A Brief History of Business Analytics (Part 6 of 8)
2014 — Information Systems (IS)
Previous: A Brief History of Business Analytics (Part 5 of 8)
Contents
- Part 1: Introduction
- Part 2: 1749 — In the Beginning, there was Statistics
- Part 3: 1937 — Operations Research (OR) / Management Science (MS)
- Part 4: 1968 — Business Intelligence
- Part 5: Late 1960s — Decision Support Systems (DSS)
- Part 6: 2014 — Information Systems (IS)
- Part 7: 2014 — Business Analytics (BA)
- Part 8: Summary
According to Evans (2014), BI has evolved to become a new subject branch today — Information Systems (IS). Information Systems (IS) are systems for collecting, organizing, storing and communicating information (Wikipedia, 2018h). Figure 2 shows the Classic/Simple View of IS found in textbooks in the 1980s.
It comprises of:
1. Transaction Processing Systems (TPS): It’s a low/entry level software for general workers to perform transactions. No allowance for any decision functions here (Wikipedia, 2018m).
2. Management Information Systems (MIS): Made for Middle Managers, it comprises of hardware and software to handle information. It may have more discretionary functions to allow Middle Managers to perform simple decisions, but not as much as DSS (Wikipedia, 2018i).
3. DSS: Already described at A Brief History of Business Analytics (Part 5 of 8). Made for Senior Managers — a tool to help them make decisions.
4. Executive Information Systems (EIS): Made for Board Level Executives, EIS emphasizes graphical displays and easy-to-use user interfaces. They help top-level executives analyze, compare, and highlight trends. In recent years, the term EIS has lost popularity in favor of the term Business Analytics (BA) (Wikipedia, 2018f).
Many companies have created a position of Chief Information Officer (CIO) that sits on the executive board. The CIO title is given to the most senior executive responsible for Information Technology (IT) (Wikipedia, 2018c). These are some of the responsibilities of a CIO:
1. Mapping out the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) strategies and policies.
2. Making decisions regarding the purchase of IT equipment or creation of new computer systems.
3. Reducing the gap between IT and non-IT professionals, creating effective working relationships.
About Dr. Alvin Ang
Dr. Alvin Ang earned his Ph.D., Masters and Bachelor degrees from NTU, Singapore.
Previously he was a Principal Consultant (Data Science) as well as an Assistant Professor. He was also 8 years SUSS adjunct lecturer. His focus and interest is in the area of real world data science. Though an operational researcher by study, his passion for practical applications outweigh his academic background
He is a scientist, entrepreneur, as well as a personal/business advisor. More about him at www.AlvinAng.sg.
