Information Systems in Organizations

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering Information Systems (IS) fundamentals, management levels, decision types, enterprise applications (ERP, SCM, CRM), supply chain models, and IT infrastructure eras.

Information System (IS)

A set of interrelated components that collect, process, store, and distribute information to support decision-making, coordination, and control in an organization.

Three Dimensions of Information Systems

The three core interconnected dimensions necessary for understanding information systems: Organizations, Management, and Technology.

Data

Raw, unorganized, and unstructured streams of facts representing events occurring in organizations or the physical environment before being put into an understandable form.

Information

Data that has been processed, interpreted, and structured into a meaningful and useful form for human decision-making.

Sociotechnical Perspective

An approach to information systems emphasizing that organizational performance is optimized only when both technological and social aspects are jointly considered and adapted to one another.

Business Process

A logically related set of activities or workflows that define how specific business tasks are performed to achieve an organizational goal.

Cross-Functional Business Process

A business process that spans across multiple functional areas and requires collaboration between different departments, such as fulfilling an order across Sales, Accounting, and Manufacturing.

Transaction Processing System (TPS)

An operational-level system that performs, records, and tracks the daily routine transactions necessary to conduct business, such as payroll, sales orders, and shipping.

Management Information Systems (MIS)

Systems serving middle management that provide routine reports on current internal organizational performance to help managers monitor and control operations.

Decision Support Systems (DSS)

Systems combining data and sophisticated analytical models to help middle managers make non-routine, semistructured decisions, such as "what-if" simulations.

Executive Support Systems (ESS)

Strategic-level systems designed to support senior management in making unstructured, long-term decisions through advanced graphics, communications, and digital dashboards incorporating internal and external data.

Business Intelligence (BI)

An umbrella term for applications, infrastructure, and tools that analyze raw data to transform it into meaningful insights that improve and optimize business decision-making.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

An integrated enterprise software system that consolidates key internal business processes across finance, manufacturing, sales, and human resources into a single system using a centralized database.

Supply Chain Management (SCM) Systems

Enterprise systems that automate and coordinate the flow of information between a firm and its suppliers to optimize planning, sourcing, manufacturing, and product delivery.

Vad är skillnaden på ett Enterprise system och ett Information System?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems

Systems that capture and analyze customer interaction data across marketing, sales, and service to optimize customer retention, satisfaction, and revenue.

Knowledge Management Systems (KMS)

Systems that support the creation, capture, organization, and dissemination of organizational knowledge and expertise to enhance business processes and decision-making.

Push-Based Model (Build-to-Stock)

A supply chain model where production schedules and inventories are driven by forecasts and qualified guesses about consumer demand, pushing products down to retailers.

Pull-Based Model (Demand-Driven)

A supply chain model where actual customer orders trigger production and inventory replenishment events throughout the supply chain, summarized as "make what we sell, not sell what we make."

Churn Rate

A metric measuring the rate or percentage of customers who stop purchasing or using a company's products and services over a given time period.

Structured Decisions

Repetitive and routine decisions handled by operational management that follow an established, standardized procedure so they do not need to be treated as novel cases.

Semistructured Decisions

Decisions where only a portion of the problem has a clear-cut procedure and answer, while other parts require human judgment and subjective insight, typically handled by middle management.

Unstructured Decisions

Non-routine decisions handled by senior management where the decision-maker must provide judgment, evaluation, and perspective to resolve complex, novel problems lacking predefined procedures.

Digital Firm

An enterprise where nearly all significant business relationships with customers, suppliers, and employees are digitally enabled and mediated.

Time Shifting

A mode of operation where work and business processes occur continuously across different hours and time zones instead of adhering to shared, rigid shifts.

Space Shifting

A work arrangement where organizational collaboration and tasks take place anywhere geographically via remote networks rather than in a shared physical office.

Complementary Assets

Organizational and managerial assets—such as a supportive culture, efficient business processes, and competent leadership—required to fully realize the business value of an IT investment.

IT Infrastructure

The shared set of physical hardware devices, software platforms, data storage, network platforms, and enterprise services required for an organization's daily operation.

Moore's Law

The technological observation that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles roughly every two years, drastically increasing computing power while reducing costs.

Law of Mass Digital Storage

The technological observation stating that the total amount of digital data stored roughly doubles every year.

Metcalfe's Law

The economic and technical principle stating that the value or power of a network grows exponentially as a function of the number of connected nodes or participants.

Machine Learning

The field of study, defined by Arthur Samuel in 1959, that gives computers the ability to learn and improve performance without being explicitly programmed.

TAL Apparel

A Hong Kong-based contract manufacturer that produces one out of every six men's shirts sold in the US, using an automated computer model to replenish retail stores directly without passing through retailer warehouses.

Dolce

An Italian luxury kitchen design company that uses a web-based MIS interface allowing customers to custom-design kitchens, transmitting specifications directly to its Italian factory for assembly and shipping.

Doris (Försäkringskassan)

A rule-based algorithmic system used by the Swedish Social Insurance Agency that automates the case-processing pipeline for activity support, delegating cases to human officers only when data is missing or denial is expected.

Samu (Försäkringskassan)

A machine learning decision support system used by the Swedish Social Insurance Agency that analyzes keywords in medical certificates to map diagnoses and generate standardized eligibility recommendations.

Five Eras of IT Infrastructure

The technological progression of IT platforms comprising: General-purpose mainframe and minicomputer computing (1959–present), Personal computers (1981–present), Client/server networks (1983–present), Enterprise computing (1992–present), and Cloud and mobile computing (2000–present).

Four Eras of the IS Field (Hirschheim and Klein)

A historical framework dividing IS academic history into four epoches: First Era (mid-1960s to mid-1970s), Second Era (mid-1970s to mid-1980s), Third Era (mid-1980s to mid/late 1990s), and Fourth Era (late 1990s to present).

SAP BusinessObjects

A reporting and business intelligence software tool that consolidates data across company divisions (such as sales and finance) into reports to track organizational health and performance.