Essentials of MIS (14th Edition) - Detailed Cheat Sheet (Chapters 1-8)

Flashcards for review based on the MIS cheat sheet.

What is a key business objective of Information Systems?

Operational Excellence: Improve efficiency for higher profitability.

How can IS enable competitive advantage?

By reducing costs, increasing productivity, and delivering better service.

What is a digital firm?

A firm where business relationships, core processes, and corporate assets are digitally managed.

What are the three dimensions of Information Systems?

Technology, Organizations, and Management.

What are Business Processes?

Structured activities or tasks that produce a specific service or product.

What does TPS stand for, and what is its primary function?

Transaction Processing System; Supports operational level and records routine transactions.

What is the purpose of MIS?

Provides summarized reports for middle managers to monitor performance.

What decisions does DSS support?

Semi-structured decisions with simulations and 'what-if' analysis.

What level of management does ESS serve?

Senior Management

What does ERP stand for, and what does it do?

Enterprise Resource Planning; Integrates business processes into a single IT system.

What is SCM, and what is its function?

Supply Chain Management; Manages relationships with suppliers and logistics.

What is the purpose of CRM?

Customer Relationship Management; Helps manage customer data and interactions.

Name some collaboration and social tools mentioned.

Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Docs, Zoom.

Name one of Porter's Five Forces.

New market entrants – threat of new competitors.

Give an example of a company that uses a low-cost leadership strategy.

Walmart

Give an example of a company that uses a product differentiation strategy.

Apple

What does the Value Chain Model identify.

Primary and support activities that add value and margin to a product.

What are network effects?

Increase value as users increase (network-based strategies).

What is an ethical dilemma in IS?

Balancing rights of users with responsibilities of organizations.

What are the five moral dimensions of Information Systems?

Information rights/obligations, Property rights/obligations, Accountability & control, System quality, Quality of life.

Give an example of a privacy law.

GDPR (EU), HIPAA (US)

Give examples of threats to privacy discussed in the notes.

Cookies, spyware, tracking software.

Give examples of intellectual property tools.

Copyrights, trademarks, patents.

What are the key components of IT infrastructure?

Hardware, software, networking, data management, services.

Define virtualization.

Running multiple OS instances on one machine.

What is cloud computing?

On-demand resources via the internet (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS).

What file system issues does DBMS solve?

Data redundancy, inconsistency, poor security.

Describe the relational model.

Tables (relations) with rows (records) and columns (attributes).

What are the benefits of normalization?

Minimizing redundancy in databases.

Difference between a data warehouse and a data mart?

Warehouse = enterprise-wide; Mart = departmental.

What does OLAP stand for?

Online Analytical Processing: Multidimensional analysis.

Describe the difference between a LAN and a WAN.

LAN has a Limited Area while a WAN has a Wide Area.

What are protocols?

Set of rules (e.g., TCP/IP).

What is VoIP?

Calls over the internet.

List common security risks.

Sniffing, spoofing, man-in-the-middle attacks.

List some common threats.

Viruses, worms, Trojan horses, spyware, ransomware.

Name some security technologies.

Firewalls, antivirus, encryption, authentication.

What should security policies include?

Acceptable use policy, security audit.

What is the purpose of Business Continuity Planning?

Recovery, backups, alternative facilities.

What does the mnemonic RIP QA related to?

Moral Dimensions: Rights, IP, Privacy, Quality, Accountability