JMU COB 204 Exam 2 Questions and Answers Solved Correctly
Business Intelligence (BI) - Answers a broad category of applications, technologies, and processes for
gathering, storing, accessing, and analyzing data to help business users make better decisions
ROI - Answers Return on Investment
Business analytics - Answers a subset of BI based on statistics, prediction, and optimization
Questions BI can answer... - Answers What happened? How many? How often? Where is the problem?
What actions are needed?
Questions business analytics can answer... - Answers Why is this happening? What will happen if these
trends continue? What will happen next? What is the best/worst that can happen?
Management - Answers process by which an organization achieves its goals through the use of resources
(people, money, materials, information)
Resources - Answers inputs
Achieving the organization's goals - Answers output
Productivity - Answers indicated by manager's ratio between inputs and outputs
Interpersonal roles - Answers figurehead, leader, liaison
Informational roles - Answers monitor, disseminator, spokesperson, analyzer
Decisional roles - Answers entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, negotiator
Decision - Answers a choice among two or more alternatives that individuals and groups make. Diverse
and made continuously.
3 major phases of decision making - Answers intelligence, design, choice
Intelligence phase - Answers managers examine a situation and then identify and define the problem or
opportunity
Design phase - Answers decision makers construct a model for addressing the situation
Choice phase - Answers selecting a solution or course of action that seems best suited to resolve the
problem
Trends making decision making difficult - Answers
Number of alternatives - Answers constantly increasing due to innovation in technology, improved
communications, global markets, internet, and e-business
Time pressure - Answers often not possible to manually process information fast enough to be effective
, More complex - Answers usually necessary to conduct a sophisticated analysis
Data warehousing - Answers provides the data needed for BI
Problem structure - Answers decision making processes fall along a continuum ranging from highly
structured to highly unstructured
Problem structure dimensions - Answers
Structured decisions - Answers deal with routine and repetitive problems for which standard solutions
exist. Ex. inventory control
Unstructured decisions - Answers intended to deal with "fuzzy," complex problems for which there are
no cut-and-dried solutions. Ex. hiring an executive
Semistructured decisions - Answers require a combination of standard solution procedures and
individual judgement. Ex. evaluating employees
Nature of Decisions categories - Answers
Operational control - Answers executing specific tasks efficiently and effectively
Management control - Answers acquiring and using resources efficiently in accomplishing organization
goals
Strategic planning - Answers long range goals and policies for growth and resource allocation
Corporate Performance Management (CPM) - Answers involved with monitoring and managing an
organization's performance according to key performance indicators
Sentiment analysis - Answers the use of natural language processing, text analysis, machine learning,
and statistics to identify and extract subjective information in source materials
Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) - Answers involves "slicing and dicing" data stored in a dimensional
format, drilling down in the data to greater detail and aggregating the data
Data mining - Answers the process of searching for valuable business information in a large database,
data warehouse, or data mart; helps explain why something happened, and predicts what will happen in
the future
Operations performed by data mining - Answers 1) predicting trends and behaviors
2) identifying previously unknown patterns
Decision Support Systems (DSSs) - Answers combine models and data to analyze semistructured
problems and some unstructured problems that involve extensive user involvement
Models - Answers simplified representations of reality
Business Intelligence (BI) - Answers a broad category of applications, technologies, and processes for
gathering, storing, accessing, and analyzing data to help business users make better decisions
ROI - Answers Return on Investment
Business analytics - Answers a subset of BI based on statistics, prediction, and optimization
Questions BI can answer... - Answers What happened? How many? How often? Where is the problem?
What actions are needed?
Questions business analytics can answer... - Answers Why is this happening? What will happen if these
trends continue? What will happen next? What is the best/worst that can happen?
Management - Answers process by which an organization achieves its goals through the use of resources
(people, money, materials, information)
Resources - Answers inputs
Achieving the organization's goals - Answers output
Productivity - Answers indicated by manager's ratio between inputs and outputs
Interpersonal roles - Answers figurehead, leader, liaison
Informational roles - Answers monitor, disseminator, spokesperson, analyzer
Decisional roles - Answers entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, negotiator
Decision - Answers a choice among two or more alternatives that individuals and groups make. Diverse
and made continuously.
3 major phases of decision making - Answers intelligence, design, choice
Intelligence phase - Answers managers examine a situation and then identify and define the problem or
opportunity
Design phase - Answers decision makers construct a model for addressing the situation
Choice phase - Answers selecting a solution or course of action that seems best suited to resolve the
problem
Trends making decision making difficult - Answers
Number of alternatives - Answers constantly increasing due to innovation in technology, improved
communications, global markets, internet, and e-business
Time pressure - Answers often not possible to manually process information fast enough to be effective
, More complex - Answers usually necessary to conduct a sophisticated analysis
Data warehousing - Answers provides the data needed for BI
Problem structure - Answers decision making processes fall along a continuum ranging from highly
structured to highly unstructured
Problem structure dimensions - Answers
Structured decisions - Answers deal with routine and repetitive problems for which standard solutions
exist. Ex. inventory control
Unstructured decisions - Answers intended to deal with "fuzzy," complex problems for which there are
no cut-and-dried solutions. Ex. hiring an executive
Semistructured decisions - Answers require a combination of standard solution procedures and
individual judgement. Ex. evaluating employees
Nature of Decisions categories - Answers
Operational control - Answers executing specific tasks efficiently and effectively
Management control - Answers acquiring and using resources efficiently in accomplishing organization
goals
Strategic planning - Answers long range goals and policies for growth and resource allocation
Corporate Performance Management (CPM) - Answers involved with monitoring and managing an
organization's performance according to key performance indicators
Sentiment analysis - Answers the use of natural language processing, text analysis, machine learning,
and statistics to identify and extract subjective information in source materials
Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) - Answers involves "slicing and dicing" data stored in a dimensional
format, drilling down in the data to greater detail and aggregating the data
Data mining - Answers the process of searching for valuable business information in a large database,
data warehouse, or data mart; helps explain why something happened, and predicts what will happen in
the future
Operations performed by data mining - Answers 1) predicting trends and behaviors
2) identifying previously unknown patterns
Decision Support Systems (DSSs) - Answers combine models and data to analyze semistructured
problems and some unstructured problems that involve extensive user involvement
Models - Answers simplified representations of reality
