Definitions:

Page 38: Chapter Review

Internet of Things: a world where interconnected internet enabled devices or “things” have the ability to
share data without human intervention.

Machine to Machine: refers to devices that connect directly to other devices. Just think of your smart
watch directly

Data: raw facts that describe characteristics of an event or object.

Big Data: a collection of large complex data sets which cannot be analyzed using traditional database
methods and tools.

Structured Data: has a defined length, type, and format that includes numbers, dates or strings such as
customer address, structured data is typically stored in a traditional system such as a relational database or
spreadsheet and accounts for about 20 percent of the data that surrounds us.

Unstructured Data: is not defined, does not follow a specified format , and typically free-form text such as
emails, twitter tweets and text messages. Unstructured data accounts for about 80 percent of the data that
surrounds us.

Machine-Generated unstructured data: such as satellite images, scientific atmosphere data and radar data

Human-generated unstructured data: such as text messages social media data and emails

Snapshot: a view of data at particular time

Information: data converted into a meaningful and useful context

Variable a data characteristic that stands for a value that changes or varies over time

Report: a document containing data organized in a table, matrix or graphical format allowing users to easily
comprehend and understand information. Reports can cover a wide range of subjects or specific subject for
a certain time period or event.

Static report: created once, based on data that does not change data static reports can include a sales
report from last year or a salary report from a decade ago.

Dynamic report: changes automatically during creation. Dynamic reports can include updating daily stock
market prices or calculating inventory.

Business Intelligence: is information collected from multiple sources such as suppliers customers,
competitors partners, and industries that analyze patterns, trends and relationships for strategic decision
making.

Data Analyst: collects, queries and consumes organizational data to uncover patterns and provide insights
for strategic decision making.

Analytics: the science of fact-based decision making.

Business Analytics: the scientific process of transforming data into insight for making better decisions.

Data scientist: extracts knowledge from data by performing statistical analysis, data mining, and advanced
analytics on big data to identify trends, market changes and other relevant information.
Descriptive analytics: describes past performance and history. These types of of findings allow an
organization to spot trends.

Diagnostic Analytics: examines data or content to answer the question “Why did it happen?” this helps an
organization determine the cause of a positive or negative outcome.

Predictive Analysis: extracts information from data to predict future trends and identify behavioral
patterns tis allows an organization to take proactive action – such as reaching out to a customer who is
unlikely to renew a contract.

Knowledge: includes the skills , experience and expertise, coupled with information and intelligence that
creates a persons intellectual resources

Knowledge worker: individuals valued for their ability to interpret and analyze information.

Knowledge assets: (intellectual Capital): the human structural and recorded resources available to the
organization. Knowledge assets reside within the minds of members, customers and colleagues and include
physical structures and recorded media.

Knowledge facilitators: help harness the wealth of knowledge in the organization. Knowledge facilitators
help acquire and catalog the knowledge assets in an organization.

Business unit: is a segment of a company ( accounting, marketing etc) representing a specific business
function.

Data Silo: occurs when one business unit is unable to freely communicate with other business units, making
it difficult or impossible for organizations to work cross-functionally. Data silos exist because management
does not believe there to be enough benefit from sharing data across business units and because data
might not be useful to personnel in other business units.

Data democratization: the ability for data to be collected, analyzed and accessible to all users.

System: a collection of parts that link to achieve a common purpose. A car is a good example of a system
because removing a part causes the entire system to stop working.

Goods: material items or products that customers will buy to satisfy a need. Clothing groceries, cell phones
and cars are all examples of goods that people buy to fulfill their needs.

Services: tasks people perform that customers will buy to satisfy a want or need.

Production: the process where a business takes raw materials and processes them or converts them into a
finished product for its goods and services.

Productivity: is the rate at which goods and services are produced based on total output given total inputs.

Systems thinking: a way of monitoring the entire system by viewing multiple inputs being processed or
transformed to produced outputs while continuously gathering feedback on each part.

Feedback: information that returns to it’s original transmitter (input, transform or output)

Management Information Systems: a business function like accounting and human resources which moves
information about people, products, and processes across the country to facilitate decision making and
problem solving.

Value-Added: the term used to describe the difference between the cost of inputs and the value of price of
outputs
MIS skills gap: is the difference between existing MIS workplace knowledge and the knowledge required to
fulfill the business goals and strategies .

