Business Driven Information Systems, Paige Baltzan, 7th Edition, Chapter 1

Algorithm

A mathematical formula in software that performs an analysis on a dataset

Analytics

The science of fact-based decision making.

Anomaly detection

The process of identifying rare or unexpected items or events in a dataset that do not conform to other items in the dataset

Big data

A collection of large, complex datasets, which cannot be analyzed using traditional database methods and tools.

Business analytics

The scientific process of transforming data into insight for making better decisions.

Business intelligence (BI)

Information collected from multiple sources such as suppliers, customers, competitors, partners, and industries that analyzes patterns, trends, and relationships for strategic decision making.

Knowledge

the skills, experience, and expertise, coupled with information and intelligence, that create a person's intellectual resources

Knowledge assets

AKA Intellectual Capital, the human, structural, and recorded resources available to the organization

Knowledge facilitator

An individual who helps acquire and catalog the knowledge assets in an organization

Knowledge worker

An individual valued for their ability to interpret and analyze information

Business process

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

Business strategy

a leadership plan that achieves a specific set of goals or objectives such as increasing sales, decreasing costs, entering new markets, or developing new products or services.

Business unit

a segment of a company (such as accounting, production, marketing) representing a specific business function.

Buyer power

the ability of buyers to affect the price they must pay for an item.

Chief automation officer

determines if a person or business process can be replaced by a robot or software.

Chief data officer (CDO)

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

Chief intellectual property officer

manage and defend intellectual property, copyrights, and patents.

Chief information officer (CIO)

is responsible for (1) overseeing all uses of information technology and (2) ensuring the strategic alignment of MIS with business goals and objectives.

Chief knowledge officer (CKO)

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

Chief privacy officer (CPO)

is responsible for ensuring the ethical and legal use of information within an organization.

Chief security officer (CSO)

is responsible for ensuring the security of MIS systems and developing strategies and MIS safeguards against attacks from hackers and viruses.

Chief sustainability officer

oversees the corporation's "environmental" programs such as helping adapt to climate change and reducing carbon emissions.

Chief technology officer (CTO)

is responsible for ensuring the throughput, speed, accuracy, availability, and reliability of an organization's information technology.

Chief user experience officer

create the optimal relationship between user and technology.

Competitive advantage

a feature of a product or service on which customers place a greater value than they do on similar offerings from competitors.

Competitive intelligence

the process of gathering information about the competitive environment, including competitors' plans, activities, and products, to improve a company's ability to succeed.

Data

raw facts that describe the characteristics of an event or object.

Data democratization

the ability for data to be collected, analyzed, and accessible to all users (the average end user).

Data scientist

extracts knowledge from data by performing statistical analysis, data mining, and advanced analytics on big data to identify trends, market changes, and other relevant information.

Descriptive analytics

use techniques that describe past performance and history

Dynamic report

changes automatically during creation.

Entry barrier

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

Fact

the confirmation or validation of an event or object. In the past, people primarily learned facts from books

Feedback

information that returns to its original transmitter (input, transform, or output) and modifies the transmitter's actions.

First-mover advantage

occurs when a company can significantly increase its market share by being first with a new competitive advantage.

Goods

material items or products that customers will buy to satisfy a want or need.

Human-generated data

data that humans, in interaction with computers, generate. Human-generated structured data includes input data, clickstream data, or gaming data.

Human-generated unstructured data

including text messages, social media data, and emails

Information

data converted into a meaningful and useful context.

Information age

when infinite quantities of facts are widely available to anyone who can use a computer.

Internet of Things (IoT)

a world where interconnected Internet-enabled devices or "things" have the ability to collect and share data without human intervention.

Loyalty program

reward customers based on their spending.

Machine-generated data

1. is created by a machine without human intervention. Machine-generated structured data includes sensor data, point-of-sale data, and web log data.

Machine-generated unstructured data

including satellite images, scientific atmosphere data, and radar data.

Machine-to-machine (M2M)

refers to devices that connect directly to other devices.

MIS skills gap

the difference between existing MIS workplace knowledge and the knowledge required to fulfill the business goals and strategies.

Management information systems (MIS)

is a business function, like accounting and human resources, which moves information about people, products, and processes across the company to facilitate decision making and problem solving.

Outlier

a data value that is numerically distant from most of the other data points in a dataset.

Porter's Five Forces Model

analyzes the competitive forces within the environment in which a company operates to assess the potential for profitability in an industry.

Porter's three generic strategies

generic business strategies that are neither organization nor industry specific and can be applied to any business, product, or service. These three generic business strategies for entering a new market are: (1) broad cost leadership, (2) broad differentiation, and (3) focused strategy.

Predictive analytics

use techniques that extract information from data to predict future trends and identify behavioral patterns.

Prescriptive analytics

use techniques that create models indicating the best decision to make or course of action to take.

Primary value activities

shown at the bottom of the value chain in Figure 1.27, acquire raw materials and manufacture, deliver, market, sell, and provide after-sales services.

Product differentiation

occurs when a company develops unique differences in its products or services with the intent to influence demand.

Production

the process where a business takes raw materials and processes them or converts them into a finished product for its goods or services.

Productivity

the rate at which goods and services are produced based on total output given total inputs.

Report

a document containing data organized in a table, matrix, or graphical format allowing users to easily comprehend and understand information.

Rivalry among existing competitors

is high when competition is fierce in a market and low when competitors are more complacent.

Services

tasks people perform that customers will buy to satisfy a want or need.

Snapshot

a view of data at a particular moment in time.

Stakeholder

a person or group that has an interest or concern in an organization.

Static report

is created once based on data that does not change.

Structured data

has a defined length, type, and format and includes numbers, dates, or strings such as Customer Address.

Supplier power

the suppliers' ability to influence the prices they charge for supplies (including materials, labor, and services).

Supply chain

consists of all parties involved, directly or indirectly, in obtaining raw materials or a product.

Support value activities

along the top of the value chain in Figure 1.27, include firm infrastructure, human resource management, technology development, and procurement.

Switching costs

costs that make customers reluctant to switch to another product or service.

SWOT analysis

evaluates an organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to identify significant influences that work for or against business strategies

System

a collection of parts that link to achieve a common purpose.

Systems thinking

a way of monitoring the entire system by viewing multiple inputs being processed or transformed to produce outputs while continuously gathering feedback on each part

Threat of new entrants

is high when it is easy for new competitors to enter a market and low when there are significant entry barriers to joining a market.

Threat of substitute products or services

is high when there are many alternatives to a product or service and low when there are few alternatives from which to choose.

Unstructured data

Data that is not defined and does not follow a specified format and is typically free-form text such as emails,

Value chain analysis

Views a firm as a series of business processes, each of which adds value to the product or service.

Variable

A data characteristic that stands for a value that changes or varies over time.