Mid Term Answers
1. chieve six strategic business objectives:
Operational excellence
New products, services, and business models
Customer and supplier intimacy
Improved decision making
Competitive advantage
Survival

1. Characteristics DSS :

1. Facilitation. DSS facilitate and support specific decision-making activities and/or decision processes.
2. Interaction. DSS are computer-based systems designed for interactive use by decision makers or staff users who control the sequence of interaction and the operations performed.
3. Ancillary. DSS can support decision makers at any level in an organization. They are NOT intended to replace decision makers.
4. Repeated Use. DSS are intended for repeated use. A specific DSS may be used routinely or used as needed for ad hoc decision support tasks.
5. Task-oriented. DSS provide specific capabilities that support one or more tasks related to decision-making, including: intelligence and data analysis; identification and design of alternatives; choice among alternatives; and decision implementation.
6. Identifiable. DSS may be independent systems that collect or replicate data from other information systems OR subsystems of a larger, more integrated information system.
7. Decision Impact. DSS are intended to improve the accuracy, timeliness, quality and overall effectiveness of a specific decision or a set of related decisions.

Characteristics of MIS :
Management information being a specialized information system conforms to certain characteristics. These characteristics are generic in nature. These characteristics remain more or less the same even when the technology around such management information system changes:

Management oriented

Management directed

Integrated

common data flows

1. Inbound logistics : automated warehousing system
   Operations : computer controlled machining systems
   Sales and marketing : computerized ordering system
   Service : equipment maintenance systems
   Outbound logistics : automated shipment schedulling system
2. Identify and clearly describe the facts.
   Define the conflict or dilemma and identify the higher-order values involved.
   Identify the stakeholders.
   Identify the options that you can reasonably take.
   Identify the potential consequences of your options.

5.A storage area network (SAN) is a network which provides access to consolidated, block level data storage. SANs are primarily used to enhance storage devices, such as disk array, tape liberaries, and optical jukeboxes, accessible to servers so that the devices appear to the operating system as localy attacheddevices. A SAN typically has its own network of storage devices that are generally not accessible through the local area network (LAN) by other devices. The cost and complexity of SANs dropped in the early 2000s to levels allowing wider adoption across both enterprise and small to medium-sized business environments.

1. A database management system (DBMS) is a software package designed to define, manipulate, retrieve and manage data in a database. A DBMS generally manipulates the data itself, the data format, field names, record structure and file structure. It also defines rules to validate and manipulate this data. A DBMS relieves users of framing programs for data maintenance. Fourth-generation query languages, such as SQL, are used along with the DBMS package to interact with a database.

2. convergence in networking and communication trends is the efficient coexistence of telephone networks and computer networks converging into single digital network using internet standards.

3. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems integrate and automate customer-facing processes in sales, marketing, and customer service, providing an enterprise-wide view of customers. Companies can use this customer knowledge when they interact with customers to provide them with better service or to sell new products and services. These systems also identify profitable or nonprofitable customers or opportunities to reduce the churn rate.

1.The attention of the computer user community is increasingly focusing on data bases and computerized information systems because of two converging trends. Computerized information systems are coming to play an essential role in business operations, and the hardware and software technology for supporting information systems is in a period of rapid technical progress. In spite of this attention, there is still little common agreement as to what information systems are, the functions they perform, and — from a technical point of view -how they should be designed, implemented, installed, and used. These conditions arise naturally from the newness of the field and the ad hoc nature of existing Computerized implementations. A compounding factor is the wide variety of perspectives of those who discuss information systems — for example, the executive, the management consultant, the systems analyst, the mathematician, and the systems programmer. In this paper, we emphasize aspects of information systems that are of importance to systems analysts, systems designers, and implementors.

1. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) is an act passed by U.S. Congres in 2002 to protect investors from the possibility of fraudulent accounting activities by corporations. The SOX Act mandated strict reforms to improve financial disclosures from corporations and prevent accounting fraud. The SOX Act was created in response to accounting malpractice in the early 2000s, when public scandals such as Enron Corporation, Tyco International plc, and WorldComshook investor confidence in financial statement and demanded an overhaul of regulatory standards.

2. A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a type of performance measurement. KPIs evaluate the success of an organization or of a particular activity in which it engages. Often success is simply the repeated, periodic achievement of some levels of operational goal (e.g. zero defects, 10/10 customer satisfaction, etc.), and sometimes success is defined in terms of making progress toward strategic goals. Accordingly, choosing the right KPIs relies upon a good understanding of what is important to the organization.’What is important’ often depends on the department measuring the performance – e.g. the KPIs useful to finance will differ from the KPIs assigned to sales. Since there is a need to understand well what is important, various techniques to assess the present state of the business, and its key activities, are associated with the selection of performance indicators. These assessments often lead to the identification of potential improvements, so performance indicators are routinely associated with ‘performance improvement’ initiatives. A very common way to choose KPIs is to apply a management framework such as the balance scored.

4.The business continuity planning (BCP) is the creation of a strategy through the recognition of threats and risks facing a company, with an eye to ensure that personnel and assets are protected and able to function in the event of a disaster. Business continuity planning (BCP) involves defining potential risks, determining how those risks will affect operations, implementing safeguards and procedures designed to mitigate those risks, testing those procedures to ensure that they work, and periodically reviewing the process to make sure that it is up to date.