ISA 235 Vocabulary

Backup

Backup

An exact copy of a system’s information.

Recovery

The ability to get a system up and running in the event of a system crash or failure that included restoring the information backup.

Disaster Recovery

A detailed process for recovering information or a system in the event of a catastrophic disaster.

Enterprise Architect

A person grounded in technology, fluent in business, and able to provide the important bridge between MIS and the business.

Virtualization

Creates multiple “virtual” machines on a single computing device. A good analogy is a computer printer.

IT’s Role in Environmental Sustainability

Combating ewaste, energy consumption, and carbon emissions requires a form to focus on creating sustainable MIS infrastructures.

Portability

Refers to the ability of an application to operate on different devices or software platforms, such as different operating systems.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Delivers applications over the cloud using a pay-per-use revenue model.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Supports the deployment of entire systems, including hardware, networking, and applications, using a pay-per-use revenue model.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Delivers hardware networking capabilities, including the use of servers, networking, and storage, over the cloud using a pay-per-use revenue model.

Usability

The degree to which a system is easy to learn and efficient and satisfying to use.

Accessibility

Refers to the varying levels that define what a user can access, view, or perform when operating a system.

High Availability

Occurs when a system is continuously operational at all times.

Scalability

Describes how well a system can scale up or adapt to the increased demands of growth.

Maintainability (Flexibility)

Refers to how quickly a system can transform to support environmental changes.

Vulnerability

A system weakness, such as a password that is never changed or a system left on while an employee goes to lunch, that can be exploited by a threat.

Reliability

Ensures a system is functioning correctly and providing accurate information.

Business Continuity Planning

Details how a company recovers and restores critical business operations and systems after a disaster or extended disruption.

Data Steward

Responsible for ensuring the policies and procedures are implemented across the organization and acts as a liaison between the MIS department and the business.

Data Stewardship

The management and oversight of an organization’s data assets to help provide business users with high-quality data that is easily accessible in a consistent manner.

Blockchain

A type of distributed ledger, consisting of blocks of data that maintain a permanent and tamper-proof record of transactional data.

Data Granularity

Refers to the extent of detail within the data (fine and detailed or coarse and abstract).

Database Management System (DBMS or RDMS)

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

Data Mart

Contains a subset of data warehouse data.

Data Cleansing or Scrubbing

A process that weeds out and fixes or discards inconsistent, incorrect, or incomplete data.

Primary Key

A field (or group of fields) that uniquely identifies a given record in a table.

Data Lake

A storage repository that holds a vast amount of raw data in its original format until the business needs it.

Data Model

Logical data structure that details the relationships among data elements by using graphics or pictures.

Data Dictionary

Compiles all of the metadata about the data elements in the data model.

Foreign Key

A primary key of one table that appears as an attribute in another table and acts to provide a logical relationship between the two tables.

Dirty Data

Erroneous or flawed data.

Data Integirty

A measure of the quality of data.

Record

A collection of related data elements. Each record in an entity occupies one row in its respective table.

Database

Maintains data about various types of objects (inventory), events (transactions), people (employees), and places (warehouses).

Data Warehouse

A logical collection of data - gathered from many different operational databases - that supports business analysis activities and decision-making tasks.

Data Visualization

Describes technologies that allow users to see or visualize data to transform information into a business perspective.

Mobile Application Management (MAM)

Technology that allows corporations to lock down, control, and enforce specific applications, generally the corporate applications specifically, on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones.

Bandwith

The maximum amount of data that can pass from one point to another in a unit of time.

Location-based Services

A GPS is a global navigation satellite system that uses at least 24 satellites, a receiver and algorithms to provide location, velocity and time synchronization for air, sea and land travel.

Geographic Information System (GIS)

A computer system for capturing, storing, checking, and displaying data related to positions on Earth’s surface in order to help individuals and organizations better understand spatial patterns and relationships.

Radio-frequency Identification (RFID)

A process that uses a tag, that consists of a tiny radio receiver and transmitter, attached to objects that is scanned by a device that creates an electromagnetic field to identify and track the objects.

Digital Divide

The gap between those who have access to digital technologies and those who do not.

WiFi

One form of wireless technology that has grown, not so much in newer capabilities, but the range of available devices have greatly increased.

Integrations

Allow separate systems to communicate directly with each other, eliminating the need for manual entry into multiple systems.

