or enabling the business to see correlations in data.

• Big Data provides more reliable information about the impact of factors in the wider environment, which may generally be difficult to determine, for example legal / political developments and exchange rate changes, resulting in more robust budgets.

Question 49

what are the uses of big data and analytics for costing

Answer 49

Big Data can help identify ways of reducing costs through process efficiencies or removing non value-adding activities. For example, social media could be monitored and customer feedback collected to establish which features of a product customers do not like, then these could be removed resulting in cost savings.

Question 50

what are the uses of big data and analytics for decision making

Answer 50

• Big data can also have an impact upon an organisations decision making as better decisions
  can be made due to the new insights into areas such as customer thinking and product
  usage.
• When using big data, information becomes more transparent and more accessible. It becomes more viable to predict trends, analyse customer behaviour, understand what customers want and deliver what customers want, leading to better decisions being made. For example, Netflix removed the mandatory auto play feature after the results of a twitter poll revealed many users did not like this feature, so now users have the option to turn this feature off

Question 51

what are the uses of big data for performance management

Answer 51

• Big data can provide more detailed and up to date performance measurement.
• Big Data can provide a better idea of non-financial performance, which indicates better long-
  term direction and earlier corrective action

Question 52

what are the Challenges and risks of implementing and using big data and data analytics in an
organisation

Answer 52

• There will be significant costs involved in setting up a system to effectively use big data.
  Computer systems may need to be upgraded to handle to volume of data and these will
  need to be monitored to ensure they do not run out of storage space. It also requires skill to
  be able to interpret the big data which means organisations will either need to spend money
  training their existing staff or hire a data scientist to interpret the data, and going forwards
  analysing big data will be complex and time consuming.
• Organisations will need to make sure they adhere to the relevant data protection legislation,
  and could incur penalties and fines if they do not.
• There is also the risk the data may contain data outliers - anomalies in the data - which
  could distort the patterns and trends shown in the data.
• Consideration also needs to be given to the veracity of the data. Sometimes known as the
  fourth V, veracity refers to the accuracy of the data. Inaccurate data could lead to inaccurate
  conclusions drawn and suboptimal decisions made.

Question 53

In generating and distributing internal information what types of controls may be
necessary

Answer 53

Input controls - passwords, checks that data is in appropriate format (e.g. alphanumeric
checks) etc

• Processing controls - audit trails of who has updated information and when
• Output controls - Distribution to authorised personnel only (use lists) or password access
  198

Question 54

Controls for highly sensitive information include…?

Answer 54

• Keeping passwords or other codes securely
• Staff contracts specifying procedures and action to be taken if the person fails to adhere to the security standards
• Storing physical documents in locked cabinets in secure locations
• IT department monitoring file access on a regular basis