MIS Strategies
January 29 – February 2
Business and Technical People :
oAssume that at your organization, the technology is handled by computer
scientists and the business decisions are handled by marketing and accounting
people. Assume that your organization wants to increase the number of buyers
on its Web site.
The computer scientists do not know enough about buyer behavior to
come up with a solution. The business people do not know enough about
Web design to create an effective site.
A project team is a team designed to accomplish specific one-time goals,
which is disbanded once the project is complete. A project team draws
the best knowledge of the business people from the business people and
best technical solutions from the technology people.
oBridging the gap between the technology people and the business people is what
MIS is all about. An employee trained in MIS is able to communicate between
the business and technology personnel.
The Value Chain :
oThe value chain views the organization as a series of business processes, each of
which adds value to the product or service. If you view your organization as a
value chain, you can identify the important processes in adding value for
customers and, thus, identify IT systems that support those processes (p. 76).
oThe processes of the value chain can be broken into several components.
Receiving and storing raw materials, actually making the product, delivering the
product are known as primary value processes. There are processes that support
primary value processes such as human resource management, accounting, etc.
These are known as support value processes.
oTo successfully use a value chain, you must learn to identify the processes
capable of adding the most value and those processes capable of reducing the
most value.
