What types of systems are used for enterprise-wide knowledge management, and how do they provide value for businesses?

Firms must deal with at least three kinds of knowledge. Some knowledge exists within the firm in the form of structured text documents (reports and presentations). Decision makers also need knowledge that is semistructured, such as email, voice mail, chat room exchanges, videos, digital pictures, brochures, or bulletin board postings. In still other cases,

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Knowledge Workers and Knowledge Work

Knowledge workers, which we introduced in Chapter 1, include researchers, designers, architects, scientists, and engineers who primarily create knowl­edge and information for the organization. Knowledge workers usually have high levels of education and memberships in professional organizations and are often asked to exercise independent judgment as a routine aspect of their work. For example,

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Sargent & Lundy Learns to Manage Employee Knowledge

Sargent & Lundy is a 125-year-old firm providing comprehensive engineering, project management, and consulting services for complex power genera­tion and power transmission projects. During its 125-year history, the company has designed 958 power plants all over the world. The headquarters are in Chicago, with global offices in Canada and the United Arab Emirates. Sargent

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Requirements of Knowledge Work Systems

Most knowledge workers rely on systems such as word processors, email, vid­eoconferencing, collaboration, and scheduling systems, which are designed to increase worker productivity in the office. However, knowledge work­ers also require highly specialized knowledge work systems with powerful graphics, analytical tools, and communications and document management capabilities. These systems require sufficient computing power to

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Examples of Knowledge Work Systems

Major knowledge work applications include CAD systems and virtual reality systems for simulation and modeling. Computer-aided design (CAD) auto­mates the creation and revision of designs, using computers and sophisticated graphics software. Using a more traditional physical design methodology, each design modification requires a mold to be made and a prototype to be tested physically.

Can Cars Drive Themselves—And Should They?

Will cars really be able to drive themselves without human operators? Should they? And are they good business investments? Everyone is searching for answers. Autonomous vehicle technology has reached a point where no automaker can ignore it. Every major auto maker is racing to develop and perfect autono­mous vehicles, believing that the market for

Big Data and the Internet of Things Drive Precision Agriculture

By 2050, the world will be populated with an estimated 9 million people, and in order to feed all of them, agricultural output will need to double. Information technology, in the form of the Internet of Things (IoT), wire­less and mobile technologies, and automated data collection and analysis is likely to provide part of

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What are the different types of decisions, and how does the decision-making process work?

Decision making in businesses used to be limited to management. Today, lower- level employees are responsible for some of these decisions, as information sys­tems make information available to lower levels of the business. But what do we mean by better decision making? How does decision making take place in businesses and other organizations? Let’s

How do information systems support the activities of managers and management decision making?

The premise of this book and this chapter is that systems to support decision making produce better decision making by managers and employees, above­average returns on investment for the firm, and ultimately higher profitability. However, information systems cannot improve every decision taking place in an organization. Let’s examine the role of managers and decision

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How do business intelligence and business analytics support decision making?

Chapter 2 introduced you to the different types of systems used for supporting management decision making. At the foundation of all of these decision support systems are a business intelligence and business analytics infrastructure that supplies the data and the analytic tools for supporting decision making. 1. What Is Business Intelligence? Business intelligence (BI)

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Decision Support for Operational and Middle Management

Operational and middle management are generally charged with monitoring the performance of key aspects of the business, ranging from the downtime of machines on a factory floor to the daily or even hourly sales at franchise food stores to the daily traffic at a company’s website. Most of the decisions these managers make are

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Decision Support for Senior Management: Balanced Scorecard and Enterprise Performance Management Methods

The purpose of executive support systems (ESS), introduced in Chapter 2, is to help C-level executive managers focus on the really important performance information that affects the overall profitability and success of the firm. There are two parts to developing ESS. First, you will need a methodology for un­derstanding exactly what is “the really

Group Decision-Support Systems (GDSS)

The systems we have just described focus primarily on helping you make a de­cision acting alone. However, what if you are part of a team and need to make a decision as a group? Group decision-support systems (GDSS) are avail­able for this purpose. The collaboration environments described in Chapter 2 can be used to

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Information Systems Development and Organizational Change

Information technology can promote various degrees of organizational change, ranging from incremental to far-reaching. Figure 13.1 shows four kinds of struc­tural organizational change that are enabled by information technology: (1) au­tomation, (2) rationalization, (3) business process redesign, and (4) paradigm shifts. Each carries different risks and rewards. The most common form of IT-enabled organizational

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Business Process Redesign

Like Cameron International, described in the chapter-opening case, many busi­nesses today are trying to use information technology to improve their business processes. Some of these systems entail incremental process change, but others require more far-reaching redesign of business processes. To deal with these changes, organizations are turning to business process management. Business process management

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What are the core activities in the systems development process?

New information systems are an outgrowth of organizational problem solving. A new information system is built as a solution to some type of problem or set of problems the organization perceives it is facing. The problem may be one in which managers and employees realize that the organization is not performing as well as

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What are the principal methodologies for modeling and designing systems?

There are alternative methodologies for modeling and designing systems. Structured methodologies and object-oriented development are the most prominent. 1. Structured Methodologies Structured methodologies have been used to document, analyze, and design information systems since the 1970 s. Structured refers to the fact that the tech­niques are step by step, with each step building on

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What are alternative methods for building information systems?

Systems differ in terms of their size and technological complexity and in terms of the organizational problems they are meant to solve. A number of systems- building approaches have been developed to deal with these differences. This section describes these alternative methods: the traditional systems life cycle, prototyping, application software packages and cloud software

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What are new approaches for system building in the digital firm era?

Technologies and business conditions are changing so rapidly that companies are adopting shorter, more informal systems development processes, including those for mobile applications. In addition to using software packages and online software services, businesses are relying more heavily on fast-cycle techniques such as rapid application development, joint application design, agile develop­ment, and reusable standardized

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How will MIS help my career?

Here is how Chapter 13 and this book can help you find a job as an entry-level junior business systems analyst. 1. The Company Systems 100 Technology Consultants, a Chicago-based professional technology services firm, provides staffing and information technology consulting ser­vices to other U.S. companies and has an open position for an entry-level junior

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