Answers:
1 C
2 B
3 A
4 A
5 A
6 B
7 A
8 B
9 B
10 B
11 C
12 C
13 C
14 B
15 A
16 B
17 B
18 A
19 A
20 B
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Solution to Business Communication
Question No.1 Write a detailed note on internal and external forms of communication in an organization.Ans: Communication :The word communication the act of or process of giving or exchanging of information, signals, or message as by talk, gesture or writing, technically speaking, in the act communication we make information, opinions, feelings and many more known are understood by others through speech, writing or body movement.Forms of communication:Following are the forms of internal and external communicationA) Internal communicationb) External communication A) Internal communicationThe communication that flows within an organization is called Internal CommunicationI) Downward communicationDownward communication flows from superiors to subordinates like a manager to employees and is used to inform, direct, coordinate, and evaluate employees. Trough these approach employees are not able to communicate their problems.II) Upward communicationUpward communication flows from employees to managers. Upward communication can be used in order to keep managers aware of how employees feel about their jobs, their coworkers, and the organization in general. The organizational culture influences the extent ofUpward communication. A climate of trust, respect, and participative decision-making will encourage considerable upward communication. A highly mechanistic and authoritarian environment will severely limit upward communication in both style and content. Trough these approach employees are motivated and the Organization achieve its goals.Horizontal communicationHorizontal communication is lateral or diagonal message exchange either within work-unit boundaries, involving peers who report to the same supervisor, or across work-unit boundaries, involving individuals who report to different supervisors. It is Take the form of meetings, reports, memos, telephone conversations, and face-to-face discussions. Horizontal communication usually relates to:Task coordination Problem solving Information sharing Conflict resolution Peer support Informal Internal communication Informal Internal communication network has every organization that is supplementary channel. It is an important source of informationDiagonal communication Diagonal communication is communication that cuts across both work areas and organizational levels. a. The increased use of e-mail facilitates diagonal communications. b. Diagonal communication has the potential to create problems if employees don’t keep theirLateral communicationLateral communication takes place among employees on the same organizational level. Ways of internal communicationAmong various ways of communicating within organization are meetings, reports, memos, telephone conversations, and face-to-face discussions. External communicationCommunication that takes place outside the organization is called external communication. The right letter, telephone call, personal conversation and proposal. The organization can bring back and customer and create good reputation in the mind of the customers. Informal External communication:Informal External communication used to learn the customers needs. High-level manager recognize to keep in touch the real world by creating opportunities to talk with customer and get feedback from the customers and the frontline companies.Ways of external communicationExternal communication can be done through the following ways. These are Letters, annual reports, pamphlets and interviews with the news media.Effective communication can help to create good reputation and a positive impact on the success of the individual as well as organization.Question No.2You have studied communication process, barriers of communication in your course; analyze with examples complete process of communicationAnswer:The process of communication have following main componentsa)Context b)Sender / Encoder c)Message d)Medium/Channel:following are the channels of oral and written communicationOral Communication Inside the organization.Outside the Organization Written communication Inside the Organization Outside the Organization e)Receiver / Decoder f)Feedback ANALYSIS: -Communication process is the name of six components working togethernamely context, sender/encoder, message, channel/medium, decoder/receiver and thefeedback. That is explaining in details. I will take ABC a medicine manufacturing company as an example for analysis of its communication process.
Solution to MGT 301
Selected Option
1.
C
2.
B
3.
D
4.
C
5.
A
6.
B
7.
C
8.
D
9.
D
10.
C
11.
A
12.
B
13.
B
14.
B
15.
C
16.
B
17.
A
18.
C
19.
C
20.
D
1.
C
2.
B
3.
D
4.
C
5.
A
6.
B
7.
C
8.
D
9.
D
10.
C
11.
A
12.
B
13.
B
14.
B
15.
C
16.
B
17.
A
18.
C
19.
C
20.
D
Solution to ECO 401
Selected Option
1.
B
2.
A
3.
D
4.
B
5.
C
6.
D
7.
A
8.
C
9.
C
10.
C
11.
B
12.
D
13.
C
14.
A
15.
D
16.
C
17.
A
18.
D
19.
A
20.
A
1.
B
2.
A
3.
D
4.
B
5.
C
6.
D
7.
A
8.
C
9.
C
10.
C
11.
B
12.
D
13.
C
14.
A
15.
D
16.
C
17.
A
18.
D
19.
A
20.
A
Solution to MGT 503
Selected Option
1.
B
2.
B
3.
B
4.
D
5.
D
6.
D
7.
A
8.
B
9.
C
10.
A
11.
B
12.
A
13.
C
14.
C
15.
C
16.
C
17.
D
18
B
19.
A
20.
A
1.
B
2.
B
3.
B
4.
D
5.
D
6.
D
7.
A
8.
B
9.
C
10.
