FREE online courses on Information Technology - Chapter 1 INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY - The Decision-Making Process
We have suggested that one important role of information
systems is to support decision making. Before we can continue our discussion of
the nature of information, we must examine the decision-making process in more
detail to see how information is used.
We must be aware of a problem before we can make a decision.
A problem exists when the decision maker's ideal situation differs from reality,
for example, when sales are below expectation. This example corresponds to
something we call disturbance handling; the manager discovers a discrepancy
between the ideal model and reality and attempts to find some way to eliminate
discrepancy.
After noting the existence of a problem, the decision maker
must decide what caused it. Are inventories up? Is the advertising budget too
low? After determining the cause or cause, the decision maker tries to solve the
problem by developing some program to remedy the situation. There is also
another type of problem-finding activity undertaken by the manager who is
looking for improvement projects. In this sense, the problem can be another
defined by asking, “What else could be doing at the present time?” The manager
is trying to anticipate problems and plan for them.
The vast amount of information available in corporate
databanks or data warehouses combined
with the vast information resources of the World Wide Web on the Internet make
problem finding an extremely important managerial activity. You must learn how
to discover that a problem exists and then use the variety of resources
available through computers and networks to locate data. You will use the data
to both understand the problem and develop a solution for it.
