CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the
Study
The term information system evolved from
a broader area of study; management information system(MIS), when computers were
first used in mid 1950s, the applications were primarily. The simple processing
of transaction records and preparations of business documents and standard
reports. Davis(1997). This use was termed data processing (DP) or electronic
data processing (EDP).
By
the mid, 1960s, many users and builders of information processing systems
developed a more comprehensive vision of what computers could do for an
organization. This vision was termed, a management information system (MIS). It
enlarged the scope of data processing to add systems for supporting management
and administrative activities including planning, scheduling, analysis and
decision making.
In
the 1980s and 1990s, their was merging of computer and communication technologies.
The organizational use of information technology was extended to internal
networks (intranet) local area networks, external networks that connect an
organization to its suppliers and customers and communication systems that
enable employee to work alone or in groups. Davis (1997).
Informationsystems has come to be applied in
various sphere of human endeavor. Stadium management is just one area where
information system can prove beneficial if applied.
A stadium is a place or a venue for outdoor
sports, concerts or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly
or completely surrounded by a field structure designed to allow spectators to
stand, sit and view the events (Wikipedia).
One
of the roles of information system is to take data and turn it into information
Davis (2014) a stadium around the world can employ information systems for
strategic advantages, as stadium management are constantly saddled with the
routine task of collecting customers data and transforming such data into
information. This ultimately leads to timely delivery of services, better
sitting arrangement and less redundancy in the day-to-day transactions….
Information
systems have become an integral part of most organizations. Without Information
Systems, Banks cannot process payments, governments cannot collect taxes, and
large shopping malls cannot take stock of their goods. In almost every
sector—education, finance, government, health care, manufacturing, and
businesses large and small—information systems play a prominent role. Every day
work, communication, information gathering, and decision making all rely on
information technology (IT). When we visit a travel agency to book a trip, a
collection of interconnected information systems is used for checking the availability
of flights and hotels and for booking them. When we make an electronic payment,
we interact with the bank’s information system rather than with personnel of
the bank. Modern supermarkets use IT to track the stock based on incoming
shipments and the sales that are recorded at cash registers. Most companies and
institutions rely heavilyon their information systems. Organizations such as
banks, online travel agencies, tax authorities, and electronic bookshops can be
seen as IT companies given the central role of their information systems. This
book is about modeling business processes. A business process describes the
flow of work within an organization. It is managed and supported by an
information system. In this chapter, we first introduce information systems
(section 1.1) and discuss different types of information systems and their
roles in organizations (section 1.2). After introducing information systems, we
look at the life cycle of these systems and concentrate on the important role
that models play in this life cycle (section 1.3). Next, we show how to
describe information systems in terms of states and state transitions (section
1.4). Although transition systems are not suitable for modeling industrial
information systems and business processes, they illustrate the essence of
modeling. Finally, we discuss the role of modeling and provide an outlook on
the next chapters
*
Information Systems
Organizations
offer products to customers to make money. These products can be goods or
services. In most organizations, huge volumes of data accumulate: data of
products, data of customers, data of employees, data of the delivery of
products, and data of other sources. These data therefore play an important
role in contemporary organizations and must be stored, managed, and processed,
which is where information systems come
into play. Because there is no unique understanding of what an information
system is, we develop a definition of an information system in this section by
considering an example organization everybody should be familiar with: a family
doctor.
A
patient who consults a family doctor usually first tells the doctor about the
symptoms. With this information, the doctor examines the patient and makes a
diagnosis. Afterward, the doctor determines the treatment to heal the patient.
For example, based on the diagnosis, the doctor may write the patient a
prescription for some medication. Finally, the doctor must document the
symptoms, the diagnosis, and the treatments. Today, most doctors use a software
system to record this information.
Before
we provide our definition of an information system, we first explain the term
“information,” which can mean any of the following:
1.