Business Strategy: a leadership plan that achieves a specific set of goals or objectives such as increasing
sales, decreasing costs, entering new markets or developing new products or services.

Stakeholder: a person or group that has an interest or concern in an organization.

Competitive Advantage: a feature of a product or service on which customers place a greater value than
they do on a similar offering from competitors.

First-mover advantage: occurs when a company can significantly increase it’s market share by being first
with a new competitive advantage.

Competitive Intelligence: the process of gathering information about the competitive environment ,
including competitors’ plans, activities and products to improve a company’s ability to succeed. It means
understanding and learning as much as possible, as soon as possible, about what is occurring outside the
company to remain competitive.

SWOT Analysis: evaluates an organization’s Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats to identify
significant influences that work for or against business strategies.

Porter’s Five Forces Model: analyzes the competitive forces within the environment in which a company
operates to assess the potential for profitability in an industry. Its purpose is to combat these competitive
forces by identifying opportunities, competitive advantage, and competitive intelligence. If the forces are
strong, they increase competition; if the forces are weak, they decrease competition.

Buyer Power: the ability of buyers to affect the price they must pay for an item.

Switching costs: costs that make customers reluctant to switch to another product or service.

Loyalty Program: rewards customers based on their spending.

Supply chain: consists of all parties involved, directly or indirectly, in obtaining raw materials or a product.

Supplier Power: the suppliers ability to influence the prices they charge for supplies ( including materials,
labor and services)

Threat of substitute product or services: high when there are many alternatives to a product or service and
low when there are few.

Threat of new entrants: high when it is easy for new competitors to enter the market and low when there
are significant entry barriers to joining a market.

Entry Barrier: a feature of a product or service that customers have come to expect; entering competitors
must offer the same for survival.

Rivalry among existing competitors: high when competition is fierce in a market and low when
competitors are more complacent.

Product Differentiation: occurs when a company develops unique differences in its products or services
with the intent to influence demand.

Porter’s three generic strategies: generic business strategies that are neither organization nor industry
specific and can be applied to any business, product, or service.
Broad market and high cost: Neiman Marcus competes by offering a broad range of differentiated products
at high prices. It’s business strategy is to offer a variety of specialty and upscale products to affluent
customers.

Narrow Market and low cost: payless competes by offering a specific product at low prices, its strategy is
to be the low cost provider of shoes. Payless competes by offering a wider selection of shoes than Walmart.

Narrow Market and high cost: tiffany and co competes by offering a differentiated product, jewelry at high
prices. It’s business strategy allows it to be a high-cost provider of premier designer jewelry to affluent
customers.

Business process: a standardized set of activities that accomplish a specific task, such as processing a
customer’s order.

Value chain analysis views a firm as a series of business processes, each of which adds value to the product
or service.

Digital Value chain: digitizes work across primary and supporting activities.

Notes:

Business units

 Accounting – records, measures, and reports monetary transactions.

 Finance – deals with strategic financial issues, including money, banking, credit, investments, and
assets.
 human resources- maintains policies, plans and procedures for the effective management of
employees.
 Marketing- supports sales by planning pricing and promoting goods or services.
 Operations Management manages the process of converting or transforming resources into goods
or services.
 Sales: performs the function of selling goods or services.

Chief Information Officer:

1) Overseeing all uses of IT

2) Ensuring the strategic alignment of MIS with business goals and objectives

Responsibilities include

Manager- ensure the delivery of all MIS projects , on time and within budget

Leader- ensure the strategic vision of MIS is in line with the strategic vision of the organization

Communicator- advocate and communicate the MIS strategy by building and maintaining strong executive
relationships.

Chief Data Officer: is responsible for determining the types of information the enterprise will capture ,
retain analyze and share the difference between the CIO and CDO is that the CIO is responsible for the
Information Systems through which the data is stored and processed, while the CDO is responsible for the
data regardless of system.

Chief Technology Officer: is responsible for ensuring that throughput speed, accuracy availability and
reliability of an organizations information technology CTO’s are similar to CIO’s except CIO’s take on the
additional responsibility for the effectiveness of ensuring that MIS is aligned with the organization’s
strategic initiatives. CTO;s ensure the efficiency of the system

Factors used to appraise supplier power

 Charging higher prices

 Limiting quality or services
 Shifting costs to industry participants

Diagrams / Pictures