A
11.
B
12.
A
13.
C
14.
C
15.
C
16.
C
17.
D
18
B
19.
A
20.
A
Solution to MGT 101
Selected Option
1.
D
2.
A
3.
A
4.
B
5.
D
6.
B
7.
A
8.
A
9.
D
10.
D
11.
D
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A
13.
D
14.
B
15.
B
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B
17.
D
18.
B
19.
B
20.
C
1.
D
2.
A
3.
A
4.
B
5.
D
6.
B
7.
A
8.
A
9.
D
10.
D
11.
D
12.
A
13.
D
14.
B
15.
B
16.
B
17.
D
18.
B
19.
B
20.
C
Solution to MGT 502
Selected Option
1.
D
2.
C
3.
B
4.
A
5.
A
6.
A
7.
A
8.
C
9.
B
10.
C
11.
D
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C
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D
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A
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B
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B
17.
A
18.
C
19.
A
20.
B
1.
D
2.
C
3.
B
4.
A
5.
A
6.
A
7.
A
8.
C
9.
B
10.
C
11.
D
12.
C
13.
D
14.
A
15.
B
16.
B
17.
A
18.
C
19.
A
20.
B
Solution to MGT 613
Selected Option
1.
A
2.
C
3.
A
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B
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B
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A
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A
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D
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B
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C
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A
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C
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A
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D
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C
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B
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A
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A
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B
20.
B
1.
A
2.
C
3.
A
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B
5.
B
6.
A
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A
8.
D
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B
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C
11.
A
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C
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A
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D
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C
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B
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A
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A
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B
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B
Solution to FIN 621
Selected Option
1.
B
2.
D
3.
D
4.
D
5.
A
6.
C
7.
C
8.
B
9.
C
10.
A
11.
C
12.
D
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C
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C
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A
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C
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C
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A
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D
20.
B
1.
B
2.
D
3.
D
4.
D
5.
A
6.
C
7.
C
8.
B
9.
C
10.
A
11.
C
12.
D
13.
C
14.
C
15.
A
16.
C
17.
C
18.
A
19.
D
20.
B
Friday, April 10, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
SOLUTION TO CS 507
Q1. Is CBIS cost-effective solution? Discuss it from the point of view of medium to large level organizations. (5 marks)
Need for information
Information is required in day to day decision making. Without the availability of right quantity of information at the right time, the process of decision making is highly affected. For this reason various sources of information are used to extract information. Some of these are:
o Newspapers
o Internet
o Marketing Brochures
o Friends & Relatives
Sources of Information
Sources of information are generally categorized as primary, secondary or tertiary depending on their originality and their proximity to the source or origin. For example, initially, findings might be communicated informally by email and then presented at meetings before being formally published as a primary source. Once published, they will then be indexed in a bibliographic database, and repackaged and commented upon by others in secondary sources.
The designations of primary, secondary and tertiary differ between disciplines or subjects, particularly between what can generally be defined as the sciences and the humanities. For example,
• The historian’s primary sources are the poems, stories, and films of the era under study.
• The research scientist's primary sources are the results of laboratory tests and the medical records of patients treated with the drug.
Written information can be divided into several types.
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tertiary Sources
What is Computer based Information System (CBIS)?
CBIS is an Information System that uses computer & telecommunications technology to perform its intended tasks. In CBIS, Information technology (IT) becomes a subset of the Information system.
The terms Information System (IS) and Computer Based Information System (CBIS) with the extensive use of computers in almost every field renders it inevitable to think of an IS as CBIS.
CBIS is cost effective because in every field computers are needed or are a part if the that organization
Q2. Explain reliability factor of a Transaction processing system with a real time example. (5 marks)
Components/Sub-Systems of CBIS
Following are the components / subsystems of CBIS
• Transaction Processing System • Management Information System • Support Systems • Office Automation System • Decision Support System • Knowledge System • Executive Support System
Let’s consider them one by one.
Transaction Processing System
This system is used to record transactions of routine and repetitive nature.
For Instance
• Defining eh transaction recording structure
• Placing customer orders
• Billing customers
• Other basic business transactions
Features
• It is a repetitive number crunching system.
• Today the transaction processing systems are more sophisticated and complex but spirit is same, that is to record routine business transactions, irrespective of their complexity, so as to help in analysis and report generation at a higher level.
• Help to cater needs for operational level management.
• Rapid Response
Fast performance with a rapid response time is critical. Businesses cannot afford to have customers waiting for a TPS to respond, the turnaround time from the input of the transaction to the production for the output must be a few seconds or less.
Reliability
• Many organizations rely heavily on their TPS; a breakdown will disrupt operations or even stop the business. For a TPS to be effective its failure rate must be very low. If a TPS does fail, then quick and accurate recovery must be possible. This makes well–designed backup and recovery procedures essential.
