Managing Enterprise Info Systems Exam 1 Review

Data

Raw facts that describe the characteristics of an event or object. Examples of this include order date, amount sold, and customer number.

Information

Data converted into a meaningful and useful context. Examples of this are best-selling product, best customer, and worst-selling product.

Business Intelligence

Information collected from multiple sources that analyzes patterns, trends, and relationships for strategic decision making.

Big Data

Large, volumes of data that are both structured and unstructured. This is analyzed to reveal patterns, trends, and associations, especially relating to human behavior and interactions.

Variety, Veracity, Volume, and Velocity

What are the four common characteristics of big data?

Structured Data

Has a defined length, type, and format and includes numbers, dates, or strings. Typically stored in a traditional system and accounts for about twenty percent of the data that surrounds us.

Unstructured Data

Not defined, does not follow a specified format, and is typically free-form text such as emails and text messages. Accounts for about eighty percent of the data that surrounds us.

Business Analytics

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

Data Analyst

Collects, queries, and consumes organizational data to uncover patterns and provide insights for strategic business decision making. Typically use tools such as Excel, Tableau, or SQL

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. Typically use tools such as R and Python programing languages.

Descriptive Analytics

Describes past performance and history. These types of findings allow an organization to spot trends.

Diagnostic Analytics

Examines data or content to answer the question, “Why did it happen?” This helps an organization determine the cause of a positive or negative outcome.

Predictive Analytics

Extracts information from data to predict future trends and identify behavioral patterns. This allows an organization to take proactive action.

Prescriptive Analytics

Creates models indicating the best decision to make or course of action to take. Gives significant value to addressing potential problems, but often requires using complex algorithms and advanced technology.

Knowledge

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

Business Department

A segment of a company representing a specific business function.

Accounting

Records, measures, and reports monetary transactions.

Finance

Deals with strategic financial issues, including money, banking, credit, investments, and assets.

Human Resources

Maintains policies, plans, and procedures for the effective management of employees.

Marketing

Supports sales by planning, pricing, and promoting goods or services.

Operations Management

Manages the process of converting or transforming resources into goods or services.

Sales

Performs the function of selling goods or services.

Data Silo

Occurs when one department is unable to freely communicate with other departments, making it difficult or impossible to work cross-functionally.

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.

Input, Process, and Output

What are the three factors of a system?

Feedback

Information that returns to its original transmitter and modifies the transmitter’s actions.

Management Information Systems (MIS)

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

Business Strategy

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

SWOT Analysis

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

Buyer Power

A part of the five forces model that is the ability of buyers to affect the price of an item.

Supplier Power

A part of the five forces model where the supplier has the ability to influence the prices they charge for.

Threat of Substitute Products or Services

A part of the five forces model that is high when there are many alternatives to a product or service and low when there are few alternatives.

Threat of New Entrants

A part of the five forces model that is high when it is easy for new competitors to enter a market and low when there are significant entry barriers.

Rivalry Among Existing Competitors

A part of the five forces model that is high when competition is fierce in a market and low when competitors are more complacent.

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

Business strategies that are neither organization nor industry specific and can be applied to any business, product, or service.

Broad Cost Leadership

If a company competes by offering a broad range of products at low prices, it is using which type of generic strategy?

Broad Differentiation

If a company competes by offering a broad range of differentiated products at high prices, it is using which type of generic strategy?

Focused Strategy

If a company competes by offering a specific product at low or high prices, it is using which type of generic strategy?

Problem Identification

The first part of the decision making process where you define the problem as clearly and precisely as possible.

Data Collection

The second part of the decision making process where you gather problem-related data, including who, what, where, when, why, and how. Grabbing facts, not rumors.

Solution Generation

The third part of the decision making process where you detail every solution possible, including ideas that seem farfetched.

Solution Test

The fourth part of the decision making process where you evaluate solutions in terms of feasibility, suitability, and acceptability.

Solution Selection

The fifth part of the decision making process where you select the solution that best solves the problem and meets the needs of the business.

