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SYS366

Lecture: Businesses and Business Processes

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What is Business?

archaic : purposeful activity : BUSYNESS usually commercial or mercantile activity engaged in as a means of

livelihood : TRADE BUSINESS may be an inclusive term but specifically designates the

activities of those engaged in the purchase or sale of commodities or in related financial transactions. COMMERCE and TRADE imply the exchange and transportation of commodities. INDUSTRY applies to the producing of commodities, especially by manufacturing or processing, usually on a large scale*

*Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

 

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Types of Businesses

– Retail– Financial– Insurance– Manufacturing– etc

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Business Areas

– The organizational areas needed to support a business.

– These can to equate to departments.

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Organizational Roles to Support the Business:

– An organizational structure made up of executives, middle management, supervisory management and operational staff.

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Operational Staff

– The individuals involved in the day to day processing of transactions I.e. Bank Tellers; Mutual Fund Sales People; Sales Associate

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Management

– Executives (Top Management) Those that make strategic and day to day decisions

– Middle Management Those that make tactical and day to day decisions

– Lower Management– Supervisory personnel who make day to day decisions

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Stakeholders

The personnel in the organizational roles for each business area are the individuals who provide the information needed to understand what is required for development of automated computer systems.

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Types of systems?

Office Systems– Productivity tools available to employees on a desk

top.– Electronic Mail, Word Processing, Database

Management, Spreadsheets, Desktop Publishing, Presentation Graphics and so on.

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Types of systems?

Operational (Transaction Processing) Systems– Take care of the day-to-day processing of the

business– Information about the transactions that affect the

organization are captured and recorded

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Types of systems?

Management Information Systems– Uses operational systems’ information to give

management the information needed to make management decisions

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Types of systems?

Executive Information Systems– Provide information to executives on how their

company is doing relative to the industry

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Types of systems?

Decision Support Systems– Systems that allow a user to explore the impact of

available options or decisions– ‘What if’ analysis

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Types of systems?

Expert Systems– Simulate human reasoning and decision-making. – Artificial Intelligence.

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Systems that Solve Business Problems

Information systems– Collection of interrelated components that

collect, process, store, and provide as output the information needed to complete business functions

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Information Systems

IS Planning

Level

Type of planning Typical IS applications Organizational Unit Responsible for

Developing

Strategic Strategies in support of organizational long-term objectives

Market and sales analysis, Product planning, Performance evaluation

Senior Management/ Executives

Tactical Policies in support of short-term goals and resource allocation

Budget analysis, Salary forecasting, Inventory scheduling, Customer service

Middle Management

Operational Day-to-day staff activities and production support

Payroll, Invoicing, Purchasing, Accounting

Lower Management; Operational

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Flow of Information

– Horizontally - information flows across departments

– Vertically - information needs of clerical staff, middle management, and senior executives

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Business Processes

– A Business Process could be an event that the business needs to respond to or it could be an event where the business needs to generate some kind of response back

– Can include manual as well as automated processes

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Business Process

“A commercial event is usually triggered by an event (for example receipt of an application form) and has at least one visible domain-specific result (e.g., a contract)”*

* Developing Software with UML by Bernard Oestereich, p. 68.

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Domain

“An area of knowledge or activity characterized by a set of concepts and terminology understood by practitioners in that area.”*

* Use Case Modeling by Kurt Bittner and Ian Spence, p. 332.

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Business Process

“The activities of a business process are usually chronologically and logically related to each other.”*

* Developing Software with UML by Bernard Oestereich, p. 68.