|
|
|
Information Systems and Technology
Today, most organizations in all sectors of industry, commerce and government are fundamentally dependent on their information systems. In industries such as telecommunications, media, entertainment and financial services, where the product is already or is being increasingly digitized, the existence of an organization critically depends on the effective application of information technology (IT).
Information System
An information system is comprised of all the components that collect, manipulate, and propagate data or information. It usually includes hardware, software, people, communications systems, and the data itself. The activities involved include inputting data, processing of data into information, storage of data and information, and the production of outputs such as management reports.
Support Role:
Information systems support business processes and operations by:
Information systems often support and occasionally constitute competitive advantages. Information systems, like business environmental scanning systems, support almost all sustainable competitive advantages. Occasionally, the information system itself is the competitive advantage. One example is Wal-Mart. They used an extranet to integrate their whole supply chain.
Related posts
Managing Information Technology Projects And Communication In Organizations
Brodbeck (2001) stated in his article titled Communication and performance in software development projects that “in summary, there is insufficient empirical evidence to support either view of internal communication as detrimental, facilitative or neutral to software development (SD) project performance. In fact the evidence is contradictory.”
The above statement and finding is very surprising. Communication has been known to improve team work and clarify issues where existing information is insufficient or where there is a challenging task. Also it has been variously recommended that communication is relevant in IT due to the fast changing environment and high turnover of software and technologies.
Related posts
Information Technology Auditing
Information technology (IT) auditing collects and evaluates data pertaining to an IT infrastructure. An IT audit may augment a financial audit, but it is specifically designed to test the IT infrastructure’s accuracy, efficiency, and security. Though around since the 1960s, IT audits have become especially important in the 21st century, when so much of a business’s activity is conducted or assisted electronically.
The first IT audits were necessitated by the use of electronics in accounting systems. Early computers did little more than that-compute-and the combination of their expense with their extraordinarily narrow focus of applications meant that they were adopted slowly. Though General Electric used a computerized accounting system in 1954, computer use was a highly specialized skill, and early input methods (such as punch cards or paper tape) were tedious to error-check.
The Disintermediation of New Technologies
In economics, disintermediation is the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain. Disintermediation is often the result of high market transparency, in that buyers are aware of supply prices direct from the manufacturer. As a result, buyers bypass the middlemen (wholesalers and retailers) in order to buy directly from the manufacturer and thereby pay less. Buyers can alternatively elect to purchase from wholesalers, but most often, a buyer-to-consumer intermediary functions as the bridge between buyer and manufacturer. A few years ago, scholars wrote that the Internet would “disintermediate” industries or eliminate middlemen. Instead, the lower cost of selling over the Net and its immense appeal have produced even more middlemen, which helps explain the success of the search giant Google and the online marketplace eBay.