The communication act of one
agent—the term “agent” may refer to any entity ranging from a person or a
software component to an organization—informing another agent (e.g., by
exchanging messages);
2.
The knowledge or beliefs of agents as a part of their
mental state; or
3.
(Data) objects that represent
knowledge or beliefs
In
the example of the family doctor, the situation in which a patient informs the
doctor about the symptoms is an example of a communication act. The patient and
the doctor are the agents in this example. The doctor uses her knowledge and
the symptoms described by a patient to examine the patient. The doctor may have
beliefs about possible causes based on earlier interactions with the patient.
Based on the outcomes of the examination and on prior knowledge, the doctor
makes a diagnosis. The documentation of the symptoms, of the diagnosis, and of
the treatments in a software system leads to the creation of data objects.
These data objects represent the new knowledge and may be used for various
purposes—for example, for billing the insurance company of the patient.
There
are textbooks in which the authors distinguish between data, information, and
knowledge. In these textbooks, the term “data” refers to the syntax, “information”
Information
Systems: Introduction and Concepts refers
to the interpretation, and “knowledge” refers to the way information is used.
The
data element “29-01-1966,” for example, may be seen as a string; in a
particular context it may, however, be interpreted as the birth date of a
person, and people may use this information to congratulate this person on the
twenty-ninth of January each year. In this chapter, we use the term
“information” in a broader sense, as described earlier.
Having
explained “information,” we can define the term “information system.” The
standard definition is that an
information system manages and processes information. This definition is
general and allows different interpretations. For example, it is not clear
whether “information system” refers only to software systems or also to humans,
such as a family doctor who manages and processes information. For this reason,
we develop a more refined definition.
The
reason for “information system” having several meanings becomes clear when we
consider Alter’s framework for information systems (Alter 2002) in figure 1.1.
It shows an integrated view of an information system encompassing six entities:
customers, products (and services), business processes, participants,
information, and technology. Customers are the actors that interact with the
information system through the exchange of products or services. These products
are being manufactured or assembled in business processes that use
participants, information, and technology.
Participants
are the people who do the work. Information may range from information about
customers to information about products and business processes. Business
processes use technology, and new technologies may enable new ways of doing
work.
Customers
and participants are examples of agents.
As figure 1.1 shows, business processes play a central role in larger
information systems. A business process describes the flow of work within an
organization. In this book, we use the following definition of a business process
adapted from work by Weske, (2007).
*Business
process;A business
process consists of a set of activities thatis performed in an
organizational and technical environment. These activities arecoordinated to
jointly realize a business goal. Each business process is enacted by asingle
organization, but it may interact with business processes performed by
otherorganizations.
According
to this definition, a business process consists of coordinated activities.
Typically,these activities must be performed in a particular order. For
example, the familydoctor first examines a patient and then makes a diagnosis.
Although a business processis enacted by a single organization, it may interact
with other business processes withinand across organizational boundaries. For
example, the family doctor may bill theinsurance company of the patient.
Diagrams
like the one in figure 1.1 illustrate why it is difficult to provide a
standarddefinition of an information system. Some researchers and practitioners
hold a viewthat all six elements constitute an information system; other
researchers and practitionersargue that only a subset (e.g., just business
processes, information, and technology)constitutes an information system.Let us
pick up again the example of the family doctor. A patient serves asa customer,
according to figure 1.1, and the product is health care. The business
processdescribes the procedure of the medical treatment. It has five
activities: a patientinforms the doctor about the symptoms, then the doctor
examines the patient, makesa diagnosis, determines the treatments, and finally
the doctor enters the data into thesoftware system. The doctor is a participant,
pieces of information are the symptoms ofthe patient and the data added to the
software system, and the doctor’s software systemis the technology involved.
Given
these considerations, we present the following definition of an
informationsystem, which is adapted from Alter’s definition (Alter 2002).
Information
system;An information system is a software system to capture,transmit,
store, retrieve, manipulate, or display information, thereby supportingpeople,
organizations, or other software systems.
