Business Information Systems Definitions

Operational Excellence

Improvement of efficiency to attain higher profitability.

Business Model

The way of doing business in which a company can generate revenue and sustain itself.

Information Systems

Set of interrelated components that collect, process, store and distribute information and support decision making, coordination, and control.

Social Business

the use of social networking platforms (external or internal) to engage employees, customers, and suppliers.

Cloud Computing

a model of computing that provides access to a shared pool of computing resources computers, storage, applications, and services), over a network, often the internet.

The device mesh

An expanding set of endpoints people use to access applications and information or interact with people, social communities, governments and businesses.

Consumerisation

New information technology that first emerges in the consumer market spreads into business organisation, eg. Google Apps, Dropbox, social networking sites.

Software as a service (SaaS)

customers use software hosted by the vendor on the vendor’s hardware and delivered over a network. Users can access these applications remotely.

Platform as a service (PaaS)

customers use infrastructure and programming tools hosted by the service provider to develop their own applications.

Infrastructure as a service (laaS)

customers use processing, storage networking and other computing resources from cloud service providers to run their own information systems.

Public Cloud

the computing infrastructure is hosted by the cloud vendor at the vendor’s premises. The customer has no visibility and control over where the computing infrastructure is hosted. The computing infrastructure is shared between all organisations.

Private Cloud

The computing infrastructure is dedicated to a particular organisation and not shared with other organisations. Private clouds are more expensive and more secure when compared to public clouds.

Hybrid Clouds

A mixed-up usage of both private and public cloud. Organisations may host critical applications on private clouds and applications with relatively less security concerns on the public cloud.

Edge Computing

A method of optimising cloud computing systems by performing some data processing on a set of linked servers at the edge of the network, near the source of the data.

Ambient Computing

also ubiquitous computing, is the concept of blending computing power into our everyday lives in a way that is embedded into our surroundings - invisible but useful.

Open-source software

Produced by a community of programmers, free and modifiable by users. It permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software. E.g., Apache web server.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

a collection of web services that Amazon provides to users of its cloud platform. AWS is the largest provider of cloud computing services in the US.

Database

a collection of data organised to serve many applications efficiently by centralising data and controlling redundant data

File

Group of records of the same type

Record

Group of related fields

Database management system (DMBS)

software that permits an organisation to centralise data, manage them efficiently, and provide access to the stored data by application programs.

Volume

the size of data.

Velocity

the speed of data accumulation

Veracity

the quality and reliability of data

Variety

the diversity of data types.

Data warehouse

stores current and historical data from many core operational transaction systems. It consolidates and standardises information for use across enterprises, but data cannot be altered.

Datamarts

subset of data warehouse. Summarised or highly focused portion of firm’s data for use by specific population of users.

OLTP: On-line Transaction Processing

is the process in which systems facilitate and manage data entry and retrieval on a frequent basis. (ATM).

ETL: extraction, transformation, and loading,

which the data is cleaned and organised into a meaningful manner.

Apache Hadoop

An open source software framework that enables distributed parallel processing of huge amounts of data across inexpensive computers.

In-memory computing

A method to rely on main memory (RAM) for data storage.

A contemporary business intelligence infrastructure

features capabilities and tools to manage and analyse large quantities and different types of data from multiple sources.

Data Lake

repository for raw structured or unstructured data that has not yet been analysed.

Business Intelligence

A series of analytical tools that works with data stored in databases to find patterns and insights for helping managers and employees make better decisions to improve organisational performance.

Data Mining

Finds hidden patterns, relationships in large databases and infers rules to predict future behavior. More discovery driven than OLAP.

Text Mining

Extracts key elements from large unstructured data sets. Sentiment analysis software.

Web Mining

Discovery and analysis of useful patterns and information from web (Google trends service)

Predictive analytics

Use statistical analysis, data mining techniques, historical data, and assumptions about future conditions to predict future trends and behavior patterns.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

a branch of computer science that aims to create intelligent machines, and enables computers to behave like humans.

Machine Learning

a part of AI that grants machines the ability to learn and make improvements independently from experience without the need for programmers to input the aforementioned comments.

Supervised Learning

most cases): Trained by providing specific examples of desired inputs and outputs identified by humans in advance.

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

The ability of computers to analyse, understand and generate human language, including speech.

Computer Vision

deals with how computers can be made to gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. It seeks to automate tasks that the human visual system can do.

Robotics

deals with the design, construction, operation, and use of robots, as well as computer systems for their control, sensory feedback and information processing.

Polyfunctional robots

capable of performing multiple tasks and seamlessly switching between them as required.

Data Science

an inter-disciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract knowledge and insights from many structural and unstructured data.

