Chapter 1 Business Driven Technology

 Information Technology (IT)?

IT is everywhere in business. Understanding IT provides great insight to anyone learning about business.

Information Technology’s Impact on Business Operations

•  Organization typically operate by functional areas or functional silos
•  Functional areas are interdepent

Information Technology Basics

•  Information technology (IT) – A field concerned with the use of technology in managing and processing information. IT is an important enabler of business success and innovation

•  Management information system (MIS) – A general name for the business function and academic discipline covering the application of people, technologies and procedures to solve business problems. 

•  When beginning to learn about information technology it is important to understand

-Data, information and business intelligence-IT resources-IT cultures

 Data, information and business intelligence

•   Data is a raw facts that describe the characteristics of an event Information is a data converted into a meaningful and useful context.
•  Business intelligence is an applications and technologies that are used to support decision          making efforts.
• Information is data converted into a a meaningful and useful context.

 IT Resources

•  People use
•  Information technology to work with
•  Information

 IT Cultures

Organizational information cultures include;

• Information-Functional Culture – Employees use information as a means of exercising influence or power over others. For example, a manager in sales refuses to share information with marketing. This causes marketing to need the sales manager’s input each time a new sales manager’s input each time a new sales strategy is developed.

• Information-Inquiring Culture – Employees across departments search for information to better understand the future and align themselves with current trends and new directions.

• Information-Discovery Culture – Employees across departments are open to new insight about crisis and radical changes and seek ways to create competitive advantages.

• Information-Sharing Culture – Employees across departments trust each other to use information (especially about problems and failures) to improve performance.