In
contrast to other definitions, we consider an information system to be a
softwaresystem. A family doctor is, hence, not part of an information system.
Furthermore, aninformation system may support not only an organization or a
person but also othersoftware systems and, hence, information systems. In
addition, our definition of aninformation system does not require the existence
of a business process; a text editor
Information
Systems: Introduction and Concepts is
an example of an information system that has no business process. In this
research,however, we concentrate on information systems in which business
processes play acentral role.
In
the example of the family doctor, the information system is the softwaresystem
that stores the data of the patient. This information system supports aperson:
the doctor.
*Types
of Information Systems
In
the previous section, we defined “information system.” Many types of
informationsystems exist on the market. To illustrate this, this section first
provides a broad classificationof information systems.We then narrow our view
to enterprise information systemsand present for this class of information
systems an overview of existing typesof software systems. Moreover, we provide
examples of typical enterprise informationsystems in various industries.
*
Classifying Information Systems
It
is ambitious to classify the many types of information systems that have
emerged inpractice. Many classifications for information systems exist in the
literature; see classificationsby Alter (2002), Dumas, Van der Aalst, and
TerHofstede (2005), and Olivé(2007), for instance. The problem is that
classification is in flux; that is, a classificationdeveloped a few years ago
is not necessarily current. As another and main limiting factor,the categories
of a classification are typically not disjointed: one type of informationsystem
belongs to multiple categories. Given these problems, we present a
high-levelclassification that distinguishes three classes of information
systems.
The
first class of information systems is personal
information systems. Such an informationsystem can manage and store
information for a private person. Examples arean address book or address
database and an audio CD collection.
Enterprise (or
organizational) information systems are
the second class of informationsystems. An enterprise information system is
tailored toward the support of an organization.
We
distinguish between generic types
and technologies of information systemsand information systems for certain types of organizations. The
former class of enterpriseinformation systems supports functionality that can
be used by a wide rangeof organizations. Examples are workflow management
systems, enterprise resourceplanning systems, data warehouse systems, and
geographic information systems. Incontrast, information systems for certain
types of organizations offer functionalitythat is tailored toward certain
industries or organizations. Examples are hospital informationsystems, airline
reservation systems, and electronic learning systems.
The
third class of information systems is public
information systems. Unlike personalinformation systems, public
information systems can manage and store informationthat can be accessed by a
community. Public libraries, information systems for museums,
Web-based
community information systems andWeb-based stock-portfolio informationsystems
are examples of public information systems.In this book, we concentrate on
enterprise information systems. These systems play acrucial role in a wide
variety of organizations and have an enormous economic value.
The
complexity and importance of such systems provide serious challenges for
ITprofessionals ranging from software engineers to management consultants.
Businessprocesses and business process models play a dominant role in
enterprise informationsystems. This explains why business process modeling is
the focus of later chapters.
*Types
of Enterprise Information Systems
There
are many types of enterprise information systems in practice. This section
givesan overview of the most important types.
Enterprise
Resource Planning Systems An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system isan information system that
supports the main business processes of an organization—for example, human
resource management, sales, marketing, management, financialaccounting,
controlling, and logistics. In the past, each business process was
encapsulatedin a separate information system. As most of these business
processes use relateddata, much redundant data had to be stored within the
respective information systems.
The
increasing number and complexity of information systems forced organizations
tospend much effort in synchronizing the data of all information systems.
An
ERP system is a solution to overcome these synchronization efforts by
integratingdifferent information systems. It is a software system that is built
on a distributed computingplatform including one or more database management
systems. The computingplatform serves as an infrastructure on which the
individual business processes areimplemented. First-generation ERP systems now
run the complete back office functionsof the world’s largest corporations.
ERP
systems run typically in a three-tier client/server architecture consisting of
a userinterface (or presentation) tier, an application server tier, and a
database server tier.
