CHAPTER 6

ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION COME AT DIFFERENCE LEVEL AND DIFFERENCE FORMAT AND "GRANULARITIES"

nformation granularities - Refers to the extent of detail within the information. Employees must be able to  correlate the different levels, formats and granularities of information when making decisions.

*Example : If employees are using a supply chain management system to make decisions, they might find that their suppliers send information in different formats and granularity at different levels.

The Value of Transactional and Analytical Information 

Transactional Information - Encompasses all of the information contained within a single business process or unit of work and its primary purpose is to support the performing of daily operational task 

*Example : Withdrawing cash from an ATM, making an airline reservation

Analytical Information - Encompass all organizational information, and its primary purpose is to support the performing of managerial analysis tasks.

*Example : Trends, sales, product statistics

The Value of Timely Information

Follow the trends to require information.

Real-time information - immediate, up-to-date information

Real-time systems - provide real-time information in response to query requests. 

Many organizations use real-time systems to exploit key corporate transactional information.

The timeliness of the information required must be evaluated for each business decision. Organizations do not want to find themselves using real-time information to make a bad decision faster.

The Value if Quality Information

Five common characteristics of  high-quality information :

Accuracy : Are all the values correct?  For example, is the name spelled correctly?

Completeness : Are any of the value missing? For example, is the address complete including street, city?

Consistency : Is aggregate or summary information in agreement with detailed information?For example, are there any duplicate customer? 

Uniqueness : Is each transaction, entity represented only once in the information? For example, are there any duplicate customer?

Timeliness : Is the information current with respect to the business requirements? For example, is information updated weekly, daily or hourly?

THE COST OF POOR INFORMATION

Can lead to making the wrong decisions. Bad information can cause serious business ramifications such as : 

• Inability to accurately track customers, which directly affects strategic initiatives such as CRM and SCM
• Difficulty identifying the organization's valuable customer
•  Difficulty tracking revenue because of inaccurate invoices.
• Inability to build strong relationships with customers

THE BENEFITS OF GOOD INFORMATION

Can significantly improve the chances of making a good decision and directly increase an organization's bottom line. Such information ensures that the basis of the decisions is accurate