INTEGRATION OF BUSINESS PROCESS & INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Hi... Guys!

This is my first writing regarding the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) which is related to the Management Informartion Systems (MIS). First of all, I would like to talk about the nature of business organisation. All of us encountered the importance characteristics of a business organisation with respect to the nature of the business, its mission, vision, goals and objectives whithin their business environment. However, we should note that business functions are the basic building blocks of a business enterprise and they exist in various organisational structures. Some of the usual and important function areas covered  are :-

a) Marketing - functional area that performs marketing research to identify and determine what products and services customers needs and wants. 

b) Finance - functional area responsible for financial accounting, management accounting, and sometimes for corporate finance and investment management.

c) Production - functional area responsible for production operations (in producing goods and services that meet the production plan) and quality assurance.

d) Human Resource - functional area that provides services in support of business functions such as : recruitment, selection, training, appraisal and promotion of staff. 

e) MIS - functional area responsible for the development, maintenance and smooth running of computer systems that capitalise on Information Technology (IT) to achieve organisational objectives.

So... my friends... according to Cule (1995) proposed that all organisations are supported by three architectures namely process, organisation, and information. Firstly, for the Process Architecture, we also have to bear in mind that any business process (e.g. supply fulfilment, product development, or claims processing) could be organised as an architecture of subtasks, delegated personnel and management processes which are namely planning, organising, directing, and controlling.

Secondly, at the higher level, the Organisation Architecture represents the governance of the company, its culture, human resource policies, and internal relationships between employees and functions. The organisation architecture is human-centered. The constitution of this structure would influence the skill set of managers, management processes, and the success of business processes. For instance, in the early 1990's, people started to realise the important role of information technology (IT) plays in orchestrating business processes such as Business Process Reengineering (BPR) exercise usually results in the careful planning and implementation of the information structure (the database), the IT infrastructure and the information systems (IS) applications. For more details on BPR, please click on :-

http://www.synergem.org/

OR

Finally, the value of the Information Architecture in Cule's theory is mainly attributed to its capacity of being used as an efficient means of communications. Actually, there are intra-organisational and inter-organisational communications. According to Benbasat and DeSanctis (2000), communications can also be devided into transactional and relational. Hence, IT units and business units are strategically integrated through communications as a whole.