Page 287 - Using MIS

Q2 How Can Information Systems Improve Process Quality? 255
Enterprise Processes

The Ethics Guide on pages Enterprise processes span an organization and support activities in multiple departments. At
266–267 demonstrates how one a hospital, the process for discharging a patient supports activities in housekeeping, the phar-
person’s actions can affect an macy, the kitchen, nurses’ stations, and other hospital departments.
entire company.
Enterprise information systems support one or more enterprise processes. As shown in
the second row of Figure 7-4, they typically have hundreds to thousands of users. Procedures
are formalized and extensively documented; users always undergo formal procedure training.
Sometimes enterprise systems include categories of procedures, and users are defined accord-
ing to levels of expertise with the system as well as by level of authority.
The solutions to problems in an enterprise system involve more than one workgroup or
department. As you will learn in this chapter, a major advantage of enterprise systems is that
data duplication within the enterprise is either eliminated altogether or, if it is allowed to exist,
changes to duplicated data are carefully managed to maintain consistency.
Because enterprise systems span many departments and involve potentially thousands of
users, they are difficult to change. Changes must be carefully planned and cautiously imple-
mented and users given considerable training. Sometimes users are given incentives and other
inducements to motivate them to change.
CRM, ERP, and EAI are three enterprise information systems that we will define and
discuss in Q4.

Inter-enterprise Processes
Inter-enterprise processes span two or more independent organizations. For example, the
process of buying a healthcare insurance policy via a healthcare exchange (see Case Study 7,
pages 288–290) involves many insurance companies and governmental agencies. Each of these
organizations has activities to fulfill, all of which are affected by laws, governmental policy, and
competitive concerns of the insurance companies.
Inter-enterprise information systems support one or more inter-enterprise processes.
Such systems typically involve thousands of users, and solutions to problems require coop-
eration among different, usually independently owned, organizations. Problems are resolved by
meeting, by contract, and sometimes by litigation.
Data are often duplicated among organizations; such duplication is either eliminated (as
will be done with PRIDE) or carefully managed. Because of their wide span, complexity, and use
by multiple companies, such systems can be exceedingly difficult to change. Supply chain man-
agement (discussed in the International Dimension, pages 501–518) is the classic example of an
inter-enterprise information system. We will study inter-enterprise PRIDE examples throughout
the remaining chapters of this text.

Q2 How Can Information Systems Improve
Process Quality?

Processes are the fabric of organizations; they are the means by which people organize their ac-
tivities to achieve the organization’s goals. As such, process quality is an important, possibly the
most important, determinant of organizational success. 2
The two dimensions of process quality are efficiency and effectiveness. Process efficiency
is a measure of the ratio of process outputs to inputs. If an alternative to the process in Figure 7-1

2 The subject of this chapter is structured processes, and we will discuss process quality in terms of them. Note,
however, that all of the concepts in this question pertain equally well to dynamic processes.