Week 2

We started the class with group presentations. Our group presented Market Dissection which I found very interesting. It is always important for an organization to formulate a strategy before entering a market. One must know the target customer’s need and how the new product will fit in compared to other competing products. Other groups presented Roles and Responsibilities in IT Departments, How to capitalize your career, Rivalry among existing Competitors (business strategies) and IT decisions.

The lecture considered chapter 2: Strategic Decision Making.
There are many points which are important for organizations in strategic Decision Making. This in addition to problem solving in the electronic world includes large-scale, opportunity-oriented, strategically focused solution. It is a tool for organizations to make decisions. Further on the lecture dealt with how to bring people together with IT processes and how good solutions can make advantages for organizations.

When an organization has to make a decision it must consider its customers, partners, suppliers and employees. Models, which represents the reality and can calculate risks and uncertainties is helpful to get an insight into the business.

Decision Making, Problem Solving and Opportunity Seizing INformation Systems
Decision Support Systems (DSS): A way to models information to support managers and business professionals. There are three quantitative models that are often used in DSS: (1) Sensitivity analysis, (2) What-if analysis and (3) Goal-seeking analysis.
Executive Information Systems (EIS): Specialized DSS. It contains data from external and also internal sources. Artificial Intelligence (AI): Simulates human intelligence as for example the ability to learn and reason. This is an advantage as it makes sense of ambiguous and contradictory information.
Enterprise Recourse Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM): A helpful tool for organizations to manage all aspects of customer’s relationship with the organization. CRM increase the customer locality by having information about the customer’s buying behavior.
Business Process Reengineering (BPR): Analyze and redesign of workflow,
Supply Chain Management (SCM): Management of information flows between stages in a supply chain. There are four basic elements in a supply chain: (1) Supply chain strategy, (2) supply chain partners, (3) supply chain operation and (4) supply chain logistics.

Week 1

In the first class of IS 6100 we introduced each other in groups and then presented us for the rest of the class. We went through the syllabus and how the WebCT and the pipeline work. Thereafter we had an introduction on how to create a blog.

The class got a power point presentation about Information Systems (IS) and Information Technology (IT). We learned the difference; Information Systems are organized by people within an organization. Moreover we looked at the history, the role of IS in business and types of IS to get an understanding about what IS is really about.

We also created a group consisting of Susanne, Hallvard, Katrine and I, or now known as The Bugs.