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Chapter 1: Information Management

This chapter discusses information management. It covers types of information and how they are used for decision making. It also discusses different categories of information systems and challenges related to information systems. The chapter describes management activities needed to ensure information systems function properly. Finally, it discusses the relationship between business and information systems, and how to perform enterprise analysis and identify critical success factors.

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Fernan Lopez
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42 views

Chapter 1: Information Management

This chapter discusses information management. It covers types of information and how they are used for decision making. It also discusses different categories of information systems and challenges related to information systems. The chapter describes management activities needed to ensure information systems function properly. Finally, it discusses the relationship between business and information systems, and how to perform enterprise analysis and identify critical success factors.

Uploaded by

Fernan Lopez
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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CHAPTER 1: INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

Chapter Objectives
At the end of this chapter, you would have learnt : Information and decision making To understand the types of information and their use for decision making and control processes. Information systems To know the categories of information systems and the challenges facing information systems in business activities. Management activities To understand the activities in managing information systems. Business and information systems To understand the relationship between business and information systems, how to perform enterprise analysis and identifying critical success factors.

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CHAPTER 1: INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

1.1 Information and Decision


Information is data that have to be shaped into a form that is meaningful and useful to human beings. Information has certain characteristics that will make them suitable for specific purposes. The following is a summary of the characteristics and the suitability for decision making.

Decision Type Characteristics Time Frame Expectation Source Scope Frequency Organisation Operational control Historical Anticipated Largely Internal Detailed Real Time Highly Structured Managerial control S S S S S S Strategic Planning Predictive Unanticipated Largely External Summary Periodic Loosely Structured

The following section shows the types of decisions and controls used in management context. Strategic decision. Management control. Knowledge-level decision. Operational control. Unstructured decisions. Structured decisions. Semistructured decisions.

1.2 Information Systems


Information systems are interrelated components working together to collect, process, store and disseminate information to support decision making, co-ordination, control, analysis and visualisation in an organisation. Formal information systems can either be computer-based or manual. From a business perspective, an information system is an organisational and management solution, based on information technology, to a challenge posed by the environment.

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1.2.1 Categories of Information


In Systems Analysis (SA205), different types of information systems that were described include transaction processing systems (TPS), management information systems (MIS), executive information systems (EIS), decision support system (DSS) and expert systems. The details of these systems will not be repeated here.

However, we would like to look at information systems from another form of classification, by the management levels.

Operational level systems Knowledge level systems Management level systems Strategic level systems

1.2.2 Challenges of Information


Increasingly, information systems are bringing about changes in business goals, relationships with customers and suppliers, and internal operations. Building and maintaining a workable information system requires certain challenges to be met.

The Strategic Business Challenge. The Globalisation Challenge. The Information Architecture Challenge. The Information Systems Investment Challenge. The Responsibility and Control Challenge.

1.3 Management Activities


To ensure that the information systems perform their intended functions, the following management activities must be performed: Supervision and project management. Planning. Security Management. Personnel management Financial management

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1.4 Business and Information


1.4.1 Linking to the Business
Deciding what new systems to build should be an essential component of organisational planning process. Organisations need to develop an information systems plan that supports the overall business plans. Once specific projects have been selected from the strategic plan, an information systems plan can be developed. An information systems plan indicates the direction of systems development, the rationale, the current situation, the management strategy, the implementation plan and the budget.

1.4.2 Establishing Organisational Information Requirements


In order to develop an effective information systems plan, the organisation must have a clear understanding of both the long and short tem information requirements. Two principal methodologies for establishing the essential information requirements of the organisation as a whole are enterprise analysis and critical success factors.

Enterprise analysis

Enterprise analysis is an analysis of organisation wide information requirements by looking at the entire organisation. The central method of enterprise analysis is ask relevant questions about the information requirements of a large sample of managers. One strength of enterprise analysis is that it gives a comprehensive view of the organisation and systems/data use and gaps. Enterprise analysis is especially suitable for start-up or massive change situations. Another strength of enterprise analysis is that it helps to produce an organisational consensus by involving a large number of managers and users of data. The main problem with enterprise analysis is that it produces an amount of data that is expensive to collect and difficult to analyse.

Critical success factors (CSF).

Critical success factors are a small number of easily identifiable operational goals. The principal method used in CSF analysis is personal interviews with a number of top managers to identify their goals and resulting CSFs. The strength of the CSF method is that it produces a smaller data set to analyse than enterprise analysis.

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Another advantage is that the CSF method is that it takes into account the changing environment with which organisations and managers must deal. The weakness of this method is that the aggregation process and the analysis of data take skill and experience to be effective. This method is clearly biased towards top management because there are the ones interviewed.

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