MIS Concepts and Business Analytics: Chapters 1-3 Baltzan

Data

Consists of raw facts.

Information

Data converted into a meaningful context.

Business Intelligence

Information gathered from multiple sources to analyze patterns and trends for strategic decision-making.

Knowledge

A combination of skills, experience, and expertise coupled with information and intelligence.

Systems Thinking

A way of monitoring an entire system by viewing how multiple inputs are processed to produce outputs while gathering feedback.

Management Information Systems (MIS)

A business function that moves information about people, products, and processes across a company to facilitate decision-making and problem-solving.

Structured Data

Data with a defined length, type, and format, such as numbers or dates in an accounting system.

Unstructured Data

Data that does not follow a specified format and is typically free-form text, such as emails or social media data.

Descriptive Analytics

Describes past performance.

Diagnostic Analytics

Examines data to find out why something happened.

Predictive Analytics

Predicts future trends.

Prescriptive Analytics

Creates models to determine the best course of action.

Competitive Advantage

A product or service that an organization's customers value more than similar offerings from a competitor.

First-Mover Advantage

Occurs when a company can significantly impact its market share by being the first to market with that competitive advantage.

SWOT Analysis

Evaluates an organization's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Porter's Five Forces

Buyer Power, Supplier Power, Threat of Substitute Products or Services, Threat of New Entrants, and Rivalry Among Existing Competitors.

Operational Level Decisions

Structured decisions that affect the day-to-day running of the firm.

Critical Success Factors (CSFs)

The crucial steps companies must perform to achieve their goals.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Quantifiable metrics used to evaluate progress toward CSFs.

Efficiency MIS Metrics

Measure the performance of the MIS itself, focusing on aspects like throughput, transaction speed, and system availability.

Effectiveness MIS Metrics

Measure the impact MIS has on business processes, such as customer satisfaction and conversion rates.

Transaction Processing System (TPS)

A basic business system that serves the operational level of an organization.

Decision Support System (DSS)

Models information to support managers at the managerial level with semistructured decisions.

Executive Information System (EIS)

A specialized DSS that supports senior-level executives with unstructured, long-term, and nonroutine decisions.

Business-Facing Process

Invisible to the external customer but essential for managing the business.

Business Process Modeling

The activity of creating a detailed flowchart of a work process.

As-Is process Model

Represents the current state of a process.

Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

The fundamental analysis and redesign of workflow within and between enterprises.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Simulates human intelligence, focusing on learning, reasoning, and self-correction.

Disruptive Technology

A new way of doing things that initially does not meet the needs of existing customers but eventually displaces established technology.

Sustaining technology

Produces an improved product that existing customers are eager to buy, improving on what already exists.

Disintermediation

Occurs in ebusiness when a company sells directly to the customer online, cutting out intermediaries like distributors or retailers.

Personalization

Occurs when a company knows enough about a customer's preferences to create offers more likely to appeal to that specific individual.

Business-to-Business (B2B)

Where businesses buy from and sell to each other.

Business-to-Consumer (B2C)

Where businesses sell to consumers.

Consumer-to-Business (C2B)

Where consumers sell to a business.

Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C)

Where consumers interact with each other.

Web 2.0

The next generation of internet use, characterized by collaboration, sharing, and being free.

Affiliate program

Allows a business to generate commissions or referral fees when a customer visiting its website clicks a link to another merchant's website.

Algorithm

Mathematical formula placed in software that performs analytics on a dataset.

Analytical Information

Encompasses all organizational data, and its primary purpose is to support the performing of managerial analysis or semistructured decisions.

As-Is process model

Represents the current state of the operation that has been mapped, without any specific improvements or changes to existing processes.

Asynchronous communication

Communication, such as email, in which the message and the response do not occur at the same time.

Automation

The process of computerizing manual tasks, making them more efficient and effective, and dramatically lowering operational costs.

Benchmark

Baseline values the system seeks to attain.

Benchmarking

A process of continuously measuring system results, comparing those results to optimal system performance (benchmark values), and identifying steps and procedures to improve system performance.

Big data

Large volumes of data—both structured and unstructured—containing greater variety, increased veracity, and more velocity.

Blog

Online journal that allows users to post their own comments, graphics, and video.

Bottleneck

Occurs when resources reach full capacity and cannot handle any additional demands.

