INFS: CH5: How Info Sys support Managerial Work and Decision Making 5.

1 Business Processes and Info Sys Biz processes: manner in which work is organised, coordinated, and focused to produce output and the ways organisation and management chooses to coordinate work. Examples of functional biz processes Functional area Manufacturing and production Sales and marketing Finance and accounting Human resources

Biz Process Assembling the product, checking for quality, producing bills of materials. Identifying customers, making customers aware of the product, selling the product. Paying creditors, creating financial statements managing cash accounts. Hiring employees, evaluating employees job performance, enrolling employees in benefits plans.

How Info Tech Enhances Business Processes Automate many steps in biz processes Change the flow of information make possible for many more people to access and share information, replacing sequential steps with tasks that can be performed simultaneously and eliminating delays in decision making. 5.2 Types of Info Sys System supporting for each major business function now replaced with cross-functional systems that integrate the activities of related business processes and organisational units. Diff level of management has diff needs. Transaction Processing System (TPS): computerised system that performs and records the daily routine, structured transactions necessary to conduct business, such as sales order entry, payroll and grant credit to customers. Used at operational level where tasks, resources and goals are predefined and highly structured. Management Info Sys (MIS): TPSs supply summarised transactions (basic operations) data to the MIS reporting system at the end of the time period (weekly, monthly or yearly). MIS provide routine reports showing comparison or summaries of transaction-level data to middle and operational level managers to provide answers to routine structured and semi-structured decision problems. E.g. compare total annual sales for specific products to planned target thus helping to design appropriate marketing plan. Does not involve model. Decision-support systems (DSS): Uses models such as analytical and statistical models to support non-routine, semi-structured decision making for middle management. Brings in both internal info form TPS and MIS and also external data such as current stock prices or product prices of competitors. (Analyse and answer what-if questions). Sometimes called business intelligence system. Can also use pivot table to support decision making.
(note: components of DSS came out as one of the essay questions in my final exam)

Executive Support Systems (ESS) for senior management: Support non-routine, unstructured questions and addresses strategic issues and long term trends by presenting graphs or charts of key performance indicators and critical data summarised from MIS and DSS and incorporate external data. E.g. What products should we be making in 5years? Firstly need to understand what the really important performance information is by using the balanced scorecard method: to understand the really important information needed by the firms executive. internally focussedthe firms strategic objectives are operationalized along four dimensions: financial, business process, customer, and learning and growth . Each dimension is measured using several key performance indicators (KPIs) Group decision-support systems (GDSS) is Supported by Web 2.0 5.3 Decision making and Info Sys 4 different stages in decision making as described by Simon Intelligence: Problem discovery- why a problem exists, where, and what effects it is having on the firm.

Design: Solution discovery- what are the various possible solutions Choice: Choosing solution- what is the best solution among alternatives Implementation: Implement the chosen and test if the solution is working and continuing to monitor how well the solution is working. Can we make it better?

Managers and Decision Making in the Real World Classical model of management: describes what managers do (plan, organise, coordinate, decide and controlling) Behavioural model: state exactly what managers do when they do the above. Shows less systematic, more informal, less reflective, more reactive and less organised. Managerial Role Interpersonal roles: Figurehead Leader Liaison Information roles: Nerve centre Disseminator Spokesperson Decision Roles: Entrepreneur Disturbance handling Resource allocator Negotiator How IS support management decision making None None Electronic communication system MIS, ESS Mail, Office systems Office and professional systems, workstation. None None DSS None

From the above, Info Sys are not helpful for all managerial roles-and where info sys can help, investment in info tech do not always produce positive result because of problems with: 1. Information quality: Accuracy, Integration, Consistency, completeness, validity, timeliness and accessibility. 2. Management Filters: Managers have selective attention, can be bias (such as underestimation of risk) or wrong focus. 3. Organisational culture: Politics etc 5.6. The Knowledge Management landscape Data (flow of events or transaction) information (organise data into categories of understanding) knowledge (discover patterns, rules and context where knowledge works) wisdom. Tacit knowledge: knowledge residing in the minds of employees that has not been documented. (unstructured e.g. messages, memos etc) Explicit knowledge: has been documented. (structured knowledge e.g. formal documents) Dimensions of knowledge: Knowledge is a firm intangible asset Has different forms Has a location: sticky (hard to move), situated (enmeshed in a firms culture), and contextual (works only in certain situations) Knowledge is situational: conditional and related to context. Organisational learning: process of adjusting their behaviour to reflect that learning by creating new business processes and by changing patterns of management decision making. Knowledge management helps organisational learning by increasing the ability of the organisation to learn from its environment and to incorporate knowledge into its business process. The Knowledge Management Value Chain : set of business processes developed on an organisation to create, store, transfer, and apply knowledge. 5 value-adding steps in the knowledge management value chain: knowledge acquisition, storage, dissemination, application, and feedback. Communities of Practice (COP): informal social networks of professionals and employees within and outside the firm who have similar work-related activities and interest.

Types of Knowledge Management Systems 1. Enterprise-Wide Knowledge Management Systems General purpose, integrated, firm wide efforts to collect, store, disseminate, and use digital content and knowledge. E.g. Enterprise content management systems, collaboration tools, learning management systems, knowledge network systems. o Enterprise Content Management Systems: have capabilities for classifying, organising and managing structured and semi-structured knowledge and making it available throughout the enterprise. Taxonomy: classification scheme. o Knowledge network Systems (expertise location and management systems): maintains a database of firm experts (people!!), as well as accepted solutions to known problems, and then facilitates the communication between employees looking for knowledge and experts who have that knowledge. Solutions created in this communication are then added to a database of solutions in the form of FAQs, best practices, or other documents. Collaboration tools: blogs, wikis, social bookmarking (save their bookmarks to public web pages. The user created taxonomies created for shared bookmarks are called folksonomies); and learning management systems (LMS) which provides tools for the management, delivery, tracking, and assessment of various types of employee learning and training.

2. Knowledge work systems (KWS): Specialised workstations and systems that enable scientists, engineers, and other knowledge workers to create and discover new knowledge. E.g. CAD, 3-D virtualisation, virtual reality, investment workstations. 3. Intelligent Techniques: Tools for discovering patterns and applying knowledge to discrete decisions and knowledge domains. e.g.) Data mining; expert systems; case-based reasoning; fuzzy logic- software tech for expressing knowledge in the form of rules that use approximate or subjective values; genetic algorithms- develop solutions to particular problems using genetically based processes such as fitness, crossover, and mutation; intelligent agents- software programs with built-in or learned knowledge bases that carry out specific, repetitive, and predictable tasks; neural networks- consist of hardware and software that attempt to mimic the thought processes of the human brain. Find patterns.