Title: Final Exam
Course: KVCC BUS203 > Section: Assessments

Question 1

The first part of the textbook discusses Management Information Systems and their importance to the world of business. The following questions cover content from the first three chapters in the text:

a.      Define what a management information system is. This definition should include a comprehensive description that includes all of the topics and items discussed in this class over the semester.

b.     How do these MIS enhance businesses? As part of this discussion make sure to include the following topics:

i.                   Business Process Modeling

ii.                 Process Quality

iii.               The Five Forces Model

iv.               Competitive Strategy

v.                 Value Chains

vi.               Competitive Advantage

c.      The I in MIS stands for information however what is information? How can information be used in a business such as the areas listed above? What makes up quality information? What steps would you take to ensure that there is quality of information within your business (Give specific scenarios)?

d.     Speaking of your business I want you to think more on a scenario where you are owning your own business. The field doesn’t matter however I want you to think about this business and then relate Management Information systems to its operation. I recommend pulling this content from your final project for this same class or at the very least using a field you have interest in. Answer the following questions:

i.                   In the part b above you were asked a generic question on how does MIS enhance a business, here I want you to think specifically on how you could personally apply MIS systems into your own business:

1.      How important would they be to your operations? Why?

2.      What kinds of systems would you use?

3.      What information would you collect?

a.      How would you use it?

4.      Overall summarize why MIS would be integrated into your business and why. If you decide that you would not need these systems, then state why.

a.      e. One of the first assignments we did in BUS 205 (I know this is another class) was to examine how we use MIS in our personal lives. You were to collect a log of each time you used an information system during your personal life. Now that you have hopefully a better idea of what these systems are please reflect on this assignment and determine whether or not you use these systems more in your life than you previously thought. Even if you did not do the assignment you can still think about how these systems impact your life. Write a brief summary on how these MIS crop up and effect your daily experience.

Question 2

The second part of the textbook covers the topic of Information technology and its relation to MIS within a business. The following questions cover information from chapters 4-6:

a.      Summarize the relationship between Hardware and Software and how this infrastructure impacts Management Information Systems:

i.     What does a business professional need to know about Hardware?

ii.     What about software?

1.      How does licensing work? (be generic)

2.      What types of software exist?

a.      Horizontal

a.      Vertical

b.     One of a Kind

c.      What is open source

b.     What is virtualization (explain both hardware and software)

c.      One of these types of software that is often used in a business environment is that of a database, the following questions are on these:

i.                   What is a database?

1.      Describe it’s make up

2.      What are keys?

3.      What is metadata?

4.      What is a query?

5.      What is filtering?

ii.                 What is a database management system and what does it provide for a database? Relate this topic to a business.

iii.               What is a database application? How does it relate to a business?

iv.               If we go back to the scenario of you opening your own business lets reconsider this but apply the idea of databases further than just MIS:

1.      In question 1 you talked about the information that you would store and use, what I would like you to do is think of how this data relates to a database. How will you store it/what style of database would you use? What would you set as relationships between the tables?

d.     The final chapter in this section discusses that of the Cloud, the following questions are on this:

i.                   What is the cloud?

ii.                 How does it impact a business?

1.     How can a business use the cloud (give examples)?

2.     What are the advantages

3.     Disadvantages

4.     Cloud service providers

5.     Content delivery networks

6.     Web services internally

7.     Security

iii.               Again go back to the example of your business and consider how you would use the cloud within this organization. Please be specific as to what level of use you will start with and your plans to expand in the future. What types of security will you put into place?

iv.               Finally relate to this to your personal life, what use do you have for cloud services? How do you expect this to expand in the future? What is your opinion of the cloud overall?

