Information System Processing

 

The system processing is at a higher level, over the application for processing. The system is defined as a product made up of several applications set in orderly manner to produce a higher level information output different than the output of the application processing.

 

For example, the financial system is a product of finance, sales and purchase accounting application. Normally the system processing addresses the management issues of the business. In the financial system, processing is done for cash management, asset and liability management, working capital management, etc. Applications which are used for system processing are the finance transaction accounting the fixed asset processing, the receivables and payables processing, the sales and purchase accounting, etc.  On the platform of these applications the system is processed for the analysis of a number of aspects of the finance management.  It provides an insight into the funds flow, the sources and the uses of funds, profitability and productivity of the business.

 

The basic management functions are same, i.e., finance, materials, production or service, personnel and sales, etc.  In all the business.

 

However, these functions are executed in different manners on account of the following factors:

 

• Nature of business (trading or manufacturing);
• The type of business (product or service);
• The complexity of business (multiple locations, divisions, products, etc.);
• Management style (autocratic, participative);
• Decision making (centralized, decentralized and empowered); and
• Quality of the organization and the people (learning and positive proactive work culture).

 

In the information system processing, the underlying design and architecture would vary giving due regard to the specifics and specialties of that business.  Though all the businesses need a trial balance, a balance sheet, an income statement, the payables and receivables statement and the expense analysis, etc., the chart of account in each case would be different and typical to that particular business only.

 

This entire work of ascertaining the information needs to determination of the system design and architecture is called System Engineering.

 

System Engineering not only deals with applications and transactions but also with the various technologies which are used in the system implementation. The data acquisition technologies such as the bar code readers, the hand held terminals, the process embedded data loggers, the image processors, the digitizers, etc., are used for capturing the data inputs.