Information Systems in MBS UG Studies Dr. Ilias Petrounias Room 3.19, MBS West

Outline What are Information Systems Why are they of interest in business & management studies Why are they difficult to get right Capabilities MBS UG studies’ options

What are Information Systems Systems for gathering, storing, manipulating and analysing information What to gather For whom to gather How to gather What to store At what level For what reason is the manipulation of information done What analysis can be done and can one gain a competitive advantage

Why Study IS in MBS (of all places) ???? Management a very wide discipline Management of people Management of processes Management of resources

Expenditure on IT Investments in 2007 worldwide (Bartels, A., Dalye, E., Lo, H., Global IT 2008 Market Outlook, Forrester Research, Feb. 2008) $ 435 billion in computer equipment $ 352 billion in communications equipment $ 336 billion in software (2/3 were packaged software) $ 488 billion on IT services and outsourcing $ 660 billion on IT staff costs

IS in Organisations IT and IS started by offering efficiency and effectiveness to organisations Then their role became strategic (by helping to transform organisations and whole industries Now the focus has moved to value creation (i.e. how IS and IT can create additional value as part of a business). Information resources play a very important role as strategic tools for organisations.

Impact of IS/IT Capable IT is as critical to business success as capable sales or marketing Entire company suffers when they don’t see value from IT ➡ Enterprise gives up one of the most important sources of leverage it has

The ‘I’ and ‘T’ of IT In itself, IT has no intrinsic business value, other than what you can sell it for. ‘Information’ needs to be separated from ‘technology’. MBS courses focus on the ‘I’ the ‘T’ is part of computer science

Technology as a Component of Business Strategy An IT strategy is a strategic business tool used to structure a future path and addresses the use and management of IT resources, business IT relationships both internal and external and the flow and storage of information throughout the organisation.

Enabling a ‘Virtuous Cycle’

Examples of IS Capabilities Retrieval of data (databases) Integrated, historical, summarised but also individual data (data warehouses) Integration of process information (Enterprise Resource Planning systems) Business Intelligence solutions + Different applications (e-commerce, social media, accounting systems, supply chain systems,...)

IS in MBS UG Studies (General Categories) General Areas Categories/Use of IS E-Business Modelling/Simulation Business Intelligence/Analytics Communication IS/IT Strategy

Options in 2nd Year BMAN21061: Introduction to Business Information Systems General intro to IS, different categories and organisational uses BMAN20880: Business Process Modelling Modelling of organisational data and processes from an IS perspective, business process improvement/optimisation BMAN20162: Business Intelligence Knowledge and analysis of organisational data to provide historical, current and predictive view of an organisation, its operations and its customers. IBM participation with case studies and application areas.

Options in 2nd Year (cont.) BMAN20471: e-Business and e-Marketing e-business infrastructure and e-business strategy; e-business models; e-marketing; customer relationship management; cloud computing BMAN20892: Social Media & Social Network Use and impact of social media in organisations and their support for collaborative work BMAN20901: Virtual Team Working Team collaboration, interaction and decision making via IT