Week 3 Questions- Strategic Decision Making

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


Transaction Processing Systems (TPS) manage business activities, this including sales receipts and payroll and used for the operation of businesses. They provide the foundation for other business systems, usually those who convey impressions about the quality of the business to the customers.


Decision Support Sytems (DSS) assist decision making to complex problems. It portrays information to help support managers when they are making decisions.


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


Quantitative models sometimes used by DSS include:


Sensitivity analysis: study of the impact that changes in one (or more) parts of the model have on other parts of the model. The user can change value of one variable as many times as they want and look at the changes in the other variables.


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


Goal-seeking analysis: finds the inputs necessary to achieve a goal such as a desired level of output. Instead of observing how changes in variables affect others this analysis sets a goal for a variable and changes the other variables until the goal is achieved.

3. Describe a business processes and their importance to an organisation, outline and example of how they are used.


Business process:
- a standardised set of activities that accomplish a specific task.
- it transforms a set of inputs into a set of outputs (e.g. customer checkout services) a business can satisfy


The best way a business can satisfy customers and spur profits is by understanding all of its business processes.


E.G.
A supermarket uses checkouts, which is the "process", and the purpose of it is to pay for and pack groceries. The process starts when the customer is in line, and ends when the customer receives the receipt.


SAMPLE BUSINESS PROCESSES.


Accounting/ Finance Business Processes
- Accounts payable
- Accounts receivable


Environmental Business Processes
- Environmental protection
- Hazardous waste management

4. Compare business process improvement and business process re-engineering.


Business process improvement: attempts to understand and measure the current process and make performance improvements accordingly.

Business process re-engineering: analyses and redesigns workflow within and between enterprises.

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


Business process modelling (or mapping) is the activity of creating a detailed flowchart ot process map of a work process. Within it showing its inputs, tasks and activities in a structured sequence.


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. This model usually displays activities as boxes and uses arrows to represent data and interfaces.


The purpose of a process model is to:
- expose process detail gradually and in a controlled manner.
- encourage consiceness and accuracy in describing the process model.
- focus attention on the process model interfaces.
- provide a powerful process analysis and consistent design vocabulary.


Example:

Week 2 Questions- Information Systems in Business

Explain information technology’s role in business?

Information Techonology is everywhere in the business world. Customer service, finance, sales and marketing, and human resources are areas in business that can all benefit from implementation of information technology. It's roles within a business is facilitating communication and increasing business intelligence. Information technology can aenable departments to perform more efficiently and effectively with their business operations.

What are Efficiency and Effectiveness Metrics? Provide some examples of each.

Effiency IT metrics measure the performance of the IT system itself.

- This includes: speed and availability.

Effectiveness IT metrics measure the impact IT has on business processes and activities,

- This includes: customer satisfaction and conversion rates.

What does Porter’s Five Forces Model attempt to explain?

The Five Forces Model helps to determine the relative attractiveness of an industry, and includes the following forces:

1. buyer power (when  buyers have many sellers to choose from. and is low when their choices are limited. Buyer power is the ability of a buyer to impact the price they are willing to pay for a certain item)

2. supplier power (when one company has power over an industry. If the supplier power is high, they are able to impact and influence the industry by charging high prices and limiting services and quality)

3. threat of substitute products or services (high threat when there are other alternatives to a product or service, and low when there is limited alternatives to choose from)

4. threat of new entrants (threat is high when new competitors easily enter a market. Low threat when there are barriers to a market that make it hard for competitors to enter)

5. rivalry among existing customers (this is high when there is strong competition in a certain market and is low when competition isn't as high)

How does the internet affect the model?


The internet allows for more buyer power, which affect the markets and competitors. Buyers are able to get online and buy cheaper items to that of the original value being sold by retail stores, etc.

Describe the relationship between business processes and value chains?


A business process is standardised set of activities that accomplish a specific task (i.e. customer's orders)


The value chain is an approach that views a business as a series of processes, of which adds value to the service or product for each customer.