•Inflexibility
A TPS wants every transaction to be processed in the same way regardless of the user, the customer or the time for day. If a TPS were flexible, there would be too many opportunities for non-standard operations, for example, a commercial airline needs to consistently accept airline reservations from a range of travel agents, accepting different transactions data from different travel agents would be a problem.
• Controlled processing
• The processing in a TPS must support an organization's operations. For example if an organization allocates roles and responsibilities to particular employees, then the TPS should enforce and maintain this requirement.
Data Processing Tasks
• Major data processing tasks which a TPS is expected to per form are
• Data identification and Gathering – keying in the data or obtaining it directly from machines by providing suitable interface
• Data manipulation/Analysis – refers to transformation of data into information
• Classifying
• Sorting
• Calculating
• Summarizing
• Data storage – data is kept somewhere in a sequenced manner until when needed.
• Document Preparation – output for managers as reports or as input to other systems.
• Goals a TPS is supposed to achieve are predefined and highly structured, for instance
• Checking a customer’s credit limit every time an order is received
• Checking inventory level before accepting an order
• Payroll generation on monthly basis
EXAMPLE
Transaction processing is a computer-based group of logical operations. In order for transaction processing to work, all the operations must succeed or fail as a group. A simple example of transaction processing is paying a utility bill from your bank account. The process of paying a bill from your account consists of debiting your account by say, 100 US dollars (USD), and crediting your utility provider’s account.
This may seem like a simple transaction, but it may actually consist of several sub-operations. If the debit of 100 USD was successful, but the credit did not go through to the utility provider’s account, then the transaction would fail. Your 100 USD would be lost somewhere in the transaction. The transaction processing system allows all the operations to be grouped into a single transaction in order to prevent problems in consistency.
Systems capable of transaction processing must pass tests for atomicity, consistency, isolation and durability, otherwise known as the ACID test. Transactions are known as atomic, meaning that the transaction will either happen or not. If one account is debited, then another account has to be credited.
The transaction processing system must always be consistent with its own rules. If errors occur in the transaction on either side, then the transaction will fail. Isolating transactions means that other processes never see information during the transaction. They may see information before or after the transaction, but not during the transaction. For example, if two people are booking the last theatre seat at the same time, they can both see the seat before the booking, but only one person will succeed in booking that seat.
Q3. An airline maintains flights and reservation for various classes of society. Describe major tasks that decision support system should perform for management. (5 marks)
Definition
Decision Support Systems (DSS) are a specific class of computerized information systems that supports business and organizational decision-making activities. A properly-designed DSS is an interactive software-based system intended to help decision makers compile useful information from raw data, documents, personal knowledge, and/or business models to identify and solve problems and make decisions.
Typical information that a decision support application might gather and present would be:
an inventory of all of your current information assets (including legacy and relational data sources, cubes, data warehouses, and data marts),
comparative sales figures between one week and the next,
projected revenue figures based on new product sales assumptions;
the consequences of different decision alternatives, given past experience in a context that is described.
History
In the absence of an all-inclusive definition, we focus on the history of DSS (see also Power[1]). According to Keen [2], the concept of decision support has evolved from two main areas of research: the theoretical studies of organizational decision making done at the Carnegie Institute of Technology during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the technical work on interactive computer systems, mainly carried out at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1960s. It is considered that the concept of DSS became an area of research of its own in the middle of the 1970s, before gaining in intensity during the 1980s. In the middle and late 1980s, executive information systems (EIS), group decision support systems (GDSS), and organizational decision support systems (ODSS) evolved from the single user and model-oriented DSS.
In 1987 Texas Instruments completed development of the Gate Assignment Display System (GADS) for United Airlines. This decision support system is credited with significantly reducing travel delays by aiding the management of ground operations at various airports, beginning with O'Hare International Airport in Chicago and Stapleton Airport in Denver Colorado.
Beginning in about 1990, data warehousing and on-line analytical processing (OLAP) began broadening the realm of DSS. As the turn of the millennium approached, new Web-based analytical applications were introduced.
It is clear that DSS belong to an environment with multidisciplinary foundations, including (but not exclusively) database research, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, simulation methods, software engineering, and telecommunications.
The advent of better and better reporting technologies has seen DSS start to emerge as a critical component of management design. Examples of this can be seen in the intense amount of discussion of DSS in the education environment.
DSS also have a weak connection to the user interface paradigm of hypertext. Both the University of Vermont PROMIS system (for medical decision making) and the Carnegie Mellon ZOG/KMS system (for military and business decision making) were decision support systems which also were major breakthroughs in user interface research. Furthermore, although hypertext researchers have generally been concerned with information overload, certain researchers, notably Douglas Engelbart, have been focused on decision makers in particular. There is no way to confirm/deny this.
Seeing the benefits of MIS for middle level managers, computerized systems have been devised for other employees in the organization to help them complete their work efficiently and effectively.