ERP
systems provide multi-instance database management, configuration
management,and version (or customization) management for the underlying
database schema,for the user interface, and for the many application programs
associated with them.
As
ERP systems are typically designed for multinational companies, they have to
supportmultiple languages, multiple currencies, and country-specific business
practices.
The
sheer size and the tremendous complexity of these software systems make
themcomplicated to deploy and maintain.
Information
Systems: Introduction and Concepts
ERP
systems are large and complex software systems that integrate smaller andmore
focused applications; for example, most ERP systems include functionality
thatis also present in other enterprise information systems, such as procurement
systems,manufacturing systems, sales and marketing systems, delivery systems,
finance systems,and workflow management systems.We introduce these systems in
the followingdiscussion.
The
market leader in the ERP market is SAP, with 43,000 customers for its system
SAP
ERP (data from 2009). Other important vendors are Oracle, Sage Company,
andMicrosoft.
Procurement
Systems A procurement
system is an information system that helps anorganization automates the
purchasing process. The aim of a procurement system is toacquire what is needed
to keep the business processes running at minimal cost. Withthe available
inventory, the expected arrival of ordered goods, and forecasts based onsales
and production plans, the procurement system determines the requirements
andgenerates new orders. At the same time, it tracks whether ordered goods
arrive. The keypoint is to order the right amount of material at the right time
from the right source.
If
the material arrive too early, money for buying the material and warehouse
spaceto store the material will be tied up. If, in contrast, the material
arrives too late, thenproduction is disrupted. Hence, the goal is to balance
reducing inventory costs withreducing the risk of out-of-stock situations.
Procurement
is an important ingredient of supply
chain management (SCM), in whichcoordination of the purchasing processes
is not limited to two actors. Instead, SCMaims at closely coordinating an
organization with its suppliers so that inefficiencies areavoided by optimizing
the entire purchasing process. For example, by synchronizingthe production
process of an organization with its suppliers, all parties may reduce
theirinventories. The market leader in the SCM market is SAP with SAP SCM;
competitorsare Oracle and JDA Software (data from 2007).
Procurement
is related to electronic data
interchange (EDI), the electronic exchange ofinformation based on a
standard set of messages. EDI can be used to avoid delays anderrors in the
procurement process as a result of rekeying information. In the classical
(pre-EDI)
situation, a purchase order is entered into the procurement system of
oneorganization, it is printed, and the printed purchase order is sent to the
order processingdepartment or to another organization. The information on the
printed purchaseorder is then reentered into the procurement system. By using
EDI or technology suchas Web services, organizations can automate these parts
of the procurement process.
The
purchase order is electronically sent to the processing department or to the
otherorganization. This automation makes the overall procurement process faster
and lesserror-prone, thereby reducing the costs for each purchase order.
Manufacturing
Systems Manufacturing
systems support the production processes
inorganizations. Driven by information, such as the bill of materials (BOM),
inventorylevels, and available capacity, they plan the production process. With
increasingautomation of production processes, manufacturing systems have become
more andmore important. For example, most steps in the production line of a
car, such as weldingthe auto body, are performed by robots. This requires
precise scheduling and materialmovement and, hence, a manufacturing system that
supports these processes.
Material requirements planning (MRP)
is an approach to translate requirements (i.e.,the number of products for each
period), inventory status data, and the BOM intoa production plan without
considering capacities. Successors, such as manufacturingresources planning (MRP2), also take capacity
information into account. Software basedon MRP and MRP2 has been the starting
point for many ERP systems.
Consider
an organization that produces different flavors of yogurt (e.g.,
strawberry,peach, and pear). The organization has several machines to produce
yogurt; each machinecan produce any flavor. Production planning means
scheduling each machine forthe flavor of yogurt it must produce. The production
plan depends on the demandfor each flavor and on the delivery of ingredients.
Furthermore, each machine hasto be cleaned at regular intervals and when the
production changes to a new flavor.
