ITSS 3300 Midterm Exam Guide 2025

What are the effects of information systems on business and their relationship to globalization? - -The provide competitive advantages for business, expedites the infill process and raise the barrier to globalization. Explain why information systems are so essential in business today. - -They can be the foundation for new products, services and ways of conducting business that provide firms with a strategic advantage. Define information system and describe its management, organization, and technology components. - -Any structured arrangement of hardware, communication networks, people, software, data resources, policies and procedures that stores, transforms, retrieves and disseminates information in an organization. Produces the information that organizations need to make decisions, control operations, analyze problems, and create new products or services. What are the Six strategic business objectives? - -Operational excellence, New products services and business models, customer and supplier intimacy, improved decisions making, competitive advantage, survival Define data. - -Raw material for processing. Relates to facts, events and transactions. Refers to unprocessed information. Define information. - -Data that has been processed in such a way as to be meaningful to the person who receives it. What are the 3 activities used by information systems to produce information. Provide examples. - -Input, process, output. A manufacturing process that takes raw materials as inputs, applies a manufacturing process, and produces manufactured goods as output. Define business process. - -A network of activities that generates value by transforming inputs into outputs. How can information systems help businesses to achieve competitive advantages? - This helps an organization focus on being the cost leader, or focus on differentiating its products or services from those of the competition. Further, the organization can employ the cost of differentiation strategy across an industry, or it can focus its strategy on an industry segment. Define disruptive technologies. - -An innovation that creates a new market and value network and eventually disrupts an existing market. Apple iPhone. ITSS 3300 ITSS 3300 What are the organizational factors in planning a new system? - -Environment, culture, structure, business processes, politics, management decisions. What are Porter's 5 competitive forces? - -Bargaining power of the customer, threat of substitutions, bargaining power of suppliers, threat of new entrants, Rivalry. What are the four generic strategies for dealing with competitive forces? - -Focus, Industry-wide, cost, differentiation. Locking in - -makes a customer dependent on a sole vendor for products and services. Locking out - -making it so no other vendor can service your product due to design. Switching cost - -cost to replace what you have Creating entry barriers - -When a company copyrights a new program or product. threat of substitution - -a product from another industry that offers same benefits to the customer Rivalry among existing firms - -the degree to which firms respond to competitive moves of other firms in the industry. Bargaining power of customer/suppliers - -the ability of the customer/supplier of the industry to influence the price and terms of purchase. What are the different parts of the Value chain and their activities? - -Value, money customer is willing to pay Margin, difference between value and cost Linkages, interactions across value activities Define business processes and their relationship to information systems. - -A collection of related, structured activities or task that produce a specific service or product. Information systems can automate many steps in business processes that were formerly manually performed. New technology can change the flow of information, making it possible for more people to access and share information, eliminating delays in decision making. Explain how enterprise applications improve organizational performance. - -They span functional areas, execute business processes across the firm and include all levels of management. Provide an example of a business process. - -Manufacturing - a product assembly process, a quality assurance process, a corrective/preventative maintenance process. ITSS 3300 ITSS 3300 How does information technology enhance business processes? - -Helps brainstorm a list of business process improvements and give a top down view of all parts of a business process. Why do organizations need to manage business processes? - -Because shortfalls that go unnoticed can lead to the downfall of the business. How can BPMN process diagram help identify and solve process problems? - -It outlines swim lanes and concepts of how issues within the business are handled from one actor to another Which comes first, business processes or information systems? - -A Business process is usually already aligned with the business strategy, a system is not. Why are business processes and systems development difficult and risky? - -Many system development projects are never finished. Most are over budget, some never satisfactorily accomplish their goals. Describe how businesses use enterprise systems to achieve operational excellence. - They help a businesses stay current with information and let managers know how a business is performing at any point in time. Explain how supply chain management systems coordinate planning, production, and logistics with suppliers. - -They link suppliers, manufacturing plants, distributions centers, retail outlets, and customers to supply goods and services from source through consumption. It is the integration of supplier, distributor, and customer logistics requirements into one cohesive process. Describe how customer relationship management systems help firms achieve customer intimacy. - -They increase customer satisfaction, reduce direct-marking cost, increase sales revenue and reduce churn rate (indicator of growth or decline of firm's customer base.) What is an enterprise system and what are its primary functions? Identify benefits and challenges with its use. - -Any kind of information system which improves the functions of a process by integration. It is used in conjunction with customer relationship management (CRM) and SCM to automate business processes. Will have a major impact if it works or fails. What are 5 major types of enterprise systems? - -Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Supply Chain Management (SCM) Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) Product Life Cycle Management (PLM) ITSS 3300 ITSS 3300 What is the business value of enterprise systems? - -This makes businesses more efficient in all areas and can identify problems with deliveries, lost orders and tracking. How do Enterprise Systems help organizations manage their business processes? - -By supplying real time view of Procurement, Fulfillment and Production throughout the total process. What are the roles of enterprise systems in organizations? - -Execute the process, capture and store process data, monitor performance. Identify potential problems that could result in key business processes if an Enterprise System is not present. - -Materials needed to produce the business item may not be present when needed. Not tracking fulfillment times could anger customers and drive away business. Production could have issues that go unaddressed concerning efficiency, which would drive away customers. What is the difference between Enterprise System and SAP? - -Enterprise Systems are a software suite of business applications; SAP is a software vendor of ERP systems. Why is streamlining the business process important and what are its benefits? - -This action removes wasteful or redundant steps to improve efficiency. It also reduces cost, attracts more customers through nimble response times, and drives higher revenue while helping the business to compete effectively. What is Master Data? - -Relates to business data used to make decisions and can originate with customers or outside the business. What is organizational data? - -Relates to key information on personnel or company functions within a business. This can also include any outsourcing companies pre cleared for business activities. What are the steps in the business process management? - -Design, stakeholders, define the current process, identify barriers to improvement, root cause analysis, develop the solutions and implementation plan What is a business process model? - -A represententation of the activity in an enterprise that portrays the current process in order to be analyzed or improved. What are some metrics for a business process? - -Sales revenue, customer loyalty and retention, cost of customer acquisition, operating productivity, s