UNIT 1 : CHAPTER 1 - Business Driven Technology

Information Technology

INFORMATION AGE is when infinite quantities of facts are widely available to anyone who can use a computer. Comparing the past, people are primarily learned facts or information just by manual which is by using a book. But today, by simply pushing a button, people can find out anything they need, from anywhere around the world, at any time they want. 

This impact on the global business environment is equivalent to the printing press’s impact on publishing and electricity’s impact on productivity. This are list of core drivers of the information age :

i.                    Data

ii.                  Information

iii.                Business intelligence

iv.                Knowledge

DATA are raw facts that describe the characteristics of an event or object. Before we have the technology, managers are manually collected and analyzed data, a time-consuming and complicated task without which they would have little insight into how to run their business. Faced a lacking data situation, managers often found themselves making business decisions about how many products to make, how much material to order, or how many employees to hire based on intuition or gut feelings.

But today, managers no longer be the same as old. They were a successful managers in compiling, analyze, and comprehend massive amounts of data daily, which is helps them to make more successful business decision. These data are useful to understanding individual sales because it have a record of order date, amount sold, customer number, and quantity ordered.

INFORMATION is data converted into meaningful and useful context. The truth about information is that its value is only good as the people who use it. Reality, people using the same information but turn into different decision depending on how they interpret or analyze the information given. Thus, information has value only in solar as the people using it do as well.

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE (BI) is information collected from multiple sources such as supplier, customer, competitors, partners, and industries that analyze patterns, trends, and relationships for strategic decision making. It manipulates multiple variables and in some cases even hundreds of variable was including such items as interest rates, weather conditions, and even gas prices. 

As top managers, they using BI to define the future of the business, analyzing markets, industries, and economies to determine the strategic direction the company must obey to remain profitable.

KNOWLEDGE includes the skills, experience, and expertise, coupled with the information and intelligence that creates a person’s intellectual resources. Today’s workers are usually referred to as knowledge workers and they use BI along with personal experience to make decision based on both information and intuition, a valuable resources for any company.

The Challenge: Departmental Companies

Typically organized by department area as listed:

i)                    Accounting

Records, measures, and reports monetary transactions.

ii)                  Finance

Deals with strategic financial issues including money, banking, credit, investments, and assets.

iii)                Human Resources

Maintains policies, plans and procedures for the effective management for employees.

iv)                Marketing

Supports sales by planning, pricing and promoting goods or services.

v)                  Operations Management

Management the process of converting or transforming or resource into goods or services.

vi)                Sales

Performs the function of selling goods and service.

Sales and Marketing focus on moving goods or service which is, maintain transactional data. For Finance and Accounting focus on managing the company’s resources and maintain monetary data. Operations Management focuses on manufacturing and maintains production data, while Human Resource focuses on hiring and training employees and maintain their data.

Information Technology Basics

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT) is field that concerned with uses of technology in managing and processing information because it is important to enabler of business success and innovation.

MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS (MIS) is general name for business function and academic discipline covering the application of people, technologies, and procedures to solve business problems. It similar with Accounting, Finance, Operations, and Human Resources.

To learn about information, we need to understand meaning of Data, Information, and Business Intelligence. We also need to know what is IT Resources and IT Culture.

  

The Procees Obtain Information from Data.

Information Technology Resources

Information Technology Culture

i)                    Information – Functional Culture

Employees use information as means of exercising influence or power over others.

ii)                  Information – Sharing Culture

To improve the performance, employees of each department trust to share their information with others especially when they department having problems or failures.

iii)                Information – Inquiring Culture

Employees across departments to looking for new technology to understand the future and align themselves with new directions and current information for their long life learning.

iv)                Information – Discovery Culture

Employees across departments was open-minded, and having new insights about crisis and radical changes and open to new ideas to create competitive advantages.