Business analytics

The scientific process of transforming data into information for making data-driven business decision.

Business process improvement

Attempts to understand and measure the current process and make performance improvements accordingly.

Business process model

A graphic description of a process, showing the sequence of process tasks, which is developed for a specific purpose.

Business process modeling (or mapping)

The activity of creating a detailed flow chart or process map of a work process showing its inputs, tasks, and activities, in a structured sequence.

Business strategy

A leadership plan that achieves a specific set of goals or objectives.

Buyer power

The ability of buyers to affect the price of an item.

Chatbot

An artificial intelligence (AI) program that simulates interactive human conversation by using key precalculated user phrases and auditory or text-based signals.

Chief data officer (CDO)

Responsible for determining the types of information the enterprise will capture, retain, analyze, and share.

Chief information officer (CIO)

Responsible for overseeing all uses of MIS and ensures the strategic alignment of MIS with business goals and objectives.

Chief knowledge officer (CKO)

Responsible for collecting, maintaining, and distributing the organization's knowledge.

Chief privacy officer (CPO)

Responsible for ensuring the ethical and legal use of information.

Chief security officer (CSO)

Responsible for ensuring the security of MIS systems.

Chief technology officer (CTO)

Responsible for ensuring the throughput, speed, accuracy, availability, and reliability of information.

Click fraud

The practice of artificially inflating traffic statistics for online advertisements.

Clickstream

The exact path a visitor takes through a website including the pattern of a consumer's navigation.

Clickstream analytics

The process of collecting, analyzing and reporting aggregate data about which pages a website visitor visits—and in what order.

Closed source

Any proprietary software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder.

Collaboration system

Tools that support the work of teams or groups by facilitating the sharing and flow of information.

Collective intelligence

Collaborating and tapping into the core knowledge of all employees, partners, and customers.

Computer Vision

Refers to the development of algorithms that can interpret and analyze visual information, including images and videos.

Content management systems (CMSs)

Help companies manage the creation, storage, editing, and publication of their website content.

Critical success factors (CSF's)

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

Crowdfunding

Sources capital for a project by raising many small amounts from a large number of individuals, typically via the Internet.

Crowdsourcing

The wisdom of the crowd.

Customer facing process

Results in a product or service that is received by an organization's external customer.

Data democratization

The ability for data to be collected, analyzed, and accessible to all users.

Data silo

Occurs when one department is unable to freely communicate with other departments.

Deep learning

A process that employs specialized algorithms to model and study complex datasets.

Deep web

The large part of the Internet that is inaccessible to conventional search engines.

Democratization

The action of making something accessible to everyone.

Digital dashboard

Tracks KPI's and CSF's by compiling information from multiple sources and tailoring it to meet user needs.

Digital Darwinism

Implies that organizations which cannot adapt to the new demands placed on them for surviving in the information age are doomed to extinction.

Digital transformation

The process of using digital technologies to fundamentally transform business processes, operations, and customer experiences.

Digitization

The automation of existing manual and paper-based processes and workflows to a digital format.

Direct-to-Consumer (DTC)

Ebusiness model where companies build, market, sell, and ship their products themselves, without relying on traditional stores or intermediaries.

Dot-com

The original term for a company operating on the Internet.

Dynamic report

Changes automatically during creation.

Ebusiness

Includes ecommerce along with all activities related to internal and external business operations.

Ebusiness model

A plan that details how a company creates, delivers, and generates revenues on the internet.

Ecommerce

Buying and selling of goods and services over the Internet.

Email

The exchange of digital messages over the Internet.

Entry barrier

A feature of a product or service that customers have come to expect and entering competitors must offer the same for survival.

Expert Systems

Computerized advisory programs that imitate the reasoning processes of experts in solving difficult problems.

Explicit knowledge

Consists of anything that can be documented, achieved, and codified.

Fact

The confirmation or validation of an event or object.

Folksonomy

Similar to taxonomy except that crowdsourcing determines the tags or keyword-based classification system.

Fuzzy logic

A mathematical method of handling imprecise or subjective information.

Hashtag

A keyword or phrase used to identify a topic; it is preceded by a hash or pound sign (#).

Heat map

A two-dimensional representation of data in which values are represented by colors.

Information age

The present time, during which infinite quantities of facts are widely available to anyone who can use a computer.

Information reach

Measures the number of people a firm can communicate with all over the world.