Helwan University
Business Information System Program
Chapter1: Introducing Information
Systems in organization
Part 1
Contents
1.1Defining the Term Organization
1.2Characteristics of Organization
1.2.1 Business Process
1.2.2 Organizational Environments
1.2.3 Organizational Structure
1.3 IS Role in Business
1.4 IS Strategy
1.5 IS Strategy Levels
1.6 The Support of Information Systems in Business
1.7 Using Information n Systems to Achieve Competitive Advantage
1.8 Information system categories
1.9 Transaction Processing Systems (TPS)
1.10 Management Information Systems (MIS)
1.11 Decision Support Systems (DSS)
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1.1 Defining the term organization
• All organizations have a management
structure that determines relationships
between the different activities and the
members, and subdivides and assigns roles,
responsibilities, and authority to carry out
different tasks.
• Organizations are open systems--they affect
and affected by their environment.
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1.1 Defining the term organization
An organization is a systematic arrangement of people
and technology intended to accomplish some purpose.
1. Organizations are collectivities oriented to the
pursuit of relatively specific goals and exhibiting
relatively high formalized social structures.
2. Organizations are collectivities whose participants
share a common interest .
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1.1 Defining the term organization
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1.2 Characteristics of organizations
• Organizations arrange specialists in hierarchy of authority.
• Trying to hiring employees based on technical qualifications
and professionalism.
• The organizations is devoted to the principle of efficiency by
maximizing the outputs by using limited inputs.
• Organizations include their business processes and
surrounding environments.
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1.2.1 Business Process
• A business process is an activity or set of
activities that will accomplish a specific
organizational goal.
• Business process management (BPM) is a
systematic approach to improving those
processes.
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These factors can be categorized into
three types of business processes:
1. Management processes: the processes that govern the
operation of a system.
• Typical management processes include "corporate governance"
and "strategic management".
2. Operational processes: processes that constitute the core
business and create the primary value stream.
• For example, taking orders from customers, and opening an
account in a bank branch.
3. Supporting processes: which support the core processes.
• Examples include accounting, recruitment (enrolment), call
center, technical support.
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1.2.2 Organization Environment
The organization needs to properly understand
the environment for effective management.
Scholars have divided these environmental
factors into two main parts as (figure 1.2):
A) Internal Environment
B) External Environment
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A. Internal Environment
• The internal environment consists of the
organization's owners, board of directors,
regulators, physical work environment and culture.
• In the internal environment include strength and
weakness of an organization.
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B. External Environment
• In the external environment, include opportunities
and threats of an organization.
• In the external environment, include legal, physical
economic, technology, social, political, culture.
• The external environment consists of two layers
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The external environment consists of
two layers:
1) Task Environment:
• Task environment is composed of the specific
dimensions of the organization's surrounding that are
very likely to influence (effect) of the organization.
• It also consists of five dimensions: Competitors,
Customers, Employees, Strategic, Planners and suppliers.
2) General Environment:
• General environment is composed of the nonspecific
elements of the organization's surrounding might affect
its activities.
• It consists of five dimensions: Economic, Technological,
Sociocultural, Political-Legal and International.
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1.2.3 Organizational Structure
Organizational structure is a system that consists
of explicit and implicit institutional rules and
policies designed to outline how various work roles
and responsibilities are delegated, controlled, and
coordinated
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A structure depends on the organization's
objectives and strategy.
• In a Centralized structure, the top layer of
management has most of the decision-making
power and has tight control over departments
and divisions.
• In a Decentralized structure, the decision-making
power is distributed, and the departments and
divisions may have different degrees of
independence.
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Figure 1.4 an example of centralized Vs decentralized system
for game products
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1.3 IS Role in Business
• A “strategy” is a plan for achieving medium and long-term goals.
• A strategic plan provides the organization with a focus and
clear mission, which can be communicated, to employees,
suppliers, and customers.
• IS strategic planning is concerned with helping the organization
achieve its strategy.
• the information systems are not just supporting other functions
in the business but are the main reason for a company improving its
position in relation to its competitors.
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Customer Relationships
Management (CRM)
• one of the best-known current business strategies is
Customer Relationships Management (CRM).
• It is a business strategy to manage customer
relationships on a long-term basis to add value.
• CRM becomes a strategic focus for the organization when
it embraces (holds) management, strategy, and
organizational culture.
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CRM is more a strategy than a process
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1.4 IS Strategy
The need for an IS strategy
is determined by
the business needs of the organization,
not by the functions
of available technology
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Several reasons are determined for the need
of an IS strategy and IS strategic planning for a
business:
1. The individual departments within an organization may function
well in terms of their own objectives but not serve the objectives
of the organization.
2-Because of a lack of coordination between departments.
3. Information systems need large resource allocations. These
allocations can only be made against an agreed direction for the
organization – a strategy for the future.
4. The organization will have responsibilities to several different
groups(owners, employees, customers, and so on).
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1.5 IS Strategy Levels
Organizations typically develop strategies at
three different levels:
1. corporate,
2. business,
3. and functional
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1-Corporate-level strategy
• The corporate-level strategy is developed by
the senior people in the business.
• It can cover new business directions, the
closing of some business operations and the
allocation of resources between branches of the
company's operations.
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2-Business-level strategy
• Business-level strategy applies to
organizations that have (semi)autonomous
businesses operating independently.
• the business strategy should support the
broad aims of the corporate strategy.
• In smaller organizations, the business unit
level is not applicable
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3-Functional-level strategy
Functional-level strategy is concerned with
plans at the functional business level such
as:
• marketing,
• information systems,
• finance, etc.
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End of Lecture
Thank you
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