Topic 2

Question 1

What is organizational strategy?

Answer 1

a planned approach that the organization takes to achieve its goals and mission statement

Question 2

What is competitive advantage?

Answer 2

an advantage over competitors in some measure, such as cost, quality, or speed; it leads to control of a market and larger-than-average profits

Question 3

What is a business process? (and what are its 3 components?

Answer 3

• an ongoing collection of related activities that create a product or service of value to the organization, its business partners, and/or its customers
• it is comprised of 3 elements:
  1. inputs
  2. resources
  3. outputs

Question 4

What are cross-functional processes?

Answer 4

• steps executed in a coordinated, collaborative way
• required multiple areas of an organization to produce a single output
• no single functional area is responsible

Question 5

IS’s have a vital role in what three areas of business processes?

Answer 5

1. executing the process
2. capturing and storing process data
3. monitoring process performance

Question 6

How do IS’s help execute the process? (3)

Answer 6

1. informing employees when it is time to complete a task
2. providing required data
3. providing a means to complete the task

Question 7

How do IS’s help capture and store process data? (3)

Answer 7

• processes generate data
• ISs capture and store process/transaction data
• immediate capturing and storing of data provides “real time” feedback

Question 8

How do IS’s help monitor process performance? (3)

Answer 8

• IS evaluates information to determine how well a process is being executed
• evaluations occur at two levels (process and instance)
• monitoring identifies problems for process improvement

Question 9

What are the 6 measures of excellence in executing business processes?

Answer 9

1. customer satisfaction
2. cost reduction
3. cycle and fulfillment time reduction
4. quality
5. differentiation
6. productivity

Question 10

What is the difference between BPR and BPI

Answer 10

BPR:
- a radical change
- create a process starting from a clean slate
BPI:
- an incremental change
- tweak current business process

Question 11

What is BPM

Answer 11

A management system used to support continuous BPI initiatives for core business processes over time
Inclues:
- process modelling
- Business activity monitoring