23-Ind-B4 Design of Information Systems · December 2013
Nivaar worked solution (AI-drafted; not reviewed by a licensed engineer)
National Exams — December 2013 — 98-Ind-B4, Design of Information Systems. 3 hours; closed book, no calculator permitted. The exam comprises four parts: Part A (select 20 of 40 terms and explain each in a sentence or two, 2 marks each = 40 marks), Parts B and C (select 2 of 5 questions in each part, 11 marks each = 22 marks per part), and Part D (select 1 of 2 questions, 16 marks). Complete answers to every term and every question in all four parts follow below, not only the minimum selection a candidate would submit on exam day.
Reference texts: Laudon & Laudon, Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm, 15th ed.; Schwalbe, Information Technology Project Management, 9th ed.
Question text not reproduced: the examination questions are © Engineers and Geoscientists BC. Open the official past paper (linked at the top of this page) to read the question, then follow the worked solution below.
Operational excellence means achieving higher levels of efficiency and productivity in a firm's core operations, so it can produce more output, at higher quality, for lower cost, than competitors. Information systems support this by tightly integrating data across the operation — enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems synchronize production, inventory, and procurement data in real time so decisions are made on current information rather than stale reports; automated manufacturing-execution and inventory systems (e.g., a retailer's just-in-time replenishment system linked directly to point-of-sale data) reduce excess inventory and stock-outs simultaneously; and process-automation tools remove manual, error-prone steps from routine transactions, directly lowering unit cost.
This objective is about knowing customers and suppliers well enough, and being responsive enough to them, that they prefer to keep doing business with the firm rather than switch. CRM systems (Question 1's term 15) consolidate every customer touchpoint into one view, letting a firm personalize service, anticipate needs, and resolve issues faster than a competitor working from fragmented data. On the supplier side, supply-chain-management and electronic-data-interchange systems that link directly into a supplier's own systems (shared demand forecasts, automated purchase orders) create switching costs and mutual dependency that a competitor without the same integration cannot easily replicate — the retailer/supplier data-sharing relationships used by large grocery and retail chains are the canonical example.
Historically, many operational decisions were made on incomplete information, guesswork, or after-the-fact reporting, because the data needed to decide well was not available when the decision had to be made. Business-intelligence tools, real-time dashboards, and data-warehousing/analytics (Question 1's terms 3 and 17) close that gap by surfacing accurate, current, and relevant information directly to the manager making the decision — for example, a real-time digital dashboard that lets network operations staff spot and respond to a service-quality problem within minutes rather than learning about it from a customer complaint days later. Better-timed, better-informed decisions compound into the other objectives above: improved decisions about inventory levels support operational excellence, and improved decisions about a specific customer's needs support customer intimacy.
