MS-07 SOLVED ASSIGNMENT 2015

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Course Code : MS-07

Course Title : Information Systems for Managers
Assignment Code : MS-07/TMA/SEM-I/2015
Coverage : All Blocks
Note: Attempt all the questions and submit this assignment on or before 30th April, 2015 to
the coordinator of your study center.
1. Define the Internet, Intranet, and e-commerce. Write a note on e-commerce. What are the
advantages of e-commerce over conventional business?
2. Discuss why management needs information. Is it possible for the management of an
organization to make effective decisions without the aid of an information system? Discuss.
3. Indentify the role of transaction processing system in the development information system.
Suggest few modules, you would like to add to improve the Marketing Information System.
4. What are the three major areas of feasibility, which are addressed in system analysis?
Which of the design lays out the components of the system and their relationship to each
other, as they would appear to users?
5. Define Artificial Intelligence and mention some of its current applications. What are
artificial neural networks? Discuss their business applications.

Answer
1. Define the Internet, Intranet, and e-commerce. Write a note on e-commerce. What are the
advantages of e-commerce over conventional business?
Ans.: Over the past decade, no innovation has impacted the way individuals and businesses
communicate as dramatically as networking technologies. These technologies have enabled the low-
cost development of open, interactive environments that help to break down the traditional barriers to
strong business relationships. Many organizations are just discovering that the 'Internet and World-
Wide Web (Web) offer an unparalleled opportunity for gaining competitive advantage in the global
marketplace' (Cronin 1996).
The Internet is currently one of the most significant infrastructures in business. Its capacity for
gathering information and the dissemination thereof is 'unsurpassed by any other current system in the
world' (Van As 1998:4). For businesses, the Internet offers an excellent means to compete globally
with other businesses of differing sizes. Now businesses in South Africa have the ability to market
themselves in the global marketplace.
For many reasons, the Internet and Web is becoming a main arena for the business community
worldwide. The Internet is both an enabling tool for business and the new business environment that
is transforming the economy. According to Gascoyne and Ozcubukcu (1997:11), the Internet is the

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most global, borderless, cost-effective and open business application and communication
infrastructure. Interactions and relationships between businesses and their customers have changed
due to the Internet, as the Internet now allows customers many more choices.
The Internet has enabled businesses to change their strategic objectives. And 'for successful
companies, the Internet is not about technology; it’s about the customer. Successful companies'
Internet strategies are to deliver more value to the customer' (Gascoyne and Ozcubukcu 1997:11). The
Internet's connective network enables organizations to establish closer links with not only their
customers, but also with suppliers, partners, etc. by using intranets and extranets. It is only natural,
with the advent of Internet technology throughout the world that business should begin to use these
networking facilities for both internal communication and with those outside the organization.
Electronic commerce is the latest economic profiteer for businesses who have recognized this advent.
Cisco Systems is one company that has realized this and is in the process of establishing an intranet
and extranet for the facilitation of improved e-commerce within the company. The company aims to
be a more effective information distributor and allows employees a continuous and up-to-date means
of attaining information, thus enabling continuous relationships with customers and partners.
Electronic Commerce, commonly known as E-commerce or ecommerce, is trading in products or
services using computer networks, such as the Internet. Electronic commerce draws on technologies
such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing,
online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and
automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web
for at least one part of the transaction's life cycle, although it may also use other technologies such as
e-mail.
The greatest and the most important advantage of e-commerce, is that it enables a business concern or
individual to reach the global market. It caters to the demands of both the national and the
international market, as your business activities are no longer restricted by geographical boundaries.
With the help of electronic commerce, even small enterprises can access the global market for selling
and purchasing products and services. Even time restrictions are nonexistent while conducting
businesses, as e-commerce empowers one to execute business transactions 24 hours a day and even on
holidays and weekends. This in turn significantly increases sales and profit.
Electronic commerce gives the customers the opportunity to look for cheaper and quality products.
With the help of e-commerce, consumers can easily research on a specific product and sometimes
even find out the original manufacturer to purchase a product at a much cheaper price than that
charged by the wholesaler. Online commerce also offers buyers a wider range of products and
services to choose from, as opposed to conventional shopping, without the hassles of lugging around
heavy shopping bags and getting stuck in messy traffic jams, which turns out to be more convenient
and time-saving. Besides these, people also come across reviews posted by other customers, about the
products purchased from a particular e-commerce site, which can help make purchasing decisions.
For business concerns, e-commerce significantly cuts down the cost associated with marketing,
customer care, processing, and information storage and inventory management. It reduces the time
period involved with business process re-engineering, customization of products to meet the demand
of particular customers, increasing productivity and customer care service. Electronic commerce
reduces the burden of infrastructure to conduct businesses like physical store setups and thereby raises
the amount of funds available for profitable investment. It also enables efficient customer care service
by collecting and managing information related to customer behavior, which in turn helps develop and
adopt an efficient marketing and promotional strategy.