Support systems can be classified into two categories
• Office automation systems
• Decision support systems
Office Automation Systems
Office automation system includes formal and informal electronic systems primarily concerned with the communication of information to and from persons both inside and outside the firm. It supports data workers in an organization.
For Instance
• Word processing
• Desktop publishing
• Imaging & Web publishing
• Electronic calendars – manager’s appt. calendars
• Email
• Audio & video conferencing – establishing communication between geographically dispersed persons.
Decision Support Systems
Before moving forward with the concept of decision support system, we would take a look at the definition of MIS
“An integrated man-machine system for providing information to support the operations, management and decision making functions in an organization.”
(Prof. Gordon Davis University of Minnesota)
Four Criteria for designing models and systems to support management decisions making were laid down by J.D.C. Little. These were
• Robustness
• Ease of Control
• Simplicity
• Completeness of relevant detail
Decision Support Systems was defined by Bill Inmon, father of data warehouse, as “a system used to support managerial decisions. Usually DSS involves the analysis of many units of data in a heuristic fashion. As a rule, DSS processing does not involve the update of data”
Heuristic simply means a particular technique of directing one’s attention in learning, discovery or problem solving. It assists in non-routine decision making process due to powerful analytical abilities.
For Instance
For any scenario all the related factors with their ranges of variability are entered into DSS, which helps guide managers for any new scenario that emerges. DSS can stimulate innovation in decision making by helping managers to existing decision making procedures.
An example of Decision Support System
An outfit store maintains ready made garments and stitched clothes for various classes of society. Due to fluctuating changes in fashion trends, pre-seasonal planning becomes critical.
• A Planning and forecasting software can be used by management to
• Measure customer reactions to re-pricing
• When to initiate clearance sales for old stock
• Deciding about discount percentages
• When to order new stock for the season
Types of DSS
DSS, may either be
• Model Driven DSS
• Data Driven DSS
Model driven DSS uses following techniques
• What-If analysis
Attempt to check the impact of a change in the assumptions (input data) on the proposed solution e.g. What will happen to the market share if the advertising budget increases by 5 % or 10%?
• Goal Seek Analysis
Attempt to find the value of the inputs necessary to achieve a desired level of output. Ituses “backward” solution approach e.g. a DSS solution yielded a profit of $2M. What will be the necessary sales volume to generate a profit of $2.2M?
These are primarily stand alone systems isolated from major organizational information systems (finance, manufacturing, HR, etc). They are developed by end users and are not reliant on central information systems control. These systems combine
• Use of a strong model, and
• Good user interface to maximize model utility
They are not usually data intensive; hat is very large data bases are usually not need for model-driven DSS. They use data and parameters usually provided by decision makers to aid in analyzing a situation.
Data Driven DSS
As opposed to model driven DSS, these systems use large pools of data found in major organizational systems. They help to extract information from the large quantities of data stored. These systems rely on
Data Warehouses created from Transaction Processing systems.
• They use following techniques for data analysis
• Online analytical processing, and
• Data mining
Components of DSS
There are two major components
• DSS data base – is a collection of current and historical data from internal external sources. It can be
a massive data warehouse.
• Decision Support Software system – is the set of software tools used for data analysis. For instance
• Online analytical processing (OLAP) tools
• Data mining tools
• Models
Data Warehouse
• A data warehouse is a logical collection of information.
• It is gathered from many different operational databases used to create business intelligence that supports business analysis activities and decision-making tasks.
• It is primarily, a record of an enterprise's past transactional and operational information, stored in a database designed to favor efficient data analysis and reporting.
• The term data warehouse generally refers to the combination of many different databases across an entire enterprise.
• Data warehouses contain a wide variety of data that present a coherent picture of business conditions at a single point in time.
• Data warehouses are generally batch updated at the end of the day, week or some period. Its contents are typically historical and static and may also contain numerous summaries.
Development Frameworks
DSS systems are not entirely different from other systems and require a structured approach. A framework was provided by Sprague and Watson (1993). The framework has three main levels. 1. Technology levels 2. People involved 3. The developmental approach
Technology Levels
Sprague has suggested that there are three levels of hardware and software that has been proposed for DSS.
a) Level 1 – Specific DSS
This is the actual application that will be used to by the user. This is the part of the application that allows the decision maker to make decisions in a particular problem area. The user can act upon that particular problem.
b) Level 2 – DSS Generator
This level contains Hardware/software environment that allows people to easily develop specific DSS applications. This level makes use of case tools or systems such as Crystal, AIMMS, iThink and Clementine.
c) Level 3 – DSS Tools
Contains lower level hardware/software. DSS generators including special languages, function libraries and linking modules
People Involved
Sprague suggests there are 5 roles involved in a typical DSS development cycle.
a) The end user.
b) An intermediary.
c) DSS developer
d) Technical supporter
e) Systems Expert
Developmental
The developmental approach for a DSS system should be strongly iterative. This will allow for the application to be changed and redesigned at various intervals. The initial problem is used to design the system on and then tested and revised to ensure the desired outcome is achieved.
