Why we need to study 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
- Organizations typically operate by functional areas or functional silos
- Functional areas are interdependent
➤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 problem. MIS is a business function , similar to Accounting, Finance , Operations and Human Resources.
- Data, information and business intelligence
- IT resources
- IT cultures
➤ Information
- Data - raw facts that describe the characteristics of an event
- Information - data converted into a meaningful and useful context.
- Business intelligence - applications and technologies that are used to support decision making effort.
- 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.