Information systems: Lecture 3
Transaction Processing systems (TPS)
There are different types of IS for different management levels within different business functions across different levels
Decision support systems
People in an organisation use different IS to match the information they are receiving and dealing with
an information system that facilitates the collection, processing, storage and retrieval of data about an organisations' routine business activities
e.g
•payments to employees
•sales
•orders to suppliers
Enterprise resource planning (ERP)
Management information systems
an information system that delivers routine information to managers/decision makers; supporting decision making activities
•MIS output at operational efficiency (what is happening? what is wrong?)
•Data stored in TPS outputs to MIS
e.g demand reports, drill down reports, exception reports, scheduled reports
^all come from information collected by TPS^
• Information system that supports problem specific decision making
• Focus is on decision making effectiveness, supports unstructured decisions/long term strategic decisions making (what would happen if? What should be done?)
• The types of decisions that DSS helps with:
○ Optimisation (what configuration of products would maximise profits?)
○ What if analysis (what would the impact on demand be if price was altered?)
SEE CHAPTER 3 NOTES PG11 FOR HIERARCHY OF IS
a set of integrated software applications capable of managing business operations across all of the organisations functional areas
•basically a system used to integrate all the different systems of an organisation into one integrated system.
With ERP, organisations are better able to coordinate: •planning
•inventory control
•production and ordering of supplies
The organisation as a value chain
•focuses on looking at an organisation horizontally as opposed to vertically
•the transformation process (of inputs to outputs) is known as the value chain
Information systems can help organisations with their value chain activities e.g improve linkages
○ An organisation is a system that takes input and transforms them into useful products/services (outputs) which are sold
§ A system’s output should have a higher relative value than its inputs (e.g Spur buys ribs for R50 but sells them for R120 once they have added value to it
Business benefits of IS
•efficiency improvements (produce more output with less input)
•improvements in effectiveness (the output has to be of high quality)
•improvements in competitive position