Calculating
a production plan is a complex optimization problem, often depending onseveral
thousand constraints. Consequently, the aim is to find a good solution ratherthan
an optimum solution.
Sales
and Marketing Systems Sales and marketing systems need to process
customerorders by taking into account issues such as availability. These
systems are driven bysoftware addressing the four p’s: product, price, place, and promotion. Organizationsundertake
promotional activities and offer their products at competitive prices to
boostsales, but a product that is not available or not at the right location
cannot be sold.
One
prominent example of a promotional activity is a bonus card in supermarkets.
Customers
who register for a bonus card get a discount or a voucher. Bonus cards arean
instrument for organizations to obtain personal data about their customers
(e.g.,age, address) and data about the buying behavior of customers (i.e., what
they buy andwhen they buy it). These data are collected and processed by an
information system. Theinformation extracted from these data can help to
improve marketing and to determinethe range of products to offer.
New
technologies are increasingly used to support sales over the Internet. Electroniccommerce uses the Internet
to inform (potential) customers, to execute the purchasetransaction, and to
deliver the product. Again, this functionality is typically embeddedin an ERP
system. To manage the contact with their customers, organizations use dedicatedcustomer relationship management (CRM)
systems. A CRM system has a
databaseto store all customer-related information, such as contact details and
past purchases.
Information
Systems: Introduction and Concepts
This
information helps tailor the marketing efforts to expected customer needs. As
anexample, a car dealer does not need to send information about a new expensive
sportscar to customers who recently bought a van or a compact car.
Delivery
Systems A delivery
system is an information system that supports the deliveryof goods to
customers. The task of these systems is to plan and schedule when and inwhat
order customers receive their products. Consider, for example, a
transportationcompany with hundreds of trucks. The planning of trips, the
routing of these trucks,and reacting to on-the-fly changes require dedicated
software. Creating an optimalschedule is a complex optimization problem. As
circumstances—for example, trafficjams and production problems—may force
rescheduling, contemporary delivery systemsaim to find a good solution rather
than a theoretical optimum solution. More andmore delivery systems offer
tracking-and-tracing functionality; for example, customersof package delivery
companies, such as UPS, can track down the location of a specificparcel via the
Internet.
Finance
Systems Among the oldest information systems are
finance systems. These
systemssupport the flow of money within and between organizations. Finance
systemstypically provide accounting functionality to maintain a consistent and
auditable setof books for reporting and management support. Another important
application offinance systems is the stock market. At a stock market, dedicated
information systemsare essential to process the operations. Again, the
functionality of finance systems isabsorbed by ERP systems. The origin of the
SAP system, for example, was in financerather than production planning.
Product
Design Systems Enterprise information systems not
only support the productionof products, they also support the design of
products. Examples are computer-aideddesign
(CAD) systems and product data management (PDM) systems. CAD systems supportthe
graphical representation and the design of product specifications. PDM
systemssupport the design process in a broader sense by managing designs and
their documentation.
Typically,
there are many versions of the same design, and designs of differentcomponents
need to be integrated. To support such complex concurrent engineeringprocesses,
PDM systems offer versioning functionality.
Workflow
Management Systems Many organizations aim
to automate their businessprocesses. To this end, they have to specify in which
order the activities of a businessprocess must be executed and which person has
to execute an activity at which time.
A
workflow refers to the
automation of a business process, in whole or in part. Eachactivity of the workflow
is implemented as software. The workflow logic specifies theorder of the
activities. A workflow management
system (WfMS) is an information systemthat defines, manages, and
executes workflows. The execution order of the workflow’sactivities is driven by
a computer representation of the workflow logic. The ultimategoal of workflow
management is to make sure that the proper activities are executedby the right
people at the right time (Aalst and Hee 2004).
