• In this group are all types of service workers, as well as traditional production employees in manufacturing organizations.
• Not managers
• Scope of their decisions is typically narrower and focused on the work at hand

• The amount of data from which information is extracted, in terms of the number of organizational units supplying data or the length of time the data cover.
• The data scope may be high if the data are about numerous people, departments, or events

• how long a period of time the data cover
• Short time span: hours or days
• Long time span: months, years, or decades

• Internal Data: collected within the organization, usually by transaction-processing systems, but also through employee and customer surveys.
• External Data: collectedfrom a wide variety of sources outside the organization, including mass communications media such as television, radio, and newspapers etc.

• Structured Data: numbers and facts that can be conveniently stored and retrieved in an orderly manner for operations and decision making. Used for daily operations and decisions that are relatively easy to make with the help of proven models.
• Unstructured Data: drawn from meeting discussions, private conversations, e-mail, and other "nonuniform" sources.

• top management set goals
• the basis for long term planning

• consists of monitoring and taking action.
• Monitoring: knowing what is happening

• Applications designed to let a user rotate virtual cubes of information.
• Information usually comes from data warehouse

• CRM Systems help collect data about customers and analyze the data into useful information to help serve customers better. 
• The CRM Systems purpose is to serve customers better, to learn about customers and potential customers, and to track customer information for planning marketing and sales activities.

• support strategy
• help seize opportunities
• use organizations strengths

1. Reduce costs
2. Raise barriers to market entrants
3. Establish high switching cost
4. Create new products or services
5. Differentiate products or services
6. Enhance products or services
7. Establish alliances
8. Lock in suppliers or buyers

Initiative #1:

Reduce Costs

• Automation may lower costs
• The Web may help lower costs
• Lower costs may enable lower prices
• Lower price may raise market share

Initiative #2:

Raise barriersto market entrants

• Legal protection (patents and copyrights)
• Expense or Expertise (capital investment)

Initiative #3:

Establish high switching costs

• Explicit Costs (fixed and nonrecurring)

• Implicit Costs (indirect)

- costs of adjusting to a new product (time and money)

Initiative #4

Create new products or services

• Sustainable Advantage
• First mover (brand name, better tech., and delivery methods)
• Critical mass (body of clients that attract other clients

Initiative #5:

Differentiate products or services

• Product Differentiation
• Brand Name
• Internet Success

Initiative #6:

Enhance products or services

• Product/service enhancement (internet services, longer warrantys etc)

Initiative #7:

Establish Alliances

• Combined package of products/services (lower costs, attract customers, and convenience)

Initiative #8:

Lock in suppliers or buyers

• Bargaining Power
• Purchase Volume
• Strengthen perception as a leader
• Create a standard

• Helps achieve long-term competitive advantage
• Embodies two types of ideas:

1. to make potentially winning business moves
2. to harness IT to implement and support the business moves.

- Top management involvement from initial consideration through development and implementation

-to be part of the overall organizational strategic plan

• information systems can help companies attain more effective and efficient business processes
• Effectiveness: degree to which a goal/task is accomplished
• Efficiency: relationship between resources expended and benefits gained in achieving a goal

• Automatically post transactions and generates reports for management and legal requirements

-transaction processing systems (TPSs)

-cost accounting systems

-managerial accounting systems

-ensure compliance with rules and regulations

-ensure cannot circumvent these principles

The job of financial managers is to manage money as efficiently as possible

-ensure sufficient funds are available for day-to-day operations

-collect receivables as soon as possible

-make payments by the latest time allowed by contract or law

-maximize yield on unused funds

• Reduce engineering lead time (or time-to-market)
• Computer Aided Design (CAD) systems
• Rapid Prototyping

ISs help in various manufacturing activities such as:

-plant activity scheduling

-material requirements assessment

-dynamic inventory management

-grouping work orders by items' characteristics

-resource qualification for task completion

Materials Requirement Planning (MRP)

-manage dependent demand inventory

-Bill of Materials (BOM)

Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II)

-expands MRP to include other manufacturing-related activities

• Market Research (surveys, test markets, and statistical models)
• Targeted Marketing: database management systems (DBMS) define potential customers
• Internet as a marketing and selling medium
• Sales force automation: equip salespeople with information technology to facilitate productivity

• Employee record management: reduce storage space for records, records retrieval time, and costs
• Promotion and recruitment: use the web to recruit
• Training (Multimedia software training)
• Evaluation
• Compensation and benefits management

• Traditional older systems- sometimes referred to as functional systems
• Tend to be stand alone applications; not integrated
• Information is often duplicated across different database systems
• Usually developed for a specific business activity

Enterprise Systems (ESs)

• secure executive sponsorships
• help from outside sources
• thorough user training
• Multi-disciplinary approach to implementation

Standard software that automates basic processes

-all business functions served by one system that supports different activities for different departments

• CRM software allows companies to better serve and know customer needs
• Emphasis on downstream activities of the supply chain (i.e. track purchases and payments, analyze customers)
• Web based customer service available 24/7

• emphasis on upstream activities of the supply chain (i.e. suppliers & venders, and manufacturing processes)
• Primary objectives of information flow are to accelerate product development and reduce product and delivery costs