Week Three - Strategic Decision Making

Define TPS & DSS, provide some examples of these systems in business.

A Transaction processing is the elementry business system that serves the operational level (analysists) in an organisation. The most common example of a TPS is an operational accounting System such as a payroll system or an order-entry system.Further examples include sales, receipts, cash deposits, payroll, credit decisions and flow of materials (as in a factory).TPS is Usually outward-reaching and convey impressions to the customers about the quality of the business, eg. Point of Sale (POS) systems. Transaction processes were the first to be automated  because these repetitive, consistent, high-volume tasks were ideal candidates for ‘computerization’.TPS’s often provide the foundation for all the other information systems.

TPS within business today, has moved to Internet Transaction Processing, example :

·        processing credit card details via a website

·       standard browser interface

·       smart phone apps

·       allows multimedia data transfer

·       Instant response / real time

·       lower cost – no humans

Decision support system (DSS) – assist decision making to more complex problems, so called unstructured or semi-structured problems

 Describe the three quantitative models typically used by decision support systems.

—  Three quantitative models used by DSSs include:

1.      Sensitivity analysis - the study of the impact that changes in one (or more) parts of the model have on other parts of the model.

2.      What-if analysis - checks the impact of a change in an assumption on the proposed solution.

3.      Goal-seeking analysis - finds the inputs necessary to achieve a goal.

Describe a business process and it's importance to an organisation

Information systems are all about improving Business Processes. Business processes refer to the manner in which work is organised, coordinated and focussed to produce a valuable product or service. A business process is a standard set of activities that accomplish a specific task, such as processing a customer order or enrolling a student.Organisations are only as effective as their business processes, these must be studied, understood and improved.

Compare business process improvement and business process re-engineering using an example

Many organisations begin business process improvement with a continuous improvement model. BPI requires taking a broad view of both information technology and business activity, and of the relationships between them. A continuous process improvement model attempts to understand and measure the current process, and make performance improvements accordingly. Technology aims to support and develop business process.

Business process re-egineering (BPR) is the analysis and redesign of workflow within and between enterprises.BPR relies on a different school of thought that business process improvement.BPR assumes that the current process is irrelevant, does not work, or is broken and must be overhauled from scratch.Such a clean slate enables business process designers to disassociate themselves from todays process and focus on a new process. It is like the designers projecting themselves into the future and asking: What should the process look like? What do customers want it to look like? What do other employees want it to look like? How do best-in-class companies do it? How can new technology facilitate the process?

BPR reached its heyday in the early 1990s when Michael Hammer and James Champy published their best-selling book, Reengineering the Corporation. The authors promoted the idea that radical redesign and reorganisation of an enterprise (wiping the slate clean) sometimes was necessary to lower costs and increase quality of service and that information technology was the key enabler for that radical change. Hammer and Champy believed that the workflow design in most large corporations was based on invalid assumptions about technology, people, and organisational goals. They suggested seven principles of reengineering to streamline the work process and thereby achieve significant improvement in quality, time management, and cost.

Describe the importance of business process modelling (or mapping) and business process models.

Business process modeling or (mapping) is the activity of creating a detailed flowchart or process.map of a work process, showing its inputs, tasks  and activities in a structures sequence. Being able to visualise an organisation’s operation is often the beginning of identifying problems or new opportunities.Technology makes the process invisible, so BPM makes the processes visible.BPM is the activity of making detailed flowchart or process map of a work processes.

A Business process model is a graphic description of a process, showing the sequence of process tasks, which is developed for a specific purpose and from a selected viewpoint.The purpose of a process model is too;

-expose process detail gradually and in a controlled manner

-encourage conciseness and accuracy in describing the process model

-focus attention on the process model interfaces.

-provide a powerful process analysis and consistent design vocabulary.