Question 3

Part 3 of the textbook deals with using IS to achieve competitive advantage. The following questions are on this topic and cover content from Chapters 7-9:

1.     The book describes various styles of Information systems. Define each through a scenario/example:

i.     Personal

ii.     Workgroup

iii.     Enterprise

iv.     Inter-Enterprise

2.     One of the problems with a business adding systems like these over time is that you have separate collections of information that do not talk to each other. These are referred to as data silos. Having these separate silos of information can cause many different problems within an organization. Discuss these data problems and list some solutions to them. You can use scenarios and examples to illustrate your point.

a.      The book describes three types of enterprise systems which are CRM, ERP, and EAI. Define each and provide an example scenario in which they could be used within a business. If you go back to your own business would you use any of these system types? Why/Why Not?

b.     Another style of system is that of social media information systems which have a whole chapter dedicated to them. As part of the discussion on these systems it describes the power of social capital. First of all, define this in your own words, what does it mean to have social capital. How can you use this to further yourself in the future/what techniques will you use to increase your level of capital? What will you do to increase the social capital of your employees to enhance your business? In your opinion is this important or can you avoid these social media systems in your personal/professional lives? Why/Why Not? Do you think that there will be changes in the future as to how we use these systems for both parts of our lives? What direction do you foresee?

c.      The final system type discussed in this part of the book deals with Business Intelligence Systems. The following questions relate to these styles of systems:

i.                   What is business intelligence? How can it support a business?

ii.                 Define the difference between data warehouses and data marts? Do you think that these would be applicable to your own business? Why/Why not?

iii.               What methods do we have to process business intelligence? What levels of use would these have within your own business?

iv.               Part of a business intelligence system is the acknowledgement that these businesses are collecting large amounts of data on you hence the term BigData. What are your thoughts on this? Do you consider this as just part of the modern era or can this be changed? Would you collect data in your own business? How would you explain the need for this collection? Please take some thought and consider this question over because it will be something that you will definitely be dealing with in the future.

Question 4

The final part of this book deals with the management of these information systems and the last set of questions will cover chapters 10 through 12:

a.      If a business is using these systems, then they are collecting large amounts of data to support their business operations. This data could contain personal information of their customers/staff or have some private company material, no matter what the data is it is very likely that this should not be disclosed to the general public. Due to this the topic of security is critical to be included with the adoption of these systems. We have discussed many different problems dealing with security and how this impacts a business. I want you to examine your business and think on what threats, vulnerabilities, and safeguards you would encounter. For this question I want you to completely examine this business area in terms of security and the policies and procedures that will be used to protect.

b.     The second part of this section deals with the organization and management of information systems. This illustrates the concept of how these systems are important and we must spend some time considering their implementation and then support their usage throughout. Through much of this exam you have been considering starting your own business and using that fictional organization to answer questions. I want you to again consider this business and think on how you would structure it around the topics covered in chapter 11. Some areas to consider:

i.                   Will you have a separate IS department?

1.      If so what will be the structure

2.      If not who will do these duties

ii.                 How will you plan the adoption/development of Information systems?

iii.               What are your thoughts on outsourcing?

1.      What is it?

2.      What are the advantages?

3.      Disadvantages?

4.      Are there any ethical implications with outsourcing? (Defend your answer)

5.      Would you out source within your business? Why/Why not?

c.      Chapter 12 focuses on the actual development of these systems, the following questions are from this chapter:

i.                   We have discussed systems development in other classes so we will not go into the definition or discussion on what development is. In the text book they discuss five areas where this development can be difficult and risky, they are:

1.      The difficulty of determining system requirements

2.      Changes in requirements

3.      Difficulties involving scheduling and budgeting

4.      Changing Technology

5.      Diseconomies of scale

6.      Discuss each and describe steps you would take to mitigate the risks for each.

ii.                 One of the hardest areas to accomplish is the definition of the system and what it will achieve? The book mentions a few different ways to accomplish these steps:

1.      Define systems goals and scope

2.      Assess Feasibility

3.      Form project team

4.      Plan project

5.      Describe each and how you would use them in your own business as a way to develop your own information systems.

iii.               This chapter ends with the discussion on performing maintenance on the system. We develop these systems and they sometimes think that is the end however they are not stagnant and need to be maintained. What techniques and procedures will you implement to make sure your systems are maintained and running efficiently? Your response should cover the following areas:

1.      Failure tracking

2.      Dealing with requests

3.      Patch

4.      Service packs

Attached Files: | - KVCC BUS203_BusinessSysInt_Final Exam(2).pdf