Module 7

Question 1

What is TPS?

Answer 1

Transaction Processing Systems: record data on fundamental operations occuring within the company.

Question 2

Types of TPS

Answer 2

• Batch processing
• Online transaction processing (OLTP)

Question 3

Batch processing

Answer 3

• Stores data in a temporary location and is processed in single units (batch) at a specific time
• Allows companies to shift processing to times when computing is less busy

Question 4

Online Transaction Processing

Answer 4

• Data is processed in real time
• Current state of the system is always reflected

Question 5

How do enterprise systems provide value?

Answer 5

They provide value by increasing operational efficiency and by providing firmwide information so managers can make better decisions.

Question 6

Enterprise software

Answer 6

Enterprise software includes analaytical tools to use the data the system captures to evaluate the overall organization performance.

Question 7

What is ERP?

Answer 7

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) intagrates functions of the company into a homogenuous system. Leaders are SAP and Oracle.

Question 8

What is a supply chain?

Answer 8

A supply chain is a network of organizations and business processes that provide the company with raw materials, transform these materials into intermediate and finished products and deliver the finished products to the customer.

Question 9

Downstream portion of supply chain

Answer 9

Includes organizations and processes for distributing and delivering end product to final customer.

Question 9

Upstream portion of supply chain

Answer 9

Includes suppliers and processes for managing relationships with them.

Question 10

JIT

Answer 10

Just-in-time strategy is an inventory management method, in which materials are received by suppliers only as they are needed, in order to lower inventory holding costs and increase inventory turnover.. This can be achieved when we have perfect information, which is not possible, so that’s why companies hold Safety Stock, which acts as a buffer for the lack of efficiency.

Question 11

Bullwhip effect

Answer 11

This happens when information about the demand for a product gets distorted as it passes through the supply chain. Small change in demand gets magnified, which leads to exess inventory.

Question 12

Supply chain planning system

Answer 12

These systems model existing supply chain, make demand forecasts and develop a plan for optimal sourcing and manufacturing.

Question 13

Demand planning

Answer 13

Determines how much of a product a company should produce to satisfy all customer demands.

Question 14

Supply chain execution system:

Answer 14

Manage the flow of products through distribution centers and warehouses to ensure the product gets delived to the right location in the most efficient manner.

Question 15

Push-based model

Answer 15

Production master schedule is based on forecasts of customer demands and product has to be pushed to customer.

Question 16

Pull-based model

Answer 16

Actual customer purchases trigger events in the supply chain.

Question 17

CRM systems

Answer 17

Customer relationship management systems integrate data from various departments.
CRM packages include tools for:
- Sales force automation
- Customer support
- Marketing

Question 18

Touch point

Answer 18

Method of interaction with the customer: email, FB, CS desk

Question 19

Sales force automation

Answer 19

SFA means making sales staff more productive by focusing sales efforts on most profitable customers.

Question 20

Operational aspect of CRM

Answer 20

Customer facing application

Question 21

Anlytical aspect of CRM

Answer 21

Applications that analyze customer data to provide information for improving business performance.
Output: Customer lifetime value CLTV

Question 22

Management Information Systems

Answer 22

• serve middle managers
• answer routine questions with predefined procedures to get to an answer
• little analytical capability
• provide reports on firm performance based on TPS

Question 23

Decision Support System

Answer 23

• serve middle managers
• can use external resources as well as MIS/TPS
• support non-routine decision making

Question 24

Executive Support System

Answer 24

• support senior management
• non-routine decision makinh, requires judgement, evaluation and insight

Question 25

Data warehouses

Answer 25

Collect and store data from transactional systems across the organization. Data is consolidated and standardized, but can’t be altered. These serve as a tool for querying, analysis and reporting.

Question 26

Data marts

Answer 26

Are subsets of data stored in data warehouses:
- contain a highly focused proportion of the organization’s data
- designed to support a specific business problem/challenge on a specific population of users.

Question 27

Data lakes

Answer 27

Centralized repository that allows you to store structured and unstructured data at any scale.

Question 28

Contemporary business intelligence infrastructure

Answer 28

Combines “traditional” data warehouse solutions with data lakes to integrate unstructured data and/or external data and/or large structured data sets.

Question 29

What do database, data warehouse, data marts use as input?

Answer 29

Operational systems like TPS.

Question 30

What is the output of databases?

Answer 30

Business intelligence tools, analytical systems.

Question 31

What are business intelligence tools?

Answer 31

Tools for consolidating, analysing, accessing data to support organizational decison-making.

Question 32

Online analytical processing

Answer 32

OLAP: transaction-level data from relational databases is aggregated and summarized.

Question 33

Where are the results of analysis from OLAP stored?

Answer 33

They are stored in special databases called data cubes, which structure results across multiple dimensions. (Time, Place, Product)

Question 34

Data Mining

Answer 34

The use of special algorithms to identify hidden patterns in and to fit models to large data sets.

Question 35

Association

Answer 35

Certain atrribute values that frequently occur together in a data set. (enables vendors to tailor discounts and optimize product location)

Question 36

Central concpets on association

Answer 36

1. Support x(X) is the fraction of transactions that contain a certain set of items X.
2. Confidence c(X->Y) is the fraction of transactions that contain Y amongst the transactions that contain X.

Question 37

Big Data

Answer 37

1. Volume: The simple size of a dataset that needs to be processed;
2. Velocity: The speed with which new data is generated and needs to be processed;
3. Variety: The different formats & features of data that need to be processed (relational databases, documents, photos, videos, spatial & temporal aspects);
4. Veracity: The reliability of the data (user-generated content, such as restaurant reviews, but also imprecisions in measurements, such as GPS positions).

Question 38

Analytics

Answer 38

Analytics applies classical statistics and AI to derive actionable insight from big data. e.g: neural networks replicate the basic functions of the human brain to predict outcome

Question 39

Neural networks

Answer 39

• Are feed historic data sets on the outcome of interest or other variables

Question 40

What did Siemens implement and how>

Answer 40

Implemented Celonis’ Business Mining software.
- analyses data in enterprise application event log to predict bottlenecks and other inefficiencies
e.g: using special algorithms it can predict which orders will be late based on historical outcomes of Siemens
- previously individual supervisors were responsible for one process making it difficult to understand which processes were affected by one process
- organisational resistance to process mining from long-term managers

Question 41

Types of decisions

Answer 41

• unstructured decisions: decision-maker must provide judgement, evaluation and insight on the decision. no well-understood procedure on makin them
• strctured: repetitive and routine, definite procedure
• semi-structured: only part of the problem has a clear-cut answer provided by an acceppted procedure