Business Intelligence and Enterprise Systems: Key Concepts

Business Intelligence and Data Analysis

Social Network Analysis

Social Network Analysis (SNA): A technique that attempts to find groups of people who work together, identify people who should collaborate but do not, or find experts in a particular subject area.

Measures

Measures: The values or numbers a user wants to analyze.

Master Data

Master Data: The data deemed most important in the operation of a business.

Web Content Mining

Web Content Mining: Extracting textual information from web documents.

Continuous Planning Process

Continuous Planning Process: A strategic business planning process involving continuous monitoring and adjusting of business processes to enable rapid reaction to changing business conditions.

Data Mining

Data Mining: A set of methods used to find hidden predictive relationships in a data set.

Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence (BI): Tools and techniques for analyzing and visualizing both structured and unstructured data to obtain an understanding of current and past performance.

Digital Dashboard

Digital Dashboard: A user interface visually representing summary information about a business’s health, often from multiple sources.

Geographic Information System

Geographic Information System (GIS): An information system designed to store and analyze spatially referenced data.

Decision Support System

Decision Support System (DSS): A special-purpose information system designed to support organizational decision-making.

Key Concepts in Business Intelligence and Data Analysis

  • In an RDBMS, an entity is represented as a table.
  • A key indicator report provides a summary of critical metrics on a recurring schedule.
  • To respond swiftly to a highly competitive and rapidly changing environment, organizations utilize a continuous planning process.
  • To determine the likelihood of new customers defaulting on a loan, a manager in a bank would typically use classification.
  • Web usage mining entails analyzing clickstream data.
  • Market share analysis is typically used by the marketing function of an organization.
  • Big data is characterized by all of the following except verifiability.
  • Monitoring and sensing agents keep track of key information such as inventory levels, notifying users when conditions change.
  • Annual sales is an example of attribute data commonly used in GIS applications.

Enterprise Systems

Enterprise System

Enterprise System: An information system that allows companies to integrate data on a company-wide basis.

Legacy System

Legacy System: An older system that is not designed to communicate with other applications beyond departmental boundaries.

Value System

Value System: A collection of interlocking company value chains.

ERP Extended Component

ERP Extended Component: Components that support the primary external activities of the organization for dealing with suppliers and customers.

Standalone Applications

Standalone Applications: Systems that focus on the specific needs of an individual department.

Vanilla Version

Vanilla Version: The features and modules that a packaged software system comes with out of the box.

Make-to-Stock Process

Make-to-Stock Process: The processes associated with producing goods based on forecast demand.

Business Process Management

Business Process Management (BPM): A systematic, structured improvement approach by all or part of an organization whereby people critically examine, rethink, and redesign business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in one or more performance measures, such as quality, cycle time, or cost.

Procure-to-Pay Process

Procure-to-Pay Process: The processes associated with acquiring goods from suppliers.

Internally Focused System

Internally Focused System: An information system that supports functional areas, business processes, and decisions within an organization.

Key Concepts in Enterprise Systems

  • Enterprise systems are information systems that allow companies to integrate information and support operations on a company-wide basis.
  • Customer service is a core activity according to the value chain model.
  • Technology development is a support activity according to the value chain model.
  • A legacy system is not an ERP system.
  • The processes associated with obtaining goods from external vendors are referred to as procure-to-pay processes.
  • The processes associated with selling a product or service are referred to as order-to-cash processes.
  • Make-to-order processes are most often associated with pull-based manufacturing of products.
  • Information systems that focus on supporting functional areas, business processes, and decision-making within an organization are referred to as internally focused systems.
  • An enterprise system that has not been customized is commonly referred to as a vanilla version.