5.2 Information Systems within an Organisation

5.2 Information Systems within an Organisation


Data Processing Systems are used within an organisation to process day to day events. These systems perform many useful functions such as logging sales or the movement of products within a warehouse. Such as system will pass data into an information system.

5.2.2 Information Systems versus data processing systems
Both of these types of system are used in many organisations and it can be difficult to tell precisely where one stops and the other begins. It is therefore even more difficult to grasp the distinction between them.

A data processing system gathers data for use within an information system. It handles routine events which prompt some form of input into a system.

Examples of these include the systems that process data from a supermarket checkout, or process data relating to stock movements within a warehouse. Hence, people at the lowest levels of an organisation’s structure generally use these systems.

An information system gathers data from data processing systems and often aggregates or summarises it in some way.

For example, a supermarket manager will not be concerned about every single can upon the shelves but will be concerned with the overall view of stock. The sales data is gathered by a data processing system but the summary is produced by an information system.
Systems used by progressively higher levels of management, such as Management Information Systems, will aggregate more and more information, but present it in an increasingly summarised form.


5.2.3 How a business is organised

Three levels of ‘view’
Three different perspectives on a company can be summarised as three different ‘views’ of the organisation.

Strategic View:
This is the view from the top of the company, including senior management and company directors. This view allows overall company strategy to be planned and decisions to be taken at this level have an impact felt at lower levels only after a few weeks, or even over a few years. These decisions will affect the whole organisation, or large sections of it.

Tactical View:
This is the view middle management have, including the management of operations and allocation of staff to resources. Decisions taken in relation to the running of a department will be felt that day, or may involve planning ahead into the next few months. The decisions will affect large groups of people working together within an organisation, such as within a particular factory or store.

Operational View:
This is the view that a person has at the lowest level, including production ‘operatives’, heads of small departments or groups of people who have a specific, small, area of responsibility. This view relates to the day-to-day operations and decisions taken will be felt immediately and only impact on a few people.

A company’s information system should provide information tailored to each level within the company in order to assist those people as effectively as possible.
But no matter at what level the information system is used, it ultimately receives its data from each and every transaction that occurs, whether that be an item sold or an item taken from a warehouse.