QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Making Business Decisions - ANSWER Understanding the way people makes decisions
is critical to embrace; They way people make decisions is going to affect your business
and the culture that is created there; Managerial decision-making challenges:
-Analyze large amounts of information
-Apply sophisticated analysis techniques
-Make decisions quickly
The Decision-Making Process - ANSWER The six-step decision-making process
-Problem identification
-Data collection
-Solution generation
-Solution test
-Solution selection
-Solution implementation
Decision-Making Essentials - ANSWER Decision-making and problem-solving occur at
each level in an organization; Strategic, Managerial, Operational
Operational Decision Making - ANSWER Employees develop, control, and maintain
core business activities required to run the day-to-day operations
Structured Decisions - ANSWER Situations where established processes offer potential
solutions
Managerial Decision Making - ANSWER Employees evaluate company operations to
identify, adapt to, and leverage change
Semistructured Decisions - ANSWER Occur in situations in which a few established
processes help to evaluate potential solutions, but not enough to lead to a definite
recommended decision
Strategic Decision Making - ANSWER Managers develop overall strategies, goals, and
objectives
Unstructured Decisions - ANSWER Occurs in situations in which no procedures or rules
exist to guide decision makers toward the correct choice
Model - ANSWER -A simplified representation or abstraction of reality
-Models can calculate risks, understand uncertainty, change variables, and manipulate
time
-Models help managers to:
,--Calculate risks
--Understand uncertainty
--Change variables
--Manipulate time to make decisions
Types of Decision Making MIS Systems - ANSWER
Decision Support System (DSS) - ANSWER Models information to support managers
and business professionals during the decision-making process
Executive Information System (EIS) - ANSWER A specialized DSS that supports senior
level executives within the organization
Artificial Intelligence (AI) - ANSWER Simulates human intelligence such as the ability to
reason and learn
Transaction Processing System (TPS) - ANSWER Basic business system that serves
the operational level and assists in making structured decisions;
Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) - ANSWER Capturing of transaction and event
information using technology to process, store, and update
Source Document - ANSWER The original transaction record
Transactional Information - ANSWER Encompasses all of the information contained
within a single business process or unit of work, and its primary purpose is to support
the performing of daily operational or structured decisions.
Operational Support Systems: Systems Thinking View of a TPS - ANSWER -Create,
read, update, and delete (CRUD) are the common processes associated with a TPS
-Common inputs are source documents and outputs are reports
Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) - ANSWER Manipulation of information to create
business intelligence in support of strategic decision making
Decision Support System (DSS) - ANSWER Models information to support managers
and business professionals during the decision-making process
Analytical Information - ANSWER Encompasses all organizational information, and its
primary purpose is to support the performing of managerial analysis or semistructured
decisions
Granularity - ANSWER Refers to the level of detail in the model or the decision-making
process
, Visualization - ANSWER Produces graphical displays of patterns and complex
relationships in large amounts of data
Digital Dashboard - ANSWER Tracks KPIs and CSFs by compiling information from
multiple sources and tailoring it to meet user needs; As digital dashboards become
easier to use, more executives can perform their own analysis without inundating IT
personnel with queries and request for reports
Strategic Support Systems: Interaction Between a TPS and EIS - ANSWER -The EIS
needs information from the TPS to help executives make decisions
-Without knowing order information, inventory information, and shipping information
from the TPSs, it would be very difficult for the CEO to make strategic decisions for the
organization
Most EISs offering the following capabilities: - ANSWER -Consolidation
-Drill-down
-Slice-and-dice
Consolidation - ANSWER Involves the aggregation of information and features simple
roll-ups to complex groupings of interrelated information
Drill-down - ANSWER Enables users to get details, and details of details, of information
Slice-and-dice - ANSWER Looks at information from different perspectives
Intelligent System - ANSWER Various commercial applications of artificial intelligence
Five most common categories of AI : - ANSWER Expert System; Neural Network;
Genetic Algorithm; Intelligent Agents; Virtual Reality
1. Expert System - ANSWER Computerized advisory programs that imitate the
reasoning processes of experts in solving difficult problems; Human expertise is
transferred to the expert system, and users can access the expert system for specific
advice; Most expert systems contain information from many human experts and can
therefore perform a better analysis than any single human
2. Neural Network - ANSWER Attempts to emulate the way the human brain works;
Neural networks are most useful for decisions that involve patterns or image
recognition; Typically used in the finance industry to discover credit card fraud by
analyzing individual spending behavior
3. Genetic Algorithm - ANSWER An artificial intelligent system that mimics the
evolutionary, survival-of-the-fittest process to generate increasingly better solutions to a
problem; Essentially an optimizing system, it finds the combination of inputs that give
the best outputs