Information Systems Management
In respect to the organization in question, many terminologies tend to affect the importance of employed information systems. Most importantly is the management of the information systems that enable the specified aspects of the system, derived from terminologies to be elaborated later in this paper, to be significant in the eyes of the organization. University of Maryland University College (UMUC) is an institution of higher education that majorly relies on current technologies to disseminate information to their students located far and wide across the globe. These technologies majorly include the information systems and its unique properties. This paper will elaborate on various aspects of information system management (ISM) with respect to the mission and goals of ISM at the said institution.
These intricate aspects that relate to ISM include business intelligence, data mining, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Intelligence Systems, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Each of these aspects of ISM management has a unique contribution to ensuring the successful use of the Information Systems. The integration of these unique aspects is significant to actualizing the mission and goals of an information system to a specific organization (Steward, 2015). As such, the following section critically defines and analyzes the various aspects mentioned above in relation to how they affect the process of actualizing the goals, mission, and the importance of ISM at UMUC.
Question 1. Which of these are used in your organization? Why?
Business Intelligence (BI)
Business Intelligence (BI) refers to the explicit definition of the software applications that are deemed critical for use in the process of analyzing a business’s raw data (Peppard & Ward, 2016). This terminology is important to consider as it has a significant impact on the conversion of raw data into useful information. BI is used in conjunction with other processes including data mining, analytical processing, and reporting (Galliers et al., 2014). In the view of the organization in question, business intelligence is used to enable the institution to process various raw data in an effort to identify, analyze and discover data related to their business for instance costs, products, incomes and sales revenues. BI plays a very important role that cumulatively impacts on the overall importance of ISM processes at UMUC. Many educational institutions especially those of higher learning may embrace BI tools to transform raw data into useful information that can be utilized to improve business processes and service provision.
Data Mining
Data Mining plays a very specific role in education organizations (Peppard & Ward, 2016). For instance, UMUC has a large catalog of raw data. This raw data has been collected from various business processes pertaining to the institution. However, to make this information useful in guiding the fruitful venture of the organization, data mining has to be used in conjunction with BI (Galliers et al., 2014). Data mining generally involves the examining of large databases of information pertaining a given organization in order to create new information. This new information ideally includes various trends that have been noticed in products, incomes, customer preference, sales revenues and so forth (Peppard & Ward, 2016). Essentially, data mining ensures that data provided through various diverse processes from different business perspectives is analyzed and turned into reliable and useful information (McFarlan, n.d.). In view of this, the importance of the ISM at UMUC is highly affected by their utilization of available data mining tools to create data that is useful and reliable in guiding future business processes of the organization.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a business management software whose essential purpose is to enable the determination of data from business activities and operations through the use of a set of integrated applications (Peppard & Ward, 2016). The purpose of the integrated applications is to create a unique relationship between various aspects of the business through the collection, storage, and interpretation of data from a given organization (Goetsch & Davis, 2016). In respect to UMUC, ERP has been used to integrate the functions of this single organization essentially.
Customer Relationship Management Tool (CRM)
CRM is defined as a software tool that utilizes the technologies and practices employed by organizations to uniquely analyze, identify, and process data pertaining to an organization and use this to manage customer interactions with the organization with the specific aim of promoting business relationships (Peppard & Ward, 2016). An organization like UMUC has a lot of customers who mainly include the student population. Because students are the most critical part of an educational institution, the CRM software tools are used to ideally identify or profile their customers, including their needs and requirements which majorly involves the process of managing relationships between the organization and their customers (Goetsch & Davis, 2016). Therefore, the CRM is used to create better fruitful and lasting business relationships between an organization and its customers through the process of identifying their needs and fulfilling them.
Question 2: Which is not used? Why not?
Intelligence Systems (IS)
In the ISM process of UMU, Intelligence systems are not widely used. This would be due to the fact that Intelligence Systems have no significant impact in the process of actualizing the mission, goals, and importance of ISM at UMUC. This actual definition of Intelligence Systems is a set of internet connected computers that integrate with different systems of an organization with the aim of gathering and analyzing data.
References
Galliers, R., Leidner, D. E., Leidner, D. E., & Galliers, R. (2014). Strategic information management: Challenges and strategies in managing information systems. London: Routledge, Taylor and Francis.
Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. (2016). Quality management for organizational excellence: Introduction to total quality. Boston: Pearson.
McFarlan, F. W. (n.d.) The new strategic weapon: Information technology. Cambridge: Harvard Business School Publishing.
Peppard, J., & Ward, J. (2016). The strategic management of information systems: Building a digital strategy. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons Ltd.
Stewart, J. J. (2015). Introduction to information systems management. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baLN8E-Xg_c.