Enterprise Systems

Provide enterprisewide support and data access for a firm’s operations and business processes.

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)

Connects the plans, methods, and tools aimed at integrating separate enterprise systems.

Supply Chain

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

Sales Force Automation

Automatically tracks all the steps in the sales process.

Operational CRM

Supports traditional transactional processing for day-to-day front-office operations or systems that deal directly with the customers.

Analytical CRM

Supports back-office operations and strategic analysis and includes all systems that do not deal directly with the customers.

Accounting and Finance ERP Components

Manage accounting data and financial processes within the enterprise with functions such as general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, budgeting, and asset management.

Production and Materials Management ERP Components

Handle production planning and execution tasks such as demand forecasting, production scheduling, job cost accounting, and quality control.

Human Resources ERP Components

Track employee information including payroll, benefits, compensation, and performance assessment and ensure compliance with all laws.

Legacy Systems

An old system that is fast approaching or beyond the end of its useful life within an organization.

Planning Phase

Establishes a high-level plan of the intended project and determines project goals.

Analysis Phase

The firm analyzes its end-user business requirements and refines project goals into defined functions and operations of the intended system.

Design Phase

Establishes descriptions of the desired features and operations of the system, including screen layouts, business rules, process diagrams, pseudo code, and other documentation.

Development Phase

Takes all the detailed design documents from the design phase and transforms them into the actual system.

Testing Phase

Brings project pieces together into a special testing environment to eliminate errors and bugs and verify that the system meets all the business requirements defined in the analysis phase.

Implementation Phase

The organization places the system into production so users can begin to perform actual business operations with it.

Maintenance Phase

Organizations perform changes, corrections, additions, and upgrades to ensure the system continues to meet business goals.

Business Requirements

The specific business requests the system must meet to be successful, so the analysis phase is critical because business requirements drive the entire systems development effort.

Agile Methodology

Aims for customer satisfaction through early and continuous delivery of useful software components developed by an iterative process using the bare minimum requirements.

Waterfall Methodology

A sequence of phases in which the output of each phase becomes the input for the next.

Prototyping

A modern design approach where the designers and system users use an iterative approach to building the system.

Outsourcing

An arrangement by which one organization provides a service or services for another organization that chooses not to perform them in-house.

Project Management

The application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.

Feasibility

The measure of the tangible and intangible benefits of an information system.

Value Chain

Groups a firm’s activities into two categories, primary value activities, and support value activities.

Internet of Things (IoT)

A world where interconnected, Internet-enabled devices or “things” have the ability to collect and share data without human intervention.

Knowledge

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

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.

Data Silo

Occurs when one business unit is unable to freely communicate with other business units, making it difficult or impossible for organizations to work cross-functionally.

Data

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

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.

System

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

Big Data

A collection of large, complex datasets, which cannot be analyzed using traditional database methods and tools. Four characteristics: Variety, Veracity, Volume, and Velocity.

Information

Data converted into a meaningful and useful context.

Analytics

The science of fact-based decision-making.

Business Analytics

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

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.

SWOT Analysis

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

Metrics

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

Business Process

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

Artificial Intelligence

Simulates human thinking and behavior, such as the ability to reason and learn.

Best Practices

The most successful solutions or problem-solving methods that have been developed by a specific organization or industry.

Algorithms

Mathematical formulas placed in software that perform an analysis on a dataset.

Machine Learning

A type of artificial intelligence that enables computers to both understand concepts in the environment and to learn.

Granularity

Refers to the level of detail in the model or the decision-making process.

Business Process Modeling

The activity of creating a detailed flowchart or process map of a work process that shows its inputs, tasks, and activities in a structured sequence.

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN)

A graphical notation that depicts the steps in a business process.

Business Process Automation

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

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

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

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

The use of software with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to handle high-volume, repeatable tasks that previously required a human to perform.

Vizualization

Produces graphical displays of patterns and complex relationships in large amounts of data (Bar Chart Histogram, Pie Chart, etc.).

Business Process Reengineering

The analysis and redesign of workflow within and between enterprises.

Business Process Streamlining

Improves business process efficiencies by simplifying or eliminating unnecessary steps.

Critical Success Factors (CSF)

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

Disruptive Technology

A new way of doing things that initially does not meet the needs of existing customers.

Sustaining Technology

Produces an improved product customers are eager to buy, such as a faster car or larger hard drive.