FUNDAMENTALS OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS

An information system can be

technically defined as a set of related
components aimed at data processing
and management that collect (or
retrieve), process, store and distribute
information to support decision
making and control in an organization.

BASIC COMPONENTS

An information system must comply

with the following basic components
interacting with each other:

 hardware , physical equipment used to

process and store data.

 the software and procedures used to

transform and extract information.

 the data that represents the company's

activities.

 the network that allows resources to be shared between computers and devices.

 the people who develop, maintain and use the system.

Information systems are a combination of three main parts: people, business

processes and information technology teams.

An information system performs four basic activities : input, storage, processing

and output of information.
 Information Entry: It is
the process by which the
Information System
takes the data it requires
to process the
information. Entries can
be manual or automatic.
Manual ones are those
that are provided
directly by the user, while automatic ones are data or information that comes from
or is taken from other systems or modules. The latter is called automatic interfaces.

Typical data input units to computers are terminals, magnetic tapes, floppy disk
drives, barcodes, scanners, voice, touch-sensitive monitors, keyboard and mouse,
among others.

Tickets:

 General customer data: name,

address, type of customer, etc.
 Credit policies: credit limit,
payment term, etc.
 Invoices (automatic interface).
 Payments, purges, etc.

Information storage: Storage is

one of the most important
activities or capabilities that a
computer has, since through this
property the system can
remember the information saved
in the previous section or process. This information is usually stored in
information structures called files. The typical storage unit is magnetic disks or
hard drives, floppy disks or floppy disks, and compact disks (CD-ROM).

Storage:

 Movements of the month (payments, purges).

 Customer catalog.
 Bills.

Information Processing: It is the

capacity of the Information
System to carry out calculations
according to a pre-established
sequence of operations. These
calculations can be made with
data recently entered into the
system or with data that is
stored. This characteristic of the
systems allows the
transformation of source data
into information that can be used for decision making, which makes it possible,
among other things, for a decision maker to generate a financial projection from
the data contained in a statement. results or a balance sheet for a base year.

Process:

 Calculation liabilities aging.

 Calculation of default interest.
 Calculation of the balance of a customer.
Information Output: Output
is the ability of an
Information System to output
processed information or
input data to the outside.
Typical output units are
printers, terminals, floppy
disks, magnetic tapes, voice,
graphers and plotters, among
others. It is important to
clarify that the output of an
Information System can constitute the input to another Information System or
module. In this case, there is also an automatic exit interface. For example, the
Client Control System has an automatic output interface with the Accounting
System, since it generates the accounting policies for the procedural movements of
clients.

Departures:

 Payment report.
 Account statements.
 Accounting policies (automatic interface)
 Balance inquiries on a terminal screen.

FEEDBACK

It is the process of sharing concerns and suggestions with the other person with the
intention of improving
their functioning.
Feedback is the process by
which a system obtains
and processes information about the functions it executes to generate corrective,
preventive or optimization actions. Most people notice on a daily basis the great
presence (and also the great absence) of feedback processes, just as in industrial
processes (automated or not), in business, in communication, in education, in
medicine, etc.

Feedback is an effective tool to learn how others perceive my actions, my words,

my work and to let others know how I perceive theirs.

Examples of feedback
The simplest can occur in daily communication. For example, if a teacher gives
certain instructions to others, at the end of the class the teacher asks: “Did you
understand me?”, then, there may be some answers like: “yes” or “no”, “can you
repeat that?” ”. Etc. Then the teacher will take the necessary actions to: repeat the
instructions, not do it, do it but first ask you to pay more attention, etc.

BENEFITS:

Thanks to the use of information systems, the following benefits are obtained:

a. Immediate access to information whether it be people, data, software or

hardware.
b. Greater motivation to anticipate requests from directives.
c. Avoid wasting time in collecting information.
d. Impulses to create research groups.
e. More dynamics are generated, thanks to computer media; like email.

GOALS:

According to Guzmán (2002),

information systems are
specifically responsible for:
a. Provide, facilitate and automatically execute processes that are constantly
performed manually.
b. Provide information and data to help make decisions.
c. Interact with the user in a deeper way.

Senn (2005, p.23), considers that: “the purposes of information systems, like that of
any system within an organization, are to process inputs, maintain data files
related to the organization and produce information, reports and other
Departures"

From a commercial point of view, López (2006) considers that information systems
have the following purpose: “Increase the performance of investments, improve
their strategic position and increase the value of the stock market.”

