Tutorial Solutions – Week 8

1. The classical model of management describes the five functions of managers: planning,
organizing, coordinating, deciding, and controlling. Behavioural models show the actual
behaviour of managers is less systematic, more informal, less reflective, more reactive, and less
well organized. Managers perform a great deal of work at an unrelenting pace; their activities are
fragmented; managers prefer current, specific, and ad hoc information; they prefer oral forms of
communication, not written documentation; they maintain a diverse and complex web of
contacts. Information systems and decision-support systems must accommodate these behaviours
to be effective.

2. MIS are used for structured decisions with reports based on routine flows of data. DSS are
used for semi structured or unstructured decisions and focus on specific decisions or classes of
decisions. DSS are better for executive decision making because executives’ questions and
problems are unstructured and rely on external environmental information as well as internal
data.

3. Business intelligence hardware and software are only as intelligent as the human beings
who use them. Managers define strategic business goals and determine progress measurements
using business performance management and balanced scorecards that focus on key performance
indicators. Industry strategic analyses focus on changes in the general business environment with
special attention paid to competitors. Strong executive oversight ensures that the organization
focuses on the right issues rather than producing information, reports, and online screens that
divert attention to the wrong issues.

4. There are two strategies for developing BI and BA capabilities in an organization. The one-
stop integrated solution uses a single vendor to provide a total hardware and software solution.
That runs the risk of making the organization dependent on the vendor’s pricing power. It offers
the advantage of dealing with only one vendor and ensuring that all the hardware and software is
compatible. The second strategy of using multiple best-of-breed vendors gives a company
greater flexibility and independence in choosing hardware and software but runs the risk of
incompatibility between the components. Either solution locks an organization into its decision
and creates tremendous switching costs.

5. BPM attempts to systematically translate a firm’s into operational targets. Once the
strategies and targets are identified, a set of KPIs are developed that measure progress toward the
targets. The firm’s performance is then measured with information drawn from the firm’s
enterprise database systems. Well-designed ESS help senior executives monitor organizational
performance, track activities of competitors, recognize changing market conditions, and identify
problems and opportunities. Employees lower down in the corporate hierarchy also use these
systems to monitor and measure business performance in their areas of responsibility.

Answers to Multiple Choice Questions

1) When there is no well-understood or agreed-on procedure for making a decision, it is said to

A) undocumented.

B) unstructured.

C) documented.

D) semistructured.

E) random.

Answer: B

2) If you can follow a definite procedure to make a business decision, you are making a(n)
________ decision.

A) ad-hoc

B) procedural

C) unstructured

D) semistructured

E) structured

Answer: E

3) The decisions involved in creating and producing a corporate intranet can be classified as
________ decisions.
A) semistructured

B) procedural

C) analytic

D) structured

E) unstructured

Answer: A

4) The role of spokesperson falls into which of Mintzberg's managerial classifications?

A) Decisional

B) Informational

C) Interpersonal

D) Symbolic

E) Organizational

Answer: B

5) Mintzberg outlined three categories of managerial roles:

A) interpersonal, informational, and decisional.

B) control, leadership, oversight.

C) operational, management, and executive.

D) symbolic, organizational, and technical.

E) operational management, middle management, senior management.

Answer: A
6) According to Mintzberg, managers in their informational role act as:

A) figureheads for the organization.

B) leaders.

C) nerve centers of the organization.

D) negotiators.

E) liaisons.

Answer: C

7) All of the following managerial roles can be supported by information systems except:

A) liaison.

B) resource allocator.

C) nerve center.

D) disseminator.

E) disturbance handler.

Answer: E

8) When managers represent their company in the outside world and perform symbolic duties,
they are acting in their:

A) decisional role.

B) managerial role.

C) informational role.

D) interpersonal role.

E) leadership role.

Answer: D
9) As discussed in the chapter text, the three main reasons that investments in information
technology do not always produce positive results are:

A) management support, technical logistics, and user compliance.

B) organization, environment, culture.

C) information quality, information integrity, and information accuracy.

D) information quality, organizational culture, and management filters.

E) organization, culture, and technology.

Answer: D

10) Google's search engine is an example of which of the following types of decision?

A) Semi-structured

B) Financial

C) Analytic

D) High-velocity

E) Highly structured

Answer: D

11) Which of the following information systems supports a manager's role as a resource
allocator?

A) MIS

B) DSS

C) ESS

D) Social network
E) Telepresence systems

Answer: B

12) Which of the following BI tools or abilities has been driving the movement toward "smart
cities"?

A) OLAP

B) Chi-square analysis

C) Predictive analytics

D) Data mining

E) Big data analytics

Answer: E

13) Decisions regarding managing and monitoring day-to-day business activities are referred to
as ________ intelligence.

A) business

B) analytical

C) operational

D) transactional

E) production

Answer: C

14) Which of the following companies is not identified in the text as one of the leading producers
of business intelligence and analytics products?

A) Google

B) Microsoft
C) SAP

D) IBM

E) SAS

Answer: A

15) ________ are visual tools for presenting performance data in a BI system.

A) Dashboards and scorecards

B) Parameterized reports

C) Reports and the drill-down feature

D) Scenarios and models

E) Ad hoc report creation

Answer: A

16) Which of the following is not a part of business intelligence infrastructure?

A) Databases

B) Balanced scorecards

C) Data warehouses

D) Data marts

E) Analytic platforms

Answer: B

17) A(n) ________ report is produced when a user enters various values in a pivot table to filter
data.

A) drill-down
B) SQL

C) ad hoc

D) production

E) parameterized

Answer: E

18) BI that is designed to determine the most likely effects of changes in the business
environment is called:

A) statistical modeling.

B) environmental analytics.

C) predictive analytics.

D) big data analytics.

E) parameterized reports.

Answer: C

19) Predictive analytics is used for all of the following except:

A) anticipating customer response to price changes.

B) identifying the most profitable customers.

C) performing a bills of material analysis.

D) establishing consumer credit scores.

E) forecasting driver safety.

Answer: C

20) Location analytics can be used for all of the following except:
A) helping a marketer to determine which people to target with mobile ads.

B) quantifying the impact of mobile ads on in-store visits.

C) package tracking and delivery routing systems.

D) determining where to open a new store.

E) determining call center resolution rates.

Answer: E

21) An information system that combines data from internal MIS with information from
financial systems and external sources to deliver reports such as profit-loss statements and
impact analyses, is an example of:

A) DSS.

B) ESS.

C) BPM.

D) TPS

E) GIS.

Answer: B

22) Which of the following type of system would be used to present senior marketing executives
with high-level information about customer retention, satisfaction, and quality performance?

A) High velocity automated decision-making system

B) MIS

C) DSS

D) TPS

E) ESS

Answer: E
23) Measures defined by management and used to internally evaluate the success of a firm's
financial, business process, customer, and learning and growth are called:

A) benchmarks.

B) KPIs.

C) the balanced scorecard method.

D) BPM.

E) parameters.

Answer: B

24) Which of the following is not a true statement about ESS?

A) They support the structured decision making of senior executives.

B) They have significant drill-down capabilities.

C) They incorporate data from a firm's existing enterprise applications.

D) They can provide access to external data.

E) They require both a methodology for understanding performance information and a system
capable of delivering that information.

Answer: A

25) A well-designed ESS helps senior executives do all of the following except:

A) monitor organizational performance.

B) track the activity of competitors.

C) recognize changing market conditions.

D) identify problems and opportunities.

Answer: E