Descripción de equipos y herramientas a utilizar

Today information system has diversity. Diverse forms of information system exist. Depending on one’s need systems are selected.

a. Business informatics: Bio-informatics and geo-informatics are quite known to us.

There is also the Business informatics(BI).BI is a discipline combining information technology (IT) – or informatics – with management concepts. The BI discipline was created in Germany. The term Business Informatics is now common in Central Europe. BI has strong synergistic effects from truly integrating business administration concepts and computer science technology into one field. Business Informatics (BI) shows numerous similarities with Information Systems (IS). There are differences between Business Informatics and Information Systems as well: Business Informatics includes information technology, like the relevant aspects of applied computer science, to a much larger extent compared to Information Systems.

Business Informatics has significant constructive features meaning that a major focus is on the development of solutions for business problems rather than simply describing them. On the other hand, information systems strongly focus on explaining empirical phenomena of the real world. IS has often been called an ‘explanation-oriented’ approach in contrast to the ‘solution-‘explanation-oriented’ BI approach. IS researchers try to explain why things in the real world are the way they are and conduct a lot of empirical surveys whereas a BI researcher tries to develop IT solutions for problems they have observed or assumed. Academics in BI, for example, are often fond of applying new technologies to business problems and doing feasibility studies by building software prototypes. The pace of scientific and technological progress in BI is quite faster than in the case of IS.

b. Metadata: Metadata are data about data. Metadata are information about information.

In any particular context, metadata characterizes the data it describes, not the entity described by that data. In the context of a camera, where the data is the photographic image, metadata would typically include the date the photograph was taken and details of the camera settings. On a portable music player such as an iPod, the album names, song titles and album art embedded in the music files are used to generate the artist and song listings, and so on are metadata. In the context of an information system, where the data is the content of the computer files, metadata about an individual data item would typically include the name of the field and its length.

Metadata about a collection of data items, a computer file, might typically include the name of the file, the type of file and the name of the data administrator. Business decision making needs metadata because the contextual inputs provide valuable information about the decision situations.

Fundamentally, metadata are ‘the data that describe the structure and workings of an organization’s use of information, and which describe the systems it uses to manage that information’. To do a model of metadata is to do an ‘Enterprise model’ of the information technology industry itself.

c. Management Information Systems (MIS): One branch of Information System is

Management Information Systems (MIS). Business computers were once used for the practical business of computing the payroll and keeping track of accounts payable and receivable. As applications were developed providing managers with information about sales, inventories, and other data that would help in managing the enterprise, the term ‘MIS’ gained prominence. Today, the term is used broadly in a number of contexts and includes (but is not limited to) decision support systems, resource and people management applications, project management, and database retrieval applications. MIS is the discipline covering the application of knowledge-ware, soft-knowledge-ware, fine-knowledge-ware, hard-knowledge-ware, and techno-ware to solve business problems. Management Information Systems analyze other information systems applied in operational activities in the organization. MIS is commonly used to refer to the group of information management methods tied to the automation or support of human decision making like Decision Support Systems (DSS), Expert systems (ES), and Executive information systems (EIS), etc.

d. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): Today Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems rule the business information world attempting to integrate all data and processes of an organization into a unified system. A typical ERP system will use multiple components of computer software and hardware to achieve the integration. A key ingredient of most ERP systems is the use of a unified database to store data for the various system modules. ERP evolved from Manufacturing Resource Planning (or MRP2), which in turn evolved from Material Requirement Planning (MRP). Around 1980, frequent changes in sales forecasts, entailing continual readjustments in production, as well as the unsuitability of the parameters fixed by the system, led the evolution of MRP (2) from MRP and later MRP(2) evolved into the generic concept Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).

The introduction of an ERP system to replace two or more independent applications eliminates the need for external interfaces previously required between systems, and provides additional benefits that range from standardization and lower maintenance (one system instead of two or more) to easier and/or greater reporting capabilities (as all data is typically kept in one database). Examples of modules in an ERP which formerly would have been stand-alone applications include:

Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Financials,

Customer Relationship Management (CRM),

Human Resources,

Warehouse Management and Decision Support System.

Ideally, ERP delivers a single database that contains all data for the software modules, which would

ERP systems saw a large boost in sales in the 1990s as companies faced the Y2K problem in their legacy systems. Many companies took this opportunity to replace their legacy information systems with ERP systems.

ERPs are not ‘back office systems’ indicating that customers and the general public are not directly involved.

ERPs are cross-functional and enterprise wide. All functional departments that are involved in operations or production are integrated in one system. In addition to manufacturing, warehousing, logistics, and information technology, this would include accounting, human resources, marketing, and strategic management.