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2. Discuss why management needs information. Is it possible for the management of an
organization to make effective decisions without the aid of an information system? Discuss.
Ans.: It's a very odd question...but an important one in government. One of the worst feelings a
government manager, executive or supervisor can experience is that dreadful sinking feeling that
occurs when it is discovered that something bad you should have known about wasn't conveyed to
you in a timely and useful way. It could be a complaint from a member of the public that wasn't
reported to you, but ended up in the Minister's office. It could be that a pet project of the person you
work for is going badly, but nobody bothered to tell you, so you could give an accurate report or
"heads-up" to your boss. Or, it could be some sort of personal problem on the part of a staff member
that is affecting the work of your unit, unbeknownst to you.
You can't be everywhere and you can't know everything, but not getting the bad news you need when
you need it is a very major problem. You look foolish, ignorant, "out of it", regardless of who might
be at fault for the lack of communication. Not a great way to enhance a developing career particularly
if your boss is also embarrassed. In other practical terms, that which you know nothing about cannot
be addressed, and timeliness is important. Sometimes late is just as bad as never!
Why People Don't Tell
Before we talk about some specific steps you can apply to encourage people to give you the bad news
when you need it, it is good to understand some of the reasons why people hesitate in doing so. There
are different sets of reasons....individual psychological reasons; reasons pertaining to your own
everyday behavior; and organizational culture reasons.
People vary in the degree to which they are comfortable communicating bad news. Some people, for
example, have difficulty tolerating conflict and associate bad news with conflict situations. Others
will hesitate because of embarrassment--because they feel responsible (even when they may not be).
Others may feel that they can "fix" the problem before it has to go to you. The same processes that
apply to family "secrets" and bad news apply in the workplace. Unfortunately, there isn't much you
can do to counteract these individual differences directly.
The second source of hesitancy is your own behavior if you tend to display your emotions easily, you
may be intimidating staff when there is bad news to share...you may simply be making it easier for
them to keep quiet and hope it blows over, rather than addressing and fixing the problem. Obviously
you wouldn't deliberately set up such a scenario, but your personal style may be sufficiently emotional
to scare off at least some people.
If your focus is on blame rather than on problem-solving, you will also be less "in the loop".
Managers that are perceived as problem-solvers are less likely to intimidate staff into silence.
Even your general communication approach affects what you will hear and not hear. If you are
generally attentive and appear interested, then you will be more likely to get what you need. If you
convey the idea that you are busy, overwhelmed, uninterested, then staff are more likely to try not to
"bother you", with what, to them, might appear like little things. Sometimes those little things are
things you really need to know about in advance.
Organizational culture issues can also intimidate staff into silence, and they line up pretty much like
the factors we described regarding your own personal behavior If your larger organization has a
history of avoidance of conflict, secrecy, blaming, intimidation, and denial, then it is more likely that
staff will keep silent as much as possible.

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Managers are present at different layers in an organisation, despite this factor all managers require
information to carry out their responsibilities. The layers of management in an organisation include:
junior managers, middle managers, senior managers.

Junior managers deal with management at an operational level and manage day-to-day issues,
whereas senior managers deal with strategic matters and major decisions.

3. Indentify the role of transaction processing system in the development information system.
Suggest few modules, you would like to add to improve the Marketing Information System.
Ans.: Management information systems (MIS) is the study of people, technology, organizations, and
the relationships among them. MIS professionals help firms realize maximum benefit from investment
in personnel, equipment, and business processes. MIS is a people-oriented field with an emphasis on
service through technology. Management information systems are typically computer systems used
for data managing to make searching, analyzing data, and spring information easier. Management
information systems are distinct from other information systems in that they are used to analyze and
facilitate strategic and operational activities.
Academically, the term is commonly used to refer to the study of how individuals, groups, and
organizations evaluate, design, implement, manage, and utilize systems to generate information to
improve efficiency and effectiveness of decision making, including systems termed decision support
systems, expert systems, and executive information systems. Many business schools (or colleges of
business administration within universities) have an MIS department, alongside departments of
accounting, finance, management, marketing, and may award degrees (at undergrad, masters, and
PhD levels) in MIS.
Information is a critical resource in the operation and management of organizations. Timely
availability of relevant information is vital for effective performance of managerial functions such as
planning, organizing, leading, and control. An information system in an organization is like the
nervous system in the human body: it is the link that connects all the organization's components
together and provides for better operation and survival in a competitive environment. Indeed, today's
organizations run on information. The term information system usually refers to a computer-based
system, one that is designed to support the operations, management, and decision functions of an
organization. Information systems in organizations thus provide information support for decision
makers. Information systems encompass transaction processing systems, management information
systems, decision support systems, and strategic information systems.
Information consists of data that have been processed and are meaningful to a user. A system is a set
of components that operate together to achieve a common purpose. Thus a management information
system collects, transmits, processes, and stores data on an organization's resources, programmes, and
accomplishments. The system makes possible the conversion of these data into management
information for use by decision makers within the organization. A management information system,
therefore, produces information that supports the management functions of an organization (Davis &
Olson, 1985; Lucas, 1990; McLeod, 1995).
Apart from variety of information system in business world, MIS and DSS were the main concern of
present article. It was found that MIS is best suited to identify problems and help management to
understand them to make suitable decisions. At the same time, MIS is not aimed to help particular and
specific need of the individual and group decision making. On the other hand DSS are tailored to the

