Study Guide

Business Process

A standardized set of activities that accomplish a specific task, such as processing a customer’s order.

Business-facing processes (back-office processes)

Invisible to the external customer but essential to the effective management of the business; they include goal setting, day-to-day planning, and performance feedback.

Customer-facing processes (front-office processes)

Processes that result in a product or service received by an organization’s external customer.

Value Chain Analysis

Views a firm as a series of business processes that each add value to the product or service.

Supply Chain Management (SCM)

The management of information flows between and among activities in a supply chain to maximize total supply chain effectiveness and corporate profitability.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Integrates all departments and functions throughout an organization into a single system to streamline business processes.

Critical Success Factors (CSFs)

The crucial steps companies perform to achieve their goals and implement their strategies.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Quantifiable metrics a company uses to evaluate progress toward critical success factors.

Ethics

The principles and standards that guide our behavior toward other people.

Information Security

A broad term encompassing the protection of information from accidental or intentional misuse.

Data Redundancy

The duplication of data, or the storage of the same data in multiple places.

Data Integrity

A measure of the quality of data.

Real-time Data

Immediate, up-to-date data.

Database Management System (DBMS)

Creates, reads, updates, and deletes data in a database while controlling access and security.

Relational Database Model

Stores data in the form of logically related, two-dimensional tables.

Metrics

Measurements that evaluate results to determine whether a project is meeting its goal.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Involves managing all aspects of a customer’s relationships with an organization to increase customer loyalty and retention.

four strategic initiatives

Business process analysis, supply chain management, customer relationship management, and enterprise relationship management.