Summary Chapter 2: Global E-business and Collaboration

Business processes are a set of activities that are needed to produce goods or services,
or it refers to how work is organized, coordinated, and focused on producing valuable
things or services, it also measures the performance of a business firm. Activities that
are engaged in business processes are supported by the flow of material, information,
and knowledge. Business processes include many functional areas and require
coordination across departments; the information needed must flow rapidly to fulfill
the customers’ order. Using Information technology while doing business can change
the flow of information, making it possible for more people to access and share
information, and also eliminating delays while making a decision.

Some business organization has systems to support each of the significant business
function such as marketing, manufacturing. Production, etc., and it also has different
systems supporting the decision-making for the primary management groups. These
systems are categorized as Transaction Processing Systems and Business intelligence.
Transaction Processing System is a computerized system that records daily
transactions that are necessary to conduct business. The objective of this system is to
answer a common routine question and to track the flow of transactions within the
organization. Transactions processing systems are often so central to a business, so
TPS failure for a few hours can lead to a firm’s demise. The second one is business
intelligence systems that focus on delivering information to support management
decision-making. Some examples of Business Intelligence systems are Management
Information System (MIS), Decision-support system (DSS), Executive support
system (ESS). All of the different systems used by a company are linked through
enterprise application or firms called it as enterprise systems.

With all those systems and information, businesses need a special system to support
collaboration and teamwork. Collaboration is the term that describes working with
other people or other business to achieve shared and explicit goals. While teams mean
some groups that assigned to get a specific mission. Collaboration and teamwork can
change the nature of the work, and organization od the firm, help to develop the
growth of professional work, changing the scope of the firm, and the culture of work
and business. Many firms enhance collaboration by embracing social business such as
using social networks, crowdsourcing, shared workspaces, blog and wikis, file
sharing, and so on. Generally, using collaboration and social business bring benefits
such as boosting productivity, increasing quality and innovation, making better
customer service and financial performance.

In business, the information system department operates information systems. It is the

formal organizational unit responsible for IT services. They are responsible for
maintaining hardware, software, data storage, networks that comprise the firm’s IT
infrastructure. They consist of specialists such as programmers, system analyst,
information systems managers, and headed by a Chief Information Officer (CIO),
guarded by Chief Privacy Officer (CPO), accompanied by Chief Knowledge Officer
(CKO), and Chief Data Officer (CDO).
Nadya Alexandra Kuswanto
18/425438/EK/21824
System and Information Technology
Chapter 3: Information system, Organizations, and Strategy

The organization is a formal social structure that takes resources from the
environment and processes them to make outputs. Organization has several features
that affect the kinds of IT used in it such as routines and business process,
organizational politics, organizational culture, organizational environments,
organizational structure, and so on. For being a good manager while deciding which
system should be implemented in the organization, it better of us to know about the
situation and the condition of the company in a detailed way.

Information systems that are used in the organization bring impacts in specific ways,
such as economic impacts. It changes both the relative costs of capital and costs of
information by reducing both agency and transaction costs for firms. The other impact
is that It flattens the hierarchies of the organization by broadening the distribution of
information to empower lower-level employees and increase management efficiency.

Porter’s competitive forces model is the most widely model for understanding the
competitive advantage. In this model, there are 5 forces that shape the fate of the firm.
There are traditional competitors, new market entrants, substitute products and
services, customers, and suppliers. To deal with those competitive forces, there are 4
generic strategies, which are enabled using IT and systems: lost-cost leadership,
product differentiation, focuses on market niche, and strengthen customer and
supplier intimacy.

Value chain model is a model that highlights specific activities in the business where
competitive strategies can be applied and where IT systems are most likely to have a
strategic impact. The model shows primary (directly related to production and
distribution) as well as support activities. It enables business to work more effective
and efficient. IT system ties together the operations of business unit, and help
business leverage their core competencies.

To align IT with the business and use information system effectively for competitive
advantage, managers need to perform a strategic system analysis to identify the types
of systems that provide a strategic advantage to their firms. Strategic information
systems often change driving the organization into new behavioral patterns. It is hard
to successfully using IT to achieve competitive advantage and need precise
coordination of technology, organization, and management. Adopting the kinds of
strategic systems requires changes in business goals, relationships with customers,
and suppliers, and business process. This also affects both social and technical
elements.