Solution Implementation

The sixth part of the decision making process where if the solution solves the problem, then the decisions made were correct. If not, the decisions were incorrect and the process begins again.

Operational Decisions

Affect how the firm is run from day to day. They are the domain of operations managers, who are the closest to the customer.

Managerial Decisions

These concern how the organization should achieve the goals and objectives set by its strategy. They are usually the responsibility of mid-level management.

Strategic Decisions

Involve higher-level issues concerned with the overall direction of the organization. These decisions define the organization’s overall goals and aspirations for the future.

Structured Decisions

Operational decisions that arise when established processes offer potential solutions.

Semistructured Decisions

Managerial decisions that occur in situations in which a few established processes help to evaluate potential solutions, but not enough to lead to a definite recommended decision.

Unstructured Decisions

Strategic decisions that occur in situations in which no procedures or rules exist to guide decision makers toward the correct choice.

Critical Success Factors (CSFs)

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

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

The quantifiable metrics a company uses to evaluate progress toward critical success factors. These are far more specific than critical success factors.

Efficiency MIS Metrics

Measures the performance of MIS itself, such as throughput, transaction speed, and system availability.

Effectiveness MIS Metrics

Measures the impact MIS has on business processes and activities, including customer satisfaction and customer conversion rates.

Benchmarking

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

Digital Dashboards

Tracks KPIs and CSFs by compiling information from multiple sources and tailoring it to meet user needs.

Business-Facing Processes

These are invisible to the external customer but essential to the effective management of the business. They include goal setting, day-to-day planning, giving performance feedback and rewards, and allocating resources.

Customer-Facing Processes

These result in a product or service received by an organization’s external customer. They include fulfilling orders, communicating with customers, and sending out bills and marketing information.

As-Is Process Models

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

To-Be Process Models

Shows the results of applying change improvement opportunities to the current process model.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Simulates human thinking and behavior, such as the ability to reason and learn, focusing on three cognitive skills: learning, reasoning, and self-correction.

Machine Learning

A branch of AI that enables computers to understand concepts in the environment and to learn.

Neural Networks

A branch of AI that attempts to emulate the way the human brain works.

Natural Language Processing

A branch of AI that refers to the development of algorithms that can analyze and understand human language, including text and speech.

Computer Vision

A branch of AI that refers to the development of algorithms that can interpret and analyze visual information, including images and videos.

Expert Systems

A branch of AI that is computerized advisory programs that imitate the reasoning process of experts in solving different problems.

Robotics

A branch of AI that focuses on creating artificial intelligence devices that can move and react to sensory input.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

A legal framework that sets guidelines for the collection and processing of personal information of individuals within the European Union.

Ethical Computer Use Policy

An epolicy that contains general principles to guide computer user behavior.

Information Privacy Policy

An epolicy that contains general principles regarding information privacy.

Acceptable Use Policy

An epolicy that requires a user to agree to follow it to be provided access to corporate email, information systems, and the Internet.

Email Privacy Policy

An epolicy that details the extent to which email messages may be read by others.

Social Media Policy

An epolicy that outlines the corporate guidelines or principles governing employee online communications.

Workplace MIS Monitoring Policy

An epolicy that tracks people’s activities by such measures as number of keystrokes, error rate, and number of transactions processed.

The Right to be Forgotten

Allows individuals to request to have all content that violates their privacy removed.

Firewall

Hardware and/or software that guard a private network by analyzing incoming and outgoing information for the correct markings. Organizations place these between a server and the Internet.

Information Security

A broad term encompassing the protection of information from accidental or intentional misuse by persons inside or outside an organization.

Downtime

Refers to a period of time when a system is unavailable.

Hackers

Experts in technology who use their knowledge to break into computers and computer networks, either for profit or simply for the challenge.

Virus

Software written with malicious intent to cause annoyance or damage. Some hackers create and leave these, causing massive computer damage.

Worm

Spreads itself not only from file to file but also from computer to computer.

People and Technology

What are the first two line of defense a company should take when addressing security risks?