SAP is a global software company headquartered in Germany which pioneered SAP, which stands for Systems Applications and Products. There are over 100,600 SAP installations serving more than 41,200 companies in more than 25 industries in more than 120 countries in mid 2007. SAP R/3 and SAP ERP are two versions of the ERP software product of SAPAG, the German Outfit. SAP ERP is the one of five major enterprise applications that makes up SAP’s Business Suite. The four other applications are: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - helps companies acquire and retain customers, gain deep marketing and customer insight, and align organization on customer-focused strategies. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) - helps manufacturers with a single source of all product-related information necessary for collaborating with business partners and supporting product line. Supply Chain Management (SCM) - helps companies enhance operational flexibility across global enterprises and provide real-time visibility for customers and suppliers. Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) - customers can collaborate closely with suppliers and integrate sourcing processes with applications throughout the enterprise to enhance transparency and lower costs.

While its original products were typically used by Fortune 500 companies, SAP is now also actively targeting small and medium sized enterprises (SME) with its SAP Business One and SAP Business All-in-One.

e. Enterprise Content Management (ECM):

Enterprise content management (ECM) is the technologies used to capture, store, preserve and deliver content and documents and content related to organizational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization’s unstructured information, wherever that information exists.

ECM is a new problem domain and has employed the technologies and strategies of (digital) content management to address business process issues, such as records and auditing, knowledge sharing, personalization and standardization of content, and so on. Generally speaking ECM solves all of the problems related to the use and preservation of information within an organization, in all of its forms — not just its web-oriented face to the outside world. Therefore, most solutions focus on ‘business to employee’ (B2E) systems.

However, as the solutions have evolved, new components to content management have arisen. For example, as unstructured content is checked in and out of an ECM system, each use can potentially enrich the content’s profile, to some extent automatically, so that the system might gradually acquire or “learn” new filtering, routing and search pathways, corporate taxonomies and semantic networks, which in turn assist in making better retention-rule decisions, determining which records or documents to keep, and which to discard, and when. Such issues become all the more important, as email and instant messaging are increasingly employed in the decision-making processes in an organization.

Thus, ECM refers to solutions that concentrate on providing in-house information, usually using internet technologies. The solutions tend to provide intranet services to employees (B2E), but also include enterprise portals for ‘business to business’ (B2B), ‘business to government’ (B2G), or ‘government to business’ (G2B), etc. This category includes most of the former document management groupware and workflow solutions that have not yet fully converted their architecture, but provide a web interface to their applications. Digital Asset Management (DAM) is as well a form of ECM that is concerned with content stored using digital e-technology.

The technology components that comprise ECM today are the descendants of the electronic document management systems (EDMS) software products that were first released in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The original EDMS products were developed as standalone technologies. Certain versions of EDMS included COLD/ERM, which are technologies for the automatic processing of structured entry data. COLD stands for Computer Output to Laser Disk and is still in use although laser disks have not been on the market for years.

The acronym ERM here stands for Enterprise Report Management. In both, supplied output data are processed on existing structure information in a way that it can be indexed independently of the origination system, and sent to a storage component that can be dynamic (Store) or an archive (Preserve).

Among the specific benefits of EDMS and ECM were the following:

• Reduction of paper handling and error-prone manual processes

• Reduction of paper storage

• Reduction of lost documents

• Faster access to information

• Online access to information that was formerly available only on paper or microfilm.

• Improved control over documents and document-oriented processes

• Streamlining of time-consuming business processes

• Security over document access and modification

• Provide reliable and accurate audit trail

• Improved tracking & monitoring, with ability to track bottlenecks & modify the system.

More recently, the ECM market has seen the entry of Microsoft and Oracle Corporation, two of the largest and most pervasive providers of software, at the value end of the market. These two software companies look to provide software solutions with the basic ECM functionality that will address the functional requirements commonly required by the majority of organizations. The result is likely to be a stratification of the current ECM market, based on the level of content services that different organizations require.

The global provider of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions, SAP Corporation is the market leader in SAP document and data archiving and management. Its targeted solutions enable one to create, access, manage, and securely archive all SAP content-both data and documents to address stringent requirements for risk reduction, operational efficiency and IT consolidation. More than 2,000,000 users—over 2,200 installations

—worldwide have achieved exceptional value of ownership by improving their critical business processes with Livelink ECM - Suite for SAP Solutions.

The application products are:

• Livelink ECM -Accounts Payable Solutions automates the invoice process to ensure minimum process time, maximum efficiency, and optimal allocation of resources.

• Livelink ECM -Customer Information Management improves customer relations and streamlines customer service and sales processes by providing easy access to consolidated customer information from SAP® and non-SAP sources directly in Microsoft Outlook.

• Livelink ECM -Data Archiving Solutions provides secure, long-term archiving of data from SAP applications, offloading aged data to reduce storage costs and improve performance, while providing seamless access to archived data.

• Livelink ECM -Document Archiving Solutions provides secure, long-term archiving of

• documents and data from SAP applications, offloading aged content to reduce storage

• costs and improve performance, while providing seamless access to archived content.

• Livelink ECM -Document Management Solutions provides data and document archiving for SAP applications to reduce storage costs and improve system performance.