Classifying DSS
There are several ways to classify DSS applications. Not every DSS fits neatly into one category, but a mix of two or more architecture in one.
Holsapple and Whinston [13] classify DSS into the following six frameworks: Text-oriented DSS, Database-oriented DSS, Spreadsheet-oriented DSS, Solver-oriented DSS, Rule-oriented DSS, and Compound DSS.
A compound DSS is the most popular classification for a DSS. It is a hybrid system that includes two or more of the five basic structures described by Holsapple and Whinston .
The support given by DSS can be separated into three distinct, interrelated categories : Personal Support, Group Support, and Organizational Support.
Additionally, the build up of a DSS is also classified into a few characteristics. 1) inputs: this is used so the DSS can have factors, numbers, and characteristics to analyze. 2) user knowledge and expertise: This allows the system to decide how much it is relied on, and exactly what inputs must be analyzed with or without the user. 3) outputs: This is used so the user of the system can analyze the decisions that may be made and then potentially 4) make a decision: This decision making is made by the DSS, however, it is ultimately made by the user in order to decide on which criteria it should use.
DSSs which perform selected cognitive decision-making functions and are based on artificial intelligence or intelligent agents technologies are called Intelligent Decision Support Systems (IDSS)[15].
The nascent field of Decision engineering treats the decision itself as an engineered object, and applies engineering principles such as Design and Quality assurance to an explicit representation of the elements that make up a decision.
Applications
As mentioned above, there are theoretical possibilities of building such systems in any knowledge domain.
One example is the Clinical decision support system for medical diagnosis. Other examples include a bank loan officer verifying the credit of a loan applicant or an engineering firm that has bids on several projects and wants to know if they can be competitive with their costs.
DSS is extensively used in business and management. Executive dashboard and other business performance software allow faster decision making, identification of negative trends, and better allocation of business resources.
A growing area of DSS application, concepts, principles, and techniques is in agricultural production, marketing for sustainable development. For example, the DSSAT4 package developed through financial support of USAID during the 80's and 90's, has allowed rapid assessment of several agricultural production systems around the world to facilitate decision-making at the farm and policy levels. There are, however, many constraints to the successful adoption on DSS in agriculture
A specific example concerns the Canadian National Railway system, which tests its equipment on a regular basis using a decision support system. A problem faced by any railroad is worn-out or defective rails, which can result in hundreds of derailments per year. Under a DSS, CN managed to decrease the incidence of derailments at the same time other companies were experiencing an increase.
DSS has many applications that have already been spoken about. However, it can be used in any field where organization is necessary. Additionally, a DSS can be designed to help make decisions on the stock market, or deciding which area or segment to market a product toward.
Q4. Compare MIS and DSS from functionality perspective. (5 marks)
Need for information
Information is required in day to day decision making. Without the availability of right quantity of information at the right time, the process of decision making is highly affected. For this reason various sources of information are used to extract information. Some of these are:
o Newspapers
o Internet
o Marketing Brochures
o Friends & Relatives
Sources of Information
Sources of information are generally categorized as primary, secondary or tertiary depending on their originality and their proximity to the source or origin. For example, initially, findings might be communicated informally by email and then presented at meetings before being formally published as a primary source. Once published, they will then be indexed in a bibliographic database, and repackaged and commented upon by others in secondary sources.
The designations of primary, secondary and tertiary differ between disciplines or subjects, particularly between what can generally be defined as the sciences and the humanities. For example,
• The historian’s primary sources are the poems, stories, and films of the era under study.
• The research scientist's primary sources are the results of laboratory tests and the medical records of patients treated with the drug.
Written information can be divided into several types.
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tertiary Sources
What is Computer based Information System (CBIS)?
CBIS is an Information System that uses computer & telecommunications technology to perform its intended tasks. In CBIS, Information technology (IT) becomes a subset of the Information system.
The terms Information System (IS) and Computer Based Information System (CBIS) with the extensive use of computers in almost every field renders it inevitable to think of an IS as CBIS.
CBIS is cost effective because in every field computers are needed or are a part if the that organization
Q2. Explain reliability factor of a Transaction processing system with a real time example. (5 marks)
Components/Sub-Systems of CBIS
Following are the components / subsystems of CBIS
• Transaction Processing System • Management Information System • Support Systems • Office Automation System • Decision Support System • Knowledge System • Executive Support System
Let’s consider them one by one.
Transaction Processing System
This system is used to record transactions of routine and repetitive nature.
For Instance
• Defining eh transaction recording structure
• Placing customer orders
• Billing customers
• Other basic business transactions
Features
• It is a repetitive number crunching system.
