Week 3 Chapter 2: Strategic Decision Making

Define TPS & DSS, and explain how an organisation can use these systems to make decisions and gain competitive advantages

TPS (Transaction Processing System) is a basic business system which serves and organisation at the operational level. e.g. an accounting system such as a payroll system.

DSS (Decision Support System) is an information systems which supports and assists managers and business professionals during the decision-making process.

These systems work together to allow employers to make efficient decisions in a business. This happens by the Transaction processing systems giving data to the decision support system to which the data is narrowed down into a simpler form hence helps employees to work efficiently and effectively.

Figure 1: This diagram shows how the TPS (Transaction Processing System) and the DSS (Decision Support System) works together.

Describe the three quantitative models typically used by decision support systems.

Sensitivity Analysis: is the study of the effect on a particular variable when one or more other variables are changed.

What-If Analysis: uses the process of changing values in cells to view how those changes are going to affect the outcome of formulas on one or more worksheets.

Formula: =IF(logical test, [true value], [false value])

E,g, =IF(C17>200,000, "Fantasic", "reasonable") This means that if cell (C17) is greater than 200,000 then it will read as "fantastic" and if it is less than 200,000 then it will read as "reasonable".

Goal Seeking Analysis: allows a value in a formula to be adjusted to produce a desired result or answer. 

Describe business processes and their importance to an organisation.

A business process enables specific tasks to be completed by the participation in a list of set activities. A business process allows a corporation to achieve a set number of goals as well as helping a business to eliminate replicated  and combined tasks and also to identify processes which are running smoothly.

Compare business process improvement and business process re-engineering.

Figure 2: This is a comparison table which I composed comparing Business Process Improvement and Business Process Re-engineering

Describe the importance of business process modelling (or mapping) and business process models.

Business processes refer to the way in which work is coordinated, organised and focused in order to produce product and/or services that are valuable and reliable.

Business process modelling is the action of producing a work process map or a detailed flowchart. These allow for business process models to be read and interpreted easily, as well as keeping them accurate and factual.

Business process models are a graphic description of a process which shows specific tasks to be performed in correct chronological order. The importance of these are that they provide an easy-to-read model which can be effectively followed due to them being in sequential order. They also can be analysed so that the company can check to see if they are achieving their objectives and goals.

Figure 3: This is an example of a business Process Model

Reference's:

Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey, Business Driven Information Systems, 1st Australian/New Zealand Edition, Mc Graw Hill, 2010.

Snell, James, 2001, The Web services insider, Part 5: Getting into the flow, IBM, http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-ref5/?dwzone=webservices, Visited: 8/4/2011