LIFECYCLE

There are basic guidelines for developing an information system for an

organization:

 Identification of problems and opportunities: the second step is to reveal the

situations that the
organization has and from
which a competitive
advantage can be
obtained (For example: a
company with personnel
trained in computer
management reduces the
cost of training users), as
well as disadvantageous
situations or limitations
that must be overcome or
taken into account (For
 example: a company building that has very limited space and will not allow
more than two computers to be installed).
 Determine the needs: In this
process, the relevant
information for the
information system that will
be proposed is identified
through some information
collection method (the one
that best suits each case).

 Knowledge of the
organization: analyze
and know all the
systems that are part of
the organization, as well
as the future users of the
information system. In
companies (present
profit goal), the business
process and
transactional processes
that the IS will support
are analyzed.

 Diagnosis: in this step a report is prepared highlighting the positive and

negative aspects of the
organization. This report
will be part of the
 information system proposal and will also be taken into account when
designing.

 System design: once the project

is approved, the development
of the logical design of the
information system begins; It
includes: the design of the
information flow within the
system, the processes that will
be carried out within the
system, the data dictionary,
output reports, etc. In this step it is important to select the platform where the SI
will be supported and the programming language to use.
 Coding: with the
algorithm already
designed, it is rewritten in
a programming language
established
(programming) in the
previous stage, that is, in
codes that the machine
can interpret and execute.

 Implementation: this step

consists of all the activities
required for the installation
of computer equipment,
 networks and the installation of the application (program) generated in the
Coding stage.

 Maintenance: feedback process, through which the correction, improvement or

adaptation of the information
system already created to another
work environment or platform can
be requested. This step includes the
previously agreed upon technical
support.

INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN THE ORGANIZATIONAL PYRAMID OF A

COMPANY

Since there are different interests, specialties and levels in an organization, there
are different types of systems. A system not only provides all the information a
company needs.

Systems at the operational level:

They support operational managers

in monitoring elementary
organizational activities and
transactions such as sales, revenue,
cash deposit, payroll, credit
decisions, and material flow in a
factory.

They aim to answer routine

questions and follow the flow of
transactions through the organization. How many parts are in inventory? What
happened to Mr. Gutiérrez's payment?

Systems at the knowledge level:

They support an organization's knowledge and data workers. The purpose of these
systems is to help business companies integrate new knowledge into business and
help the organization control the flow of office work. These types of systems are
among the fastest growing applications in business today.

Systems at administrative level:

They serve the supervision, control, decision-making, and administrative activities

of middle-level managers. The main question these systems raise is: Are things
going well? Typically, these types of systems provide periodic reporting rather
than instantaneous trading information. They support non-routine decisions and
tend to focus on less structured decisions for which the information requirements
are not always clear.

Systems at a strategic level:

They help directors confront and

resolve strategic issues and long-
term trends, both in the company
and in the external environment.
Its main function is to combine
changes in the external
environment with the existing
organizational capacity.

FROM A BUSINESS POINT OF VIEW

The first classification is based
on the hierarchy of an
organization and was called the
pyramid model. Depending on
the function for which they are
intended or the type of end user,
information systems can be
classified into:

 Transaction processing
system ( TPS ): manages
information regarding
transactions produced in a
company or organization, it is also known as Operational Information
System.

 Management information systems ( MIS ): aimed at solving business

problems in general.

 Decision support systems ( DSS ): tool to carry out the analysis of the
different business variables in order to support the decision-making
process.

 Executive information systems ( EIS ): tool aimed at management-level

users, which allows monitoring the status of the variables of an area or
unit of the company based on internal and external information. It is at
this level when information systems manage strategic information for
companies.
 EVOLUTION OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS OVER TIME

These information systems did not emerge simultaneously in the market;

The first to appear
were the TPS, in the
1960s; however, over
time, other
information systems
began to evolve. The
first provide
information to the following as the organizational scale increases.

 Office automation systems ( OAS ): applications intended to help the

daily work of the administrator of a company or organization.
  Expert system ( SE ): they emulate the behavior of an expert in a
specific domain.

 Resource Planning System ( ERP) Enterprise Resource Planning :

whose objective is the planning of an organization's resources.
Typically this has been used in productive companies that have
followed MRPII planning methodologies. The objective is to have
clearly identified how to get to the final products from the raw
materials; That is, from an inventory of raw materials and inputs, we
can determine the amount of final products that we will generate to
make them available to the market. They integrate an organization's
information and processes into a single system.

The last
were the
SE,
which reached its peak in the 1990s (although the latter had a timid
appearance in the 1970s that did not catch on, since the technology was not
sufficiently developed.

IMPORTANCE:

Organizations need information to be

alive and prosper, thus growing to
distant places, thus modifying the way
business is managed.

For an organization to improve its

productivity and performance, it is
necessary to apply techniques and, above
all, technologies so that the systems can
operate with precision and effectiveness
(2008).