• Today the transaction processing systems are more sophisticated and complex but spirit is same, that is to record routine business transactions, irrespective of their complexity, so as to help in analysis and report generation at a higher level.
• Help to cater needs for operational level management.
• Rapid Response
Fast performance with a rapid response time is critical. Businesses cannot afford to have customers waiting for a TPS to respond, the turnaround time from the input of the transaction to the production for the output must be a few seconds or less.
Reliability
• Many organizations rely heavily on their TPS; a breakdown will disrupt operations or even stop the business. For a TPS to be effective its failure rate must be very low. If a TPS does fail, then quick and accurate recovery must be possible. This makes well–designed backup and recovery procedures essential.
•Inflexibility
A TPS wants every transaction to be processed in the same way regardless of the user, the customer or the time for day. If a TPS were flexible, there would be too many opportunities for non-standard operations, for example, a commercial airline needs to consistently accept airline reservations from a range of travel agents, accepting different transactions data from different travel agents would be a problem.
• Controlled processing
• The processing in a TPS must support an organization's operations. For example if an organization allocates roles and responsibilities to particular employees, then the TPS should enforce and maintain this requirement.
Data Processing Tasks
• Major data processing tasks which a TPS is expected to per form are
• Data identification and Gathering – keying in the data or obtaining it directly from machines by providing suitable interface
• Data manipulation/Analysis – refers to transformation of data into information
• Classifying
• Sorting
• Calculating
• Summarizing
• Data storage – data is kept somewhere in a sequenced manner until when needed.
• Document Preparation – output for managers as reports or as input to other systems.
• Goals a TPS is supposed to achieve are predefined and highly structured, for instance
• Checking a customer’s credit limit every time an order is received
• Checking inventory level before accepting an order
• Payroll generation on monthly basis
EXAMPLE
Transaction processing is a computer-based group of logical operations. In order for transaction processing to work, all the operations must succeed or fail as a group. A simple example of transaction processing is paying a utility bill from your bank account. The process of paying a bill from your account consists of debiting your account by say, 100 US dollars (USD), and crediting your utility provider’s account.
This may seem like a simple transaction, but it may actually consist of several sub-operations. If the debit of 100 USD was successful, but the credit did not go through to the utility provider’s account, then the transaction would fail. Your 100 USD would be lost somewhere in the transaction. The transaction processing system allows all the operations to be grouped into a single transaction in order to prevent problems in consistency.
Systems capable of transaction processing must pass tests for atomicity, consistency, isolation and durability, otherwise known as the ACID test. Transactions are known as atomic, meaning that the transaction will either happen or not. If one account is debited, then another account has to be credited.
The transaction processing system must always be consistent with its own rules. If errors occur in the transaction on either side, then the transaction will fail. Isolating transactions means that other processes never see information during the transaction. They may see information before or after the transaction, but not during the transaction. For example, if two people are booking the last theatre seat at the same time, they can both see the seat before the booking, but only one person will succeed in booking that seat.
Q3. An airline maintains flights and reservation for various classes of society. Describe major tasks that decision support system should perform for management. (5 marks)
Definition
Decision Support Systems (DSS) are a specific class of computerized information systems that supports business and organizational decision-making activities. A properly-designed DSS is an interactive software-based system intended to help decision makers compile useful information from raw data, documents, personal knowledge, and/or business models to identify and solve problems and make decisions.
Typical information that a decision support application might gather and present would be:
an inventory of all of your current information assets (including legacy and relational data sources, cubes, data warehouses, and data marts),
comparative sales figures between one week and the next,
projected revenue figures based on new product sales assumptions;
the consequences of different decision alternatives, given past experience in a context that is described.
History
In the absence of an all-inclusive definition, we focus on the history of DSS (see also Power[1]). According to Keen [2], the concept of decision support has evolved from two main areas of research: the theoretical studies of organizational decision making done at the Carnegie Institute of Technology during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the technical work on interactive computer systems, mainly carried out at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1960s. It is considered that the concept of DSS became an area of research of its own in the middle of the 1970s, before gaining in intensity during the 1980s. In the middle and late 1980s, executive information systems (EIS), group decision support systems (GDSS), and organizational decision support systems (ODSS) evolved from the single user and model-oriented DSS.
In 1987 Texas Instruments completed development of the Gate Assignment Display System (GADS) for United Airlines. This decision support system is credited with significantly reducing travel delays by aiding the management of ground operations at various airports, beginning with O'Hare International Airport in Chicago and Stapleton Airport in Denver Colorado.
Beginning in about 1990, data warehousing and on-line analytical processing (OLAP) began broadening the realm of DSS. As the turn of the millennium approached, new Web-based analytical applications were introduced.