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specific need of individual and group managers. Therefore, it could be concluded, that DSS can
extend its support to the same steps of decision making process and has more roles in decision-
making and problem solving than MIS. Due to some practical limitations, may be some of steps of
decision making process to be chosen and the others to be removed. It is important to consider which
ones are preferred to the other ones. In future works can study on the role of other information
systems for managers' decision making and comparative it to DSS and MIS.
In a sense, you do have such a crystal ball. It’s called marketing research. Marketing research is the
process of collecting, analyzing, and reporting marketing information that can be used to answer
questions or solve problems so as to improve a company’s bottom line. Marketing research includes a
wide range of activities. (By contrast, market research is a narrower activity. It is the process of
researching a specific market to determine its size and trends.) Although marketing research isn’t
foolproof, it can take some of the guesswork out of decision making. Back to your great product idea:
what, for example, should you name your product? Naming a product might sound like a minor
decision, but it’s not. In some cases it can be a deal breaker. Just ask the bug-spray maker out!
International, Inc. In the 1990s, Out! International came up with what it thought was a really cute
name for bug spray that would appeal to children. The product was called “Hey! There’s a Monster in
My Room!” The problem was that the name itself scared kids. They wanted nothing to do with it.

4. What are the three major areas of feasibility, which are addressed in system analysis? Which
of the design lays out the components of the system and their relationship to each other, as they
would appear to users?
Ans.: Feasibility studies aim to objectively and rationally uncover the strengths and weaknesses of an
existing business or proposed venture, opportunities and threats present in the environment, the
resources required to carry through, and ultimately the prospects for success. In its simplest terms, the
two criteria to judge feasibility are cost required and value to be attained. A well-designed feasibility
study should provide a historical background of the business or project, a description of the product or
service, accounting statements, details of the operations and management, marketing research and
policies, financial data, legal requirements and tax obligations. Generally, feasibility studies precede
technical development and project implementation.
A feasibility study evaluates the project's potential for success; therefore, perceived objectivity is an
important factor in the credibility of the study for potential investors and lending institutions. It must
therefore be conducted with an objective, unbiased approach to provide information upon which
decisions can be based.
Feasibility analysis should be conducted during the analysis phase before the decision is made by the
top management. Feasibility is a measure of how beneficial or practical an information system will be
to the organization. There are three feasibility checkpoints during the system analysis phase of the
system development life cycle. At the end of this checkpoints, the decision will be made either the
system development works will be continued or cancelled. In every checkpoint, there are six tests that
can be used for feasibility analysis; operational feasibility, cultural feasibility, technical feasibility,
schedule feasibility and economic feasibility.
The first feasibility checkpoint where a measurement is more on answering questions such as; do the
problems and opportunity warrant the cost of a detailed study of current system? At this checkpoint,
the problems and opportunities are measured in terms of accuracy. This feasibility is not focus from
the aspects of development costs, time and other. After estimating the real problems and
opportunities, then, the system analyst will estimates the development cost.

