All boxes, cases, and the opening vignette are new to this edition. We have added a new
learning objective about the importance of special-purpose systems. This chapter includes
many new examples of how managers and decision makers can use information and decision
support systems to achieve personal and corporate goals. The section on problem solving and
decision making has new examples. We have emphasized that many of the information and
decision support topics discussed in the chapter can be built into some ERP systems, discussed
in Chapter 9.
We have added a new section on the benefits of information and decision support systems
at the end of the material on decision making and problem solving. This new section investigates the performance and costs of these systems and how they can benefit individuals,
groups, and organizations by helping them make better decisions, solve and implement
problems, and achieve their goals. We have also included new examples, including how
British Airways used the problem solving approach to address flight delays.
The section on MIS has updated examples and references throughout. We explore how
companies and local governments use software tools to help them in developing effective
MIS reporting systems. The section on demand reports provides new examples and references
about how people can get medical records from the Internet. The section on exception reports
has a new example of the use of mashups to get reports from different data sources. This
section also includes a new example of the use of texting as a way to deliver exception reports.
The “Financial MIS” section has new examples and material. We have shown how the Internet has been used to make microloans using social-networking sites such as Facebook. We
have also investigated how financial companies use corporate news to help them make trading
decisions. The section on manufacturing MISs has also been updated. We have included
examples that show how companies, such as Toyota, continue to use JIT inventory control
techniques. The material on marketing MISs has been updated with new material on the use
of video advertising and social-networking sites to promote new products and services. This
section also includes new examples of how the Internet is being used to auction radio ads.
The material on the human resource (HR) MIS has also been updated with new information
about just-in-time talent and the use of supply chain techniques in the HR area.
The use of digital dashboards and business activity monitoring continues to be stressed
in the section on decision support systems along with examples and references. The section
on optimization includes new examples, showing the huge cost savings of the technique. The
use of data warehousing, data marts, and data mining, first introduced in Chapter 5, is
emphasized in this chapter. New corporate examples of the use of data warehousing, data
marts, and data mining that can be used to provide information and decision support have
been placed throughout the section. The use of mashups to integrate data from different
sources into a data-driven DSS has been included.
This chapter continues to highlight group support systems. We discuss additional features
of groupware, including group monitoring, idea collection, and idea organizing and voting
features. New examples and approaches have been explored, including the use of the Web
to deliver group support. We have modified the section on parallel communication to include
the use of unified communication in group decision making.
To keep the chapter length reasonable, we have trimmed a number of the sections. We
have deleted the section on developing effective reports and moved some of the material into
other sections. The material on the characteristics of a management information system has
been summarized in a table. The characteristics of a decision support information system and
those of an executive support system have also been put in new tables.