Blockchain

A distributed database technology that enables firms and organizations to create and verify transactions on a network nearly instantaneously without a central authority.

Public Chain

An open network. Anyone can download the protocol and read, write or participate in the network. No particular participant has control over the data in a public blockchain. Public blockchains are also decentralized and immutable.

Private Chains

An invitation-only blockchain governed by a single entity. The participating parties require permission to read, write, or audit the blockchain. The transactions and data are not publicly visible and can only be accessed by the participating parties.

Hybrid Chains

The combination of both public chains and private chains.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI)

artificial intelligence capable of generating code, text, images, videos, music, or other data using generative models, often in response to prompts.

Generative model

a statistical model of the jo A generative model joint probability int probability distribution (,) on a given observable variable X and target variable Y.

Discriminative Model

is a model of the conditional probability P (YlX=x) of the target Y, given an observation x.

Deep Learning

mimics the human brain using artificial neural networks such as transformers to allow computers to perform complex tasks.

Vector

compressed low-dimensional representation of the input.

Transformer

The major breakthrough that led to the performance of the current state-of-the-art generative AI models was the introduction of the transformer (2017).

Text Generation

a process where an AI system produces written content, imitating human language patterns and styles. It involves using deep learning models to generate new text based on patterns learned from existing text data.

AI Hallucinations

are when a large language model (LLM) perceives patterns or objects that are nonexistent, creating nonsensical or inaccurate outputs.

Network

devices (computers, printers, servers, communication hardware, etc.) that are connected for the purpose of sharing data.

Nodes

connected devices

Local Area Network (LAN)

connect personal computers and other digital devices in limited geographical areas such as home or office building.

Wide Area Networks (WANs)

networks that cover large geographic areas e.g. regions, states, countries…

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)

Handles the movement of data between computers.

Internet Protocol (IP)

handles the address part of each packet.

Intranet

A network designed to serve the internal informational needs of a company, using Internet concepts and tools.

Extranet

A private (company-owned) network that uses Internet technology and the public telecommunication system to securely share part of a business’s information or operations with suppliers, vendors, partners, customers, or other businesses.

Web 2.0

second-generation interactive internet-based services enabling people to collaborate, share information, and create new services online.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

Syndicates Web content, so aggregator software can pull content for use in another setting or viewing later.

Wiki

A server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content.

Semantic Search

a search engine that could really understand human language and behavior

Sensor

a device that is capable of sensing something about its surroundings, such as pressure, temperature, humidity, PH level, motion, vibration, or level of light.

Location-based commerce (L based commerce)

refers to the delivery of advertisements, products or services to customers whose location is known at a given time.

Enterprise Systems

Suite of integrated software modules and a common central database. It collects data from many divisions of the firm for use in nearly all of the firm's internal business activities.

Supply chain

a set of relationships among suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers that facilitate the transformation of raw materials into final products.

Churn Rate

Percentage of customers who stop using or purchasing products or services from a company.

E-commerce

describes the process of buying, selling, transferring, or exchanging products, services, and/or information via computer networks, including the internet.

E-business

refers to a broader definition of e-commerce, not just the buying and selling of goods and services.

Portal

“Supersite” provides a comprehensive entry point for a huge array of resources and services on the Internet.

E-tailer

Online retail stores that sell physical products directly to consumers or to individual businesses.

Content Provider

Providing digital content, such as digital news, music, photos, or video, over the Web.

Transaction Broker

saves users money and time by processing online sales transactions and generating a fee for each transaction.

Market Creator

Provides a digital environment where buyers and sellers can meet, search for products, display products, and establish prices for those products.

Service Provider

Provides Web 2.0 applications such as photo sharing, video sharing, and user-generated content as services. Online data storage and backup.

Community Provider

Provides an online meeting place where people with similar interests can communicate and find useful information.

Brick-and-mortar

traditional way of doing business, without virtual/online selling (Purely physical organisations)

Click-and-mortar

half virtual/online, and still sell a small number of products offline (e.g., Walmart).

Virtual Organisations

completely virtual without real store/selling of the products (e.g., Amazon)

Consumer-to-business (C2B)

type of commerce where a consumer or end user provides a product or service to an organisation.

Mobile Commerce (M-commerce)

refers to the use of handheld wireless devices for purchasing goods and services from any location.

Wisdom of Crowds

Large numbers of people can make better decisions about topics and products than a single person – better understand customers’ needs.

Social Commerce

a subset of electronic commerce that involves using social media, online media that supports social interaction, and user contributions to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services.

Social Shopping

collective activities of online shoppers

Social Shopping Site

one type of social commerce.

Digital marketing

is the marketing of products or ser Digital marketing vices using digital technologies, mainly through the Internet.