Not
every business process corresponds to a single workflow. Workflows are
casebased;that is, every piece of work is executed for a specific case. One can
think of a caseas a workflow instance, such as a mortgage, an insurance claim,
a tax declaration, apurchase order, or a request for information. Each case is
handled individually accordingto the workflow definition (often referred to as
the workflow schema). Examplesof business processes that do not correspond to a
single workflow are stock-keepingprocesses; for example, in make-to-stock and assemble-to-order processes, end
productsor materials already exist before the order is placed (i.e., before the
case is created,manufacturing or assembly activities have already occurred).
For this reason, only fragmentsof such business processes (i.e., in-between stocking
points) are considered to beworkflows.
Interestingly,
WfMSs are embedded in some of the enterprise information systemsalready
mentioned; for example, most ERP andPDMsystems include one or more
WfMScomponents. Besides enterprise information systems, middleware software
(e.g., IBM’sWebSphere) and development platforms (e.g., the .NET framework)
embed workflowfunctionality; see the WebSphere Process Server and the Windows
WorkflowFoundation. Examples of stand-alone WfMSs are BPM|one, FileNet, and YAWL.
Data
Warehouses A data warehouse is a large database that stores historical and
upto-date information from a variety of sources. It is optimized for fast query
answering.
To
allow this, there are three continuous processes: The first process extracts
data atregular intervals from its information sources, loads the data into
auxiliary tables, andthen cleans and transforms the loaded data to make it
suitable for the data warehouseschema. Processing queries from users and from
data analysis applications is the task ofthe second process. The third process
archives the information that is no longer neededby means of tertiary storage
technology.
Nowadays,
most organizations employ information systems for financial
accounting,purchasing, sales and inventory management, production planning, and
managementcontrol. To efficiently use the vast amount of information that these
operational systemshave been collecting over the years for planning and
decision-making purposes,the information from all relevant sources must be
merged and consolidated in a datawarehouse.
Whereas
an operational database is accessed by online
transaction processing (OLTP)applications that update its content, a
data warehouse is accessed by ad hoc user queriesand by special data analysis
programs, referred to as online
analytical processing (OLAP)applications. In a banking environment, for
example, there may be an OLTP application.
1.2 Statement of
problems
Organization/business
incur loose due to the repetitive and manual nature of their day-to-day
activities. This is particularly evident in organizational where a large number
of customers have to be served within a limited time. In stadium for instance,
losses are incurred due to excess tickets produced for limited number of
customers.
1.3 objectives of study
The
specific objectives of the study are;
i.
To study the manual
method of processing tickets at stadiums.
ii.
Design an information
system which is time efficient and solves certain problems associated with the manual system.
iii.
Design a comprehensive database
that will house the information of customers/fans at stadium.
iv.
Implement the study in
a particular stadium.
1.4 Limitation of
study;
The
limitations of this research work are as follows;
i.
The absence of
monthly/annual reservation functionality where customers can get their tickets
i.e tickets for all the game of a particular season.
ii.
The system does not
address the challenges of the seat reservation at stadiums.
1.5 Significance of the
study;
The
design/implementation of information systems for stadiums will ensure
efficiency and timelines in the processing of ticket. The system also saves
labor. Which is associated with the manual processing of ticket at stadiums.
1.6 Definition of
terms;
Data
– this is a low fact or unprocessed/unshaped information (raw file).\
Information
–these are data that has been processed and is ready for use.
Management
– this is the bringing together of resources and people for the accomplishment
of a specific goal i.e. planning or controlling a group of person that makes
decision.
Information
management – this is the organization and management of related data with a
system.
Information
retrieval – this is the method used in recovering specific information.
Maintenance
– this is a way of taking proper care of facilities in an organization.\
Record
– this is the collection of related fields, data or in formation within the
organization.
Output
– this is the transfer of processed information to the people or activities.
Processing
– this is converting of raw data into a more readable and meaningful form.
Information
system – this can be defined as a set of interrelated components that collect,
retrieve, process, store and distributes information to support decision making
and control in an organization.
Stadium
– this is a place set aside for sport activities to take place.
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