• In addition, it provides consolidated views of related content from multiple SAP and non-SAP applications, integrating content into the context of business processes.

• Livelink ECM -Employee Information Management provides HR departments with a complete solution based on ECM: all printed documents from employees and job applicants, master data and internal personnel documents are immediately available from the electronic personnel file.

• Livelink ECM -Shared Document Access provides your customers, partners and employees with a personalized overview of all documents related to a specific business process.

• Livelink ECM - Supplier Information Management helps improve procurement processes with a 360º view of supplier information

• Livelink ECM -Vendor Invoice Management Solutions is a prepackaged composite application that works with ERP systems to streamline Accounts Payable (AP) operations, by optimizing and simplifying the process of creating, managing, monitoring and routing purchase orders and invoices for AP personnel and vendors.

Open Text Contract Management SAP is a composite application which operates and provides central storage and access to contract information, making processes easier and more efficient.

Open Text Extended ECM Solutions is a complete ECM application that allows content-centric business processes, complementing your SAP Business Suite applications’ ability to manage transaction-centric processes.

There are many, many companies in the corporate world whose input, process and output are all information, information and information only. They are the corporate leaders as well. They are the soft- and hard-ware companies. They device to generate process and use information. Their number, value and growth speak about the role information in business decision making.

3.5.2 Paradigm shift from product orientation to knowledge orientation

In the post-industrial era or the information age, the focus of companies has shifted from being product oriented to knowledge oriented, in a sense that market operators today compete on process and innovation rather than product. Information Systems has a number of different areas of work:

i. Information Systems Strategy ii. Information Systems Management iii. Information Systems Development

Each of which branches out into a number of sub disciplines, that overlap with other science and managerial disciplines such as computer science, pure and engineering sciences, social and behavioral sciences, and business management.

i. Information Systems Strategy:

The function of a IS strategy according to Wilson (1989), ‘to bring together the business aims of the company, an understanding of the information needed to support those aims, and the implementation of computer systems to provide that information. It is a plan for the development of systems towards some future vision of the role of information systems in the organization.’ Reponen (1993) puts IS strategy as, ‘something which is essentially a planning process in the minds of the decision makers, users and developers of the systems. It is supported with written reports and plans, but they are of secondary importance.’

Information Systems Management: Information systems management covers Business Systems Analysis; Communications System Design; Databases; E-business & E-commerce;

Engineering Management: Enterprise Resource Management (ERP); Management of Specific Areas: Enterprise Resource Management (ERP); Management of IT; Operating

Systems; Operations Management; Production Engineering: Operations Research; Industrial Engineering &

Manufacturing: Operations Research; Manufacturing Engineering: Operations Research; Real-Time Systems;

Systems & Computer Architecture of Databases; Systems & Computer Engineering; Systems Integration and so on. Information systems management will be able to:

• Apply appropriate problem-solving methodologies to analyze and solve problems.

• Apply standard systems practices to plan, implement, manage, and evaluate IS.

• Communicate effectively using oral, written, and multimedia techniques.

• Manage change in the dynamic and global environments of automated systems.

• Use technology to research information needed to produce informed decisions

• Identify relationships between programming languages and information systems.

• Demonstrate skills in systems analysis appropriate to the MIS projects.

• Demonstrate skills in the design, creation, maintenance, and reporting functions of database systems and database systems management.

• Use a systems approach to select hardware and software for an organization.

• Evaluate ethical issues related to information systems, work productivity, and human factors.

Information Systems Development: There are several models of development of information systems.

a. Waterfall Model/Linear Sequential Model is the classic view of system development.

It is seen as a journey down a river with the end of each phase being a waterfall. The Waterfall Model consists of the following steps: System Conceptualization, Systems Analysis, System Design, Coding and Testing. In recent years it has come under attack, due to its rigid design and inflexible procedure.

b. Iterative Development: The iterative model addresses many of the problems associated with the Waterfall model. It does present new challenges. The user community needs to be actively involved throughout the project. While this involvement is positive for the project, it is demanding on the time of the staff and can add project delay. The iterative model can lead to ‘scope creep’ since user feedback following each phase may lead to increased customer demands.

c. Spiral Model: Spiral development is a family of software development processes characterized by repeatedly iterating a set of elemental development processes and managing risk. The spiral model was designed to include the best features from the waterfall and prototyping models, and introduces a new component - risk-assessment.

The term “spiral” is used to describe the process that is followed as the development of the system takes place.

Similar to the prototyping, an initial version of the system is developed, and then repetitively modified based on input received from customer evaluations. Unlike the prototyping model, however, the development of each version of the system is carefully designed using the steps involved in the waterfall model.

d. RAD Model: Rapid Application Development (RAD) model is a linear sequential software development process model. It emphasizes an extremely short development cycle. The RAD model is a ‘high-speed’

adoption of the linear sequential model in which rapid development is achieved by using a component-based construction approach. Business modeling, Data modeling, Process modeling, Application generation are its components.