MIS2
Information Systems in the Enterprise

2.1 Major Types of Systems in Organizations
No one system can meet all the information needs in an organization.

Different Kinds of Systems
There are three main categories of information systems in an organization.
Operational Level Systems - these support organizational managers by keeping track of day to day activities.
Management Level systems - these help the managers monitor, control, and support decision makings and administrating activities.
Strategic level systems - These help senior level management look for long terms trends and address strategic issues.
These type are broken down to sales and marketing, manufacturing and production, finance and accounting, And human resources.

Four Major Types of Systems

Transaction Processing Systems
A transaction processing system (TPS) is a system that serves the basic operational levels of an organization. At this level most decisions are predefined and structured. Along with the categories mentioned us the last group, another is specialized ones for each industry. When these systems have a failure they can bring an organization to its knees.

Management Information Systems
Management Information Systems (MIS) serves managers by providing reports and access to current and historical performance records. They are generally aimed at planning, controlling and decision making. The information from the TPS system is basically summarized in an mis system.

Decision-Support Systems
These systems, sometimes called business intelligence Systems, serve management by helping them make decisions. They use both internal information from TPS and MIS systems, but external information as well. They are designed to be analytical and condense large amounts l information into usable form.

Executive Support Systems
These systems are used by senior management. The focus on decisions that need judgment, evaluation, and insight. They use external data mixed with data from internal systems. An ESS is not made to solve a specific problem but to analyze many different type of problems and offer different solutions. These systems tend to be user friendly as many managers do not have computer experience.

Relationship of Systems to One Another
The TPS system tends to feed all other systems. The ESS tends to receive data from all other systems. The other systems can feed or receive on both. Integrating these systems allows for data to flow easily and can be a strategic advantage.

2.2 Systems From A Functional Perspective

Sales and Marketing Systems
Sales is for selling a companies products, marketing is for identifying customers and what they want. They would use a sales and marketing system that would identify trends, look for sales opportunities, analyze advertising and other sales and marketing needs.

Manufacturing and Production Systems
A manufacturing and production system deals with the actual creation of productions. these can deal with many different things.
Plant location
Investment in new technology
Inventory control
A new fool is a Product Life Cycle Management (PLM) system. This type of system is a data repository of all the information for a product. Once collected all parts of the company would have information it needed to do its job. A CAD system helps to design a product with less need for physical prototypes.

Finance and Accounting Systems
These systems are for analyzing assets as well as investments. Much information is external in financial systems. Much of an accounting systems information is internal, functions include budgeting, general ledger, billings' and accounts payable,

Human Resource Systems
These system are for attracting developing and maintaining the workforce of a firm. System include: payroll, benefits, and training.

2.3 Integrating Functions and Business Processes: Introduction to Enterprise Applications

Business Process and Information Systems
This type of system is the logically related activities to accomplish any given task. Keeping this digital can be a competitive advantage or a hindrance if they are old and outdated. Many system can and do cross boundaries between departments.

System for Enterprise-Wide Process Integration
To become more flexible and efficient firms need to integrate their systems across the Enterprise. A new way of doing this is corporate intranets and web technology these type of systems often deal with supply chains and knowledge management systems.

Overview of Enterprise Applications

Overview of Enterprise Systems
A large organization generally has many different business units which have built their own systems that cannot talk to each other. An enterprise system provides for seamless communications across the organization. These systems Are sometimes referred to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.

Overview of Supply Chain Management Systems
Supply chain Management Systems focus on outward communications to suppliers of a firm. This makes them interorganizational. The need here is to tell suppliers that you need and when, and they would communicate back what they can do.

Overview of Customer Relationship Management Systems
Customer Relationship Management systems deal with interactions with the customer. Good CRM systems deal with identifying good over marginal or poor customers as it is more costly to get new customers than to keep existing ones. They also focus on how to provide better service and support to their customers.

Overview of Knowledge Management Systems
These systems collect all relevant knowledge and make it available to support business and management decisions.

2.4 Management Opportunities, Challenges, and Solutions

Opportunities

Management Challenges

Integration and the Whole Firm View
In the past systems were designed with a narrow view this mode many systems that could not talk with each other. The need is for systems can be independent in use but communicate with the whole system.

Management and Employee Training
Training people can be a challenge but can be Costly if not done.

Accounting For The Cost of Systems and Managing Demand for Systems
Information Technology Costs but people in a firm tend to treat it like it is free. Firms need to learn which investments are the ones to focus on.

Solution Guidelines

Inventorying the Firm's Information Systems for a 360-Degree View of Information
The need here is for a total view of the organization including inventorying what they already have with the eye to making it work together.

Employee and Management Education
Insure shot the budget is there to educate workers, as well as learn how current systems work end incorporate the good parts for less of a learning curve.

Accounting for the Costs and Benefits of Information Systems
An accounting system needs to be developed so that costs are billed to the right departments as well as keeping services provided for the firm as a whole separate and billed to the IT people.