It is clear that DSS belong to an environment with multidisciplinary foundations, including (but not exclusively) database research, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, simulation methods, software engineering, and telecommunications.
The advent of better and better reporting technologies has seen DSS start to emerge as a critical component of management design. Examples of this can be seen in the intense amount of discussion of DSS in the education environment.
DSS also have a weak connection to the user interface paradigm of hypertext. Both the University of Vermont PROMIS system (for medical decision making) and the Carnegie Mellon ZOG/KMS system (for military and business decision making) were decision support systems which also were major breakthroughs in user interface research. Furthermore, although hypertext researchers have generally been concerned with information overload, certain researchers, notably Douglas Engelbart, have been focused on decision makers in particular. There is no way to confirm/deny this.
Seeing the benefits of MIS for middle level managers, computerized systems have been devised for other employees in the organization to help them complete their work efficiently and effectively.
Support systems can be classified into two categories
• Office automation systems
• Decision support systems
Office Automation Systems
Office automation system includes formal and informal electronic systems primarily concerned with the communication of information to and from persons both inside and outside the firm. It supports data workers in an organization.
For Instance
• Word processing
• Desktop publishing
• Imaging & Web publishing
• Electronic calendars – manager’s appt. calendars
• Audio & video conferencing – establishing communication between geographically dispersed persons.
Decision Support Systems
Before moving forward with the concept of decision support system, we would take a look at the definition of MIS
“An integrated man-machine system for providing information to support the operations, management and decision making functions in an organization.”
(Prof. Gordon Davis University of Minnesota)
Four Criteria for designing models and systems to support management decisions making were laid down by J.D.C. Little. These were
• Robustness
• Ease of Control
• Simplicity
• Completeness of relevant detail
Decision Support Systems was defined by Bill Inmon, father of data warehouse, as “a system used to support managerial decisions. Usually DSS involves the analysis of many units of data in a heuristic fashion. As a rule, DSS processing does not involve the update of data”
Heuristic simply means a particular technique of directing one’s attention in learning, discovery or problem solving. It assists in non-routine decision making process due to powerful analytical abilities.
For Instance
For any scenario all the related factors with their ranges of variability are entered into DSS, which helps guide managers for any new scenario that emerges. DSS can stimulate innovation in decision making by helping managers to existing decision making procedures.
An example of Decision Support System
An outfit store maintains ready made garments and stitched clothes for various classes of society. Due to fluctuating changes in fashion trends, pre-seasonal planning becomes critical.
• A Planning and forecasting software can be used by management to
• Measure customer reactions to re-pricing
• When to initiate clearance sales for old stock
• Deciding about discount percentages
• When to order new stock for the season
Types of DSS
DSS, may either be
• Model Driven DSS
• Data Driven DSS
Model driven DSS uses following techniques
• What-If analysis
Attempt to check the impact of a change in the assumptions (input data) on the proposed solution e.g. What will happen to the market share if the advertising budget increases by 5 % or 10%?
• Goal Seek Analysis
Attempt to find the value of the inputs necessary to achieve a desired level of output. Ituses “backward” solution approach e.g. a DSS solution yielded a profit of $2M. What will be the necessary sales volume to generate a profit of $2.2M?
These are primarily stand alone systems isolated from major organizational information systems (finance, manufacturing, HR, etc). They are developed by end users and are not reliant on central information systems control. These systems combine
• Use of a strong model, and
• Good user interface to maximize model utility
They are not usually data intensive; hat is very large data bases are usually not need for model-driven DSS. They use data and parameters usually provided by decision makers to aid in analyzing a situation.
Data Driven DSS
As opposed to model driven DSS, these systems use large pools of data found in major organizational systems. They help to extract information from the large quantities of data stored. These systems rely on
Data Warehouses created from Transaction Processing systems.
• They use following techniques for data analysis
• Online analytical processing, and
• Data mining
Components of DSS
There are two major components
• DSS data base – is a collection of current and historical data from internal external sources. It can be
a massive data warehouse.
• Decision Support Software system – is the set of software tools used for data analysis. For instance
• Online analytical processing (OLAP) tools
• Data mining tools
• Models
Data Warehouse
• A data warehouse is a logical collection of information.
• It is gathered from many different operational databases used to create business intelligence that supports business analysis activities and decision-making tasks.
• It is primarily, a record of an enterprise's past transactional and operational information, stored in a database designed to favor efficient data analysis and reporting.
• The term data warehouse generally refers to the combination of many different databases across an entire enterprise.
• Data warehouses contain a wide variety of data that present a coherent picture of business conditions at a single point in time.
• Data warehouses are generally batch updated at the end of the day, week or some period. Its contents are typically historical and static and may also contain numerous summaries.
