1. Mr C Johnston ICT Teacher www.computechedu.co.uk
BTEC IT Unit 03 - Lesson 01 Business Information
Mr C Johnston
ICT Teacher

2. Session Objectives
Understand how organisations use business information.

3. Information Terms Qualitative Quantitative Primary Data Secondary Data
Personal and subjective
Quantitative
Factual, often number based – obtained through well defined processes
Primary Data
Collected yourself
Secondary Data
Collected from an external source – internet, TV

4. Types and Purposes of Information
Types and purposes of information Produce a poster showing a mind map identifying different types of information.
The poster needs to include an example of a purpose for each type of information identified there.
Make sure you clearly show the differences between:
- qualitative and quantitative information
- primary and secondary data.
Use colour on your poster to show the different strands of the mind map.
BTEC Book – Unit 03 p3/4

6. Purpose of Information
Read Pages of the Unit 03 book
Type of information
Use
Gaining advantage
Decision making
Analysis
Operational Support

7. Decision Making (strategic)
Operational Support
Operational Information is the day-to-day information, which an organisation uses. Typically section leaders and supervisors use it to ensure operations run smoothly. It could be amount of hours employees worked, daily productivity figures, daily sales of a department in a shop.
Analysis (tactical)
Tactile Information is operational information in a summarised form often used by middle management to oversee operations. It could be monthly production figures or entire weekly sales for an entire branch of a shop. Tactile information shows the big picture – how well an individual department of a shop did on a certain day would not interest an area manager.
Decision Making (strategic)
Strategic Information is a more summarised form of tactile information, which allows directors, and other senior management make decisions about the business. This information will take into account demographic information so predictions can be made about how to run the business in the future. This type of information is often produced by an MIS system.
Gaining Advantage
Using local adhoc information about future events to exploit opportunities and create more business. May involve looking for trends and patterns in previous data.

8. Organisations and Information
Consider three organisations of your choice. These could be for example: a college, a council, a charity, a shop, a restaurant, a church
1. What types of information is each organisation likely to need?
2. Where could each organisation get the necessary information from?
3. In each organisation which departments are involved with collecting and
processing the different types of information?
4. What are the similarities and different in information needs between the
organisations you have selected?
BTEC Book – Unit 03 p3/4

9. Sources of Information
Internal Information
Information generated within the organisation
External Information
Information which is available from outside the organisation
+ve Good Sources
-ve Bad Sources
???
Read Pages of the Unit 03 book

11. Sources of Information
In groups give a presentation on the sources of information. One group will deal with internal sources and the other will deal with external sources.
Use flipchart sheets or PowerPoint as the visual aids to help the presentations. Within your group allocate team members to prepare a flipchart page each for the following topics.
Internal External
- Financial - Government
- Personnel - Trade groupings
- Marketing - Commercially provided
- Purchasing - Databases
- Sales Research
- Manufacturing
- Administration
BTEC Book – Unit 03 p5 / 6