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The second feasibility checkpoint where occurs after the detailed measurement on problem analysis of
the current system. After the problems and opportunities are defined, it’s easy for the system analyst
to come out with good development cost estimation. At this stage, the minimum development cost is
equal with solving the problems. But the real development cost is done did the requirement analysis.
The third feasibility checkpoint where major feasibility analysis will be conducted after completing
the user requirements. At this point, several alternative solutions are available and define its
input/output methods, data storage, software and hardware requirements and other. This checkpoint is
where all the detailed estimation of development cost is available.
This is what most programmers mean when using the term software documentation. When creating
software, code alone is insufficient. There must be text along with it to describe various aspects of its
intended operation. It is important for the code documents to be thorough, but not so verbose that it
becomes difficult to maintain them. Several How-to and overview documentation are found specific
to the software application or software product being documented by API Writers. This
documentation may be used by developers, testers and also the end customers or clients using this
software application. Today, we see lot of high end applications in the field of power, energy,
transportation, networks, aerospace, safety, security, industry automation and a variety of other
domains. Technical documentation has become important within such organizations as the basic and
advanced level of information may change over a period of time with architecture changes. Hence,
technical documentation has gained lot of importance in recent times, especially in the software field.
Often, tools such as Doxygen, NDoc, javadoc, EiffelStudio, Sandcastle, ROBODoc, POD, TwinText,
or Universal Report can be used to auto-generate the code documents—that is, they extract the
comments and software contracts, where available, from the source code and create reference manuals
in such forms as text or HTML files. Code documents are often organized into a reference guide style,
allowing a programmer to quickly look up an arbitrary function or class.
The idea of auto-generating documentation is attractive to programmers for various reasons. For
example, because it is extracted from the source code itself (for example, through comments), the
programmer can write it while referring to the code, and use the same tools used to create the source
code to make the documentation. This makes it much easier to keep the documentation up-to-date.
Of course, a downside is that only programmers can edit this kind of documentation, and it depends
on them to refresh the output (for example, by running a cron job to update the documents nightly).
Some would characterize this as a pro rather than a con.
Donald Knuth has insisted on the fact that documentation can be a very difficult afterthought process
and has advocated literate programming, writing at the same time and location as the source code and
extracted by automatic means.
Elucidative Programming is the result of practical applications of Literate Programming in real
programming contexts. The Elucidative paradigm proposes that source code and documentation be
stored separately. This paradigm was inspired by the same experimental findings that produced Kelp.
Often, software developers need to be able to create and access information that is not going to be part
of the source file itself. Such annotations are usually part of several software development activities,
such as code walks and porting, where third party source code is analysed in a functional way.
Annotations can therefore help the developer during any stage of software development where a
formal documentation system would hinder progress. Kelp stores annotations in separate files, linking
the information to the source code dynamically.

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5. Define Artificial Intelligence and mention some of its current applications. What are artificial
neural networks? Discuss their business applications.
Ans.: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is difficult to define. John McCarthy, one of the founders of the field,
defines AI as the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent
computer programs (McCarthy). It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand
human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically-based. This
definition is appropriate in that it contains three main features of Artificial Intelligence. The first is its
concern with mechanical intelligence, or the emulation of intelligence with a computer. The second is
that Artificial Intelligence contains aspects that are engineering in nature, that is, it is the creation of
mechanical artifacts. The last feature is that Artificial Intelligence tends to look at intelligence in a
general fashion – which means that it does not always restrict itself to human intelligence.
Artificial Intelligence is slowly but surely growing in its importance in education. As machines grow
"smarter," our educational system needs to be in a process of continually rethinking what students
should be learning.
One way to think about AI is by comparing and contrasting the capabilities and limitations of a human
brain with that of an artificially intelligent computer. Both a human brain and a computer "brain" can
input, store, process, and output information. Both can contain declarative and procedural knowledge.
Right now, a human brain is far far better at thinking, understanding, and knowing what it is like to be
human than is a computer brain. However, a computer brain can carry out a variety of procedures
(that humans consider important) far faster and more accurately than a human brain.
Thus, we need an educational system that prepares humans to work in an environment in which both
human brains and computer brains are valued and useful. This general idea underlies the field of
Computational Thinking. Artificial intelligence has been used in a wide range of fields including
medical diagnosis, stock trading, robot control, law, remote sensing, scientific discovery and toys.
However, many AI applications are not perceived as AI: "A lot of cutting edge AI has filtered into
general applications, often without being called AI because once something becomes useful enough
and common enough it's not labeled AI anymore," Nick Bostrom reports. "Many thousands of AI
applications are deeply embedded in the infrastructure of every industry." In the late 90s and early
21st century, AI technology became widely used as elements of larger systems, but the field is rarely
credited for these successes.
In machine learning, artificial neural networks (ANNs) are a family of statistical learning algorithms
inspired by biological neural networks (the central nervous systems of animals, in particular the brain)
and are used to estimate or approximate functions that can depend on a large number of inputs and are
generally unknown. Artificial neural networks are generally presented as systems of interconnected
"neurons" which can compute values from inputs, and are capable of machine learning as well as
pattern recognition thanks to their adaptive nature. For example, a neural network for handwriting
recognition is defined by a set of input neurons which may be activated by the pixels of an input
image. After being weighted and transformed by a function (determined by the network's designer),
the activations of these neurons are then passed on to other neurons. This process is repeated until
finally, an output neuron is activated. This determines which character was read.

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