Development Frameworks
DSS systems are not entirely different from other systems and require a structured approach. A framework was provided by Sprague and Watson (1993). The framework has three main levels. 1. Technology levels 2. People involved 3. The developmental approach
Technology Levels
Sprague has suggested that there are three levels of hardware and software that has been proposed for DSS.
a) Level 1 – Specific DSS
This is the actual application that will be used to by the user. This is the part of the application that allows the decision maker to make decisions in a particular problem area. The user can act upon that particular problem.
b) Level 2 – DSS Generator
This level contains Hardware/software environment that allows people to easily develop specific DSS applications. This level makes use of case tools or systems such as Crystal, AIMMS, iThink and Clementine.
c) Level 3 – DSS Tools
Contains lower level hardware/software. DSS generators including special languages, function libraries and linking modules
People Involved
Sprague suggests there are 5 roles involved in a typical DSS development cycle.
a) The end user.
b) An intermediary.
c) DSS developer
d) Technical supporter
e) Systems Expert
Developmental
The developmental approach for a DSS system should be strongly iterative. This will allow for the application to be changed and redesigned at various intervals. The initial problem is used to design the system on and then tested and revised to ensure the desired outcome is achieved.
Classifying DSS
There are several ways to classify DSS applications. Not every DSS fits neatly into one category, but a mix of two or more architecture in one.
Holsapple and Whinston [13] classify DSS into the following six frameworks: Text-oriented DSS, Database-oriented DSS, Spreadsheet-oriented DSS, Solver-oriented DSS, Rule-oriented DSS, and Compound DSS.
A compound DSS is the most popular classification for a DSS. It is a hybrid system that includes two or more of the five basic structures described by Holsapple and Whinston .
The support given by DSS can be separated into three distinct, interrelated categories : Personal Support, Group Support, and Organizational Support.
Additionally, the build up of a DSS is also classified into a few characteristics. 1) inputs: this is used so the DSS can have factors, numbers, and characteristics to analyze. 2) user knowledge and expertise: This allows the system to decide how much it is relied on, and exactly what inputs must be analyzed with or without the user. 3) outputs: This is used so the user of the system can analyze the decisions that may be made and then potentially 4) make a decision: This decision making is made by the DSS, however, it is ultimately made by the user in order to decide on which criteria it should use.
DSSs which perform selected cognitive decision-making functions and are based on artificial intelligence or intelligent agents technologies are called Intelligent Decision Support Systems (IDSS)[15].
The nascent field of Decision engineering treats the decision itself as an engineered object, and applies engineering principles such as Design and Quality assurance to an explicit representation of the elements that make up a decision.
Applications
As mentioned above, there are theoretical possibilities of building such systems in any knowledge domain.
One example is the Clinical decision support system for medical diagnosis. Other examples include a bank loan officer verifying the credit of a loan applicant or an engineering firm that has bids on several projects and wants to know if they can be competitive with their costs.
DSS is extensively used in business and management. Executive dashboard and other business performance software allow faster decision making, identification of negative trends, and better allocation of business resources.
A growing area of DSS application, concepts, principles, and techniques is in agricultural production, marketing for sustainable development. For example, the DSSAT4 package developed through financial support of USAID during the 80's and 90's, has allowed rapid assessment of several agricultural production systems around the world to facilitate decision-making at the farm and policy levels. There are, however, many constraints to the successful adoption on DSS in agriculture
A specific example concerns the Canadian National Railway system, which tests its equipment on a regular basis using a decision support system. A problem faced by any railroad is worn-out or defective rails, which can result in hundreds of derailments per year. Under a DSS, CN managed to decrease the incidence of derailments at the same time other companies were experiencing an increase.
DSS has many applications that have already been spoken about. However, it can be used in any field where organization is necessary. Additionally, a DSS can be designed to help make decisions on the stock market, or deciding which area or segment to market a product toward.
Q4. Compare MIS and DSS from functionality perspective. (5 marks)
Monday, April 6, 2009
Introduction
The Virtual University, Pakistan’s first University based completely on modern Information and Communication Technologies, was established by the Government as a public sector, not-for-profit institution with a clear mission: to provide extremely affordable world class education to aspiring students all over the country. Using free-to-air satellite television broadcast and the Internet, the Virtual University allows students to follow its rigorous programs regardless of their physical locations. It thus aims at alleviating the lack of capacity in the existing universities while simultaneously tackl-ing the acute shortage of qualified professors in the country. By identifying the top Professors of the country, regardless of their institutional affiliation and requesting them to develop and deliver hand-crafted courses, the Virtual University aims at providing the very best courses to not only its own students but also to students of all other universities in the country.The Virtual University of Pakistan holds a Federal Charter, making its degrees recognized and accepted all over the country as well as overseas. The University opened its virtual doors in 2002 and in a short span of time its outreach has reached over sixty cities of the country with more than a hundred associated institutions providing rastructure support to the students. Pakistani students residing overseas in several other countries of the region are also enrolled in the University's programs.
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