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STUDY GUIDE · GKU 1

Foundations of information systems study guide (Information Systems)

An information system is people, procedures, data and technology working together so that an organisation can run its daily transactions, make decisions and compete. This unit is the heaviest in the Information Systems exam, and it is wide rather than deep. It starts with what an information system is made of and what makes information worth having; moves to the people who build and run systems, the types of system that serve each level of an organisation, the techniques for deciding with information, and how systems create strategic value (Porter's five forces and value chain); then covers the solutions organisations buy — business processes, enterprise systems (ERP, CRM, SCM) and e-business; and ends with how information is moved and protected, how systems are developed and changed, and how an investment in a system is justified with TCO, NPV, ROI and payback. Most questions are short scenarios: name the quality dimension, the system type, the role, the force or the control. The decision-table and investment sections carry the arithmetic.

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Structured by the official ETEC subject standard for this topic: every listed topic and learning outcome, with formulas, figures and worked examples. The full sections are available to members in the app.

SKU 1.1 · Foundations of information systems

  1. What an information system is: components, operations and impact

    Data, information and knowledge; the components of a computer-based information system; the operations it performs on information (input, processing, storage, output, feedback); and its impact on organisations, people and society.

  2. Quality information: dimensions, characteristics and value

    The time, content and form dimensions of information quality; the data-quality dimensions an exam names (accuracy, completeness, consistency, timeliness, relevance, validity, uniqueness); how to measure them as ratios; and why information has value only when it improves a decision by more than it costs.

  3. Roles of IS in business and the IS professional

    The three roles information systems play in a business, the jobs in an IS function and who is responsible for what, and the characteristics that make an IS professional effective.

  4. Types and levels of information systems and the decisions they support

    Operational, managerial and strategic levels; transaction processing, management information, decision support and executive support systems, with knowledge and collaboration systems; structured, semistructured and unstructured decisions; and Simon's phases of decision-making.

  5. Deciding with information: decision tables, the value of information and weighted scoring

    How a decision table (payoff matrix) turns options and uncertain conditions into a choice by expected value, maximin, maximax or minimax regret; how much information is worth before you buy it (EVPI); and how a weighted scoring model ranks options on several criteria.

  6. Strategic value of IS: five forces, value chain and knowledge

    How information systems create competitive advantage: Porter's five forces and the generic strategies, the value chain as a map of where IS adds value, and knowledge management as a way of turning what people know into a lasting asset.

  7. Business processes and enterprise systems: ERP, SCM and CRM

    What a business process is and why functional silos break it; how enterprise resource planning integrates the firm on one database; what supply chain and customer relationship management add; and how to critique an enterprise system for a given problem.

  8. E-business, e-commerce and collaboration solutions

    E-business versus e-commerce, the B2C, B2B, C2C and government categories, common online business models, collaboration and social business tools, and how to match an e-business solution to a business problem.

  9. Transmitting and securing information in an organisation

    How information moves through an organisation (LAN, WAN, internet, intranet, extranet, VPN, cloud), the threats to it, and the techniques that protect it in transit and at rest — encryption, authentication, access control, audit logging, firewalls, backups and validation at the source.

  10. Developing systems, improving processes and managing change

    The systems development life cycle and the main methodologies (waterfall, prototyping, agile), the ways to acquire a system, the four kinds of organisational change from automation to paradigm shift, measuring a process improvement, and how innovation and change management decide whether a new system is used.

  11. Justifying an IS investment: TCO, NPV, ROI and payback

    How an IS solution is costed over its whole life (total cost of ownership) and justified with the time value of money: net present value, return on investment, simple and discounted payback, and what the numbers leave out.

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