From Book News, Inc.
The new edition of a textbook formerly titled Information Systems, A Management Perspective. The author presents a work system framework of business operations and applies it to the various applications and systems of information technologies at use in today's business world. Chapters discuss business processes, information and databases, types of information systems, the basics of e-commerce, human and ethical issues, networks and telecommunications, software and artificial intelligence, strategic planning for information technology, information systems maintenance, and security and control.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Book Info
Emphasizes the essential role of information systems in the works systems through which today's businesses operate. For professionals in the field of information systems.

From the Back Cover
THE REALITY BEHIND SYSTEM SUCCESS... Steven Alter's Information Systems: Foundation of E-Business, fourth edition, emphasizes the essential role information systems play in today's successful businesses. Viewing information systems from a business perspective, is essential for understanding how e-commerce and e-business really work and for appreciating why technology is not a magic bullet that solves all problems. Most current business practices rely on IT, but successful application of any technology involves much more than the technology itself. Today's managers need a way to understand and evaluate the impact and use of technology in their businesses. This book is an indispensable tool for business and IT students because it: provides a rigorous, yet non-technical approach, that any manager, executive, or business professional can use to visualize and analyze system-related opportunities and problems that confront almost every company in today's economy. presents a practical, straightforward approach for attaining business results, recognizing possibilities, and avoiding the wasted time and effort consumed by technology initiatives that never achieve their goals. combines the vocabulary of today's technologies with problem solving tools and methods that business and IT students can continue to use in the future. This text's updated coverage of the work system framework and principles, e-business and e-commerce, value and supply chains, ERP systems, networks, and system security, help explain how technology applications make a difference. Its companion web site (www.prenhall.com/alter) extends the book's coverage. The balance of theory and practice in this text makes Information Systems: Foundation of E-Business, fourth edition, a resource that business and IT students can use even after new generations of technology have replaced those of today.

About the Author
Steven Alter is Professor of Information Systems at the University of San Francisco. He holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Ph.D. in Management Science, both from MIT. While on the faculty of the University of Southern California, he revised his Ph.D. thesis and published it as Decision Support Systems: Current Practice and Continuing Challenges, one of the first books on this type of information system. Professor Alter's journal articles have appeared in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, MIS Quarterly, Communications of the ACM, Communications of AIS, TIMS Studies in Management Sciences, Interfaces, Data Processing, Futures, and The Futurist. Prior to joining the University of San Francisco, he served for eight years as a founding vice president of Consilium, Inc. (acquired by Applied Materials in 1998). He participated in building and implementing early versions of manufacturing software used by major semiconductor and electronics manufacturers in the United States, Europe, and Asia. His many roles included starting departments for customer service, documentation and training, technical support, and product management. Upon returning to academia he decided to work on a problem he observed in industry, the difficulty business people have in articulating what they expect from computerized systems and how these systems can or should be used to change the way work is done. His initial efforts in this area led to the 1992 publication of the first edition of this text. The subsequent editions have benefited from additional research on how business professionals understand information systems. His related articles in Communications of AIS, the online journal of the Association for Information Systems include: "A General, Yet Useful Theory of Information Systems" (March, 1999) "Same Words, Different Meanings: Are Basic IS/IT Concepts Our Self-Imposed Tower of Babel?" (April, 2000) "Are the Fundamental Concepts of Information Systems Mostly about Work Systems?" (April, 2001) His hobbies include music, hiking, skiing, yoga, and international travel. He is a member of the Larkspur Trio Dot Com, which occasionally presents reasonably proficient amateur performances of trios for violin, cello, and piano. One enthusiastic reviewer raved, "They certainly played up to their potential." The photo was taken while he was traveling to ICIS 2000, the International Conference on Information Systems in Brisbane, Australia, for which he organized a debate entitled "Does the Trend toward E-Business Call for Changes in the Fundamental Concepts of Information Systems?" Despite coaxing, the koala seemed to have no views on this topic.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Now, like it or not, "e" stands for everything: e-banking, e-books, e-travel, e-training, e-entertainment, and even e-engineering. The "e" in e-business will soon be irrelevant. E-business is rapidly becoming a way of life. It's our perspective that the name for e-business in the year 2000 will simply be: business. Information Systems, Foundation of E-Business, is the new name of this fourth edition of a book whose first three editions were called Information Systems, A Management Perspective. This edition retains its management flavor, but it also emphasizes and integrates the significant trends toward e-business and e-commerce that have become pervasive in the last few years. E-BUSINESS: WHY THE MESSENGER ISN'T THE MESSAGE In a few short years, e-business grew from an IBM advertising campaign into a tidal wave of hope and hype mixed with fear and uncertainty about becoming obsolete or being blindsided by unknown competitors. The seeds of e-business have evolved continually over almost five decades since the first computer applications in business. Back in the 1960s "e" was the first letter in electronic data processing (EDP). Later it was the first letter in electronic mail (e-mail) and electronic data interchange (EDI). The Web arrived in the early 1990s and it brought new forms of electronic commerce (e-commerce). And now we have e-business, which leapt to prominence when an IBM advertising campaign popularized e-business as an umbrella term for a long-term trend. The day before IBM's e-business ad campaign appeared on Oct. 7, 1997, the Wall Street Journal said Louis Gerstner, IBM's CEO, wanted "to position IBM as a cutting-edge company and shake off for good its image as a stodgy, if reliable, supplier of computers to giant corporations." Within several months an Information Week article noted that anyone who hadn't been in Fiji for the past few months had doubtless heard the latest computer industry buzz phrase: electronic business. Today "e" is everywhere. Open a newspaper, listen to a strategy consultant's sales pitch, learn about the latest NASDAQ IPO and the discussion almost can't avoid mentioning e-business, e-commerce, e-enterprise, e-economy, and e-just about anything else. Although "e" is often associated with the Internet, the long history of EDP, e-mail, EDI, and e-commerce shows that the Internet is not the message even if it is the latest electronic messenger. The message is about work systems that make extensive use of computer and communication technologies in order to perform work more efficiently, satisfy new and existing customer desires, and allow people to live more interesting and fulfilling lives. The message is full of optimism and hope, but the reality has been mixed. Applications of technology have enabled processes and products that would have been impossible without today's cost-effective technology. Unfortunately some technology applications have also led to problems and disappointments. Information systems are the foundation of e-business because e-business is really about making extensive use of computer and communication technologies in critical business processes. Some of these uses are directed within the firm, such as designing products, coordinating value added work, and integrating across an enterprise. Others are associated with e-commerce, such as selling and providing service through electronic links. Yet others, such as supply chain management and customer relationship management, span the firm and its business partners. More and more of today's important work systems are inextricably linked to the information systems that support them. Most of today's important work systems in large organizations rely on information systems so completely that they cannot operate efficiently without the information systems. Increasingly, if the information system goes down, so does the work system. And from the other direction, it is increasingly obvious that the purpose and effectiveness of most information systems can be understood mainly in terms of their direct role in work systems. In summary, I renamed this book Information Systems: Foundation of E-Business to emphasize the essential role of information systems in the systems through which today's businesses operate. Businesses operate through work systems. Work systems increasingly use e-business approaches. Information systems are the foundation of e-business. The implications for a business professional are clear. Anyone who intends to play an important role in today's business needs to understand information systems in order to understand the work systems through which organizations operate. Anyone who lacks this understanding will be at a great disadvantage. Today's business professionals need more than the ability to do personal work on a computer and a general familiarity with business and technical terms. Contributing fully to current organizations requires an ability to participate in e-business systems, evaluate them, and contribute to system development efforts. This requires an organized approach for thinking about systems, an approach that can be used successfully today and will still be valid five or ten years from now when today's technical and business terms are no longer at the cutting edge. WHAT'S THE HEADLINE Books related to information systems and e-business are often written from one of two viewpoints. Either business issues are the headline or technology is the headline. Major choices in writing this book reflect its emphasis on business even though the technology topics are covered thoroughly: The book is organized around a framework that business professionals can use for visualizing any computerized or non-computerized system in any organization. The basic unit of analysis is the work system, a system in which human participants and/or machines perform a business process using information, technology, and other resources to produce products and/or services for internal or external customers. This unit of analysis is appropriate for today's business professionals for a number of reasons: Information systems are actually work systems. E-business systems are actually work systems. Information systems exist to support other work systems. Information systems are increasingly integrated with the work systems they support. Information system projects are actually time-limited work systems. In other words, the concept of work system is like a common denominator covering most situations in which information systems are built or used. Having a central conceptual core makes it much easier to understand the importance of the many business and technical terms that constitute the vocabulary of information systems. The coverage of the work system framework, system-related principles, and the general topic of how to think about systems from a business viewpoint appear at the beginning of the book, not the end or in an isolated chapter about "problem solving." Accordingly, Chapters 1 and 2 introduce the framework and explain how business professionals can analyze systems for themselves. The chapters that follow discuss the elements of a work system, the business process (3), information and databases (4), customers and products (6), human and ethical issues (7), and technology (8, 9, and 10). The other chapters discuss types of information systems (5) and topics related to building and maintaining information systems (11, 12, 13). Wherever there is a choice, topics are presented with a business emphasis rather than a technology emphasis. For example, the discussion of databases appears in Chapter 4 as part of a discussion of information and databases, rather than in a later chapter grouped around technology headings such as computer hardware, software, and telecommunications. Similarly, intranets and extranets are introduced in Chapter 5, Types of Information Systems, as part of a discussion of information systems that support communication activities. Later, Chapter 10, Networks and Telecommunications, discusses telecommunications applications and common types of networks before delving into important technical topics that business professionals should be familiar with. WHAT'S NEW The changes in this new edition include an improved representation of the work system framework, introduction of principle-based analysis of systems, integration of e-business and e-commerce topics, and updating to include many topics that were not as important when the previous edition was published. Improved representation of the work system framework As in the previous edition, this edition establishes a framework for describing a system and applies that framework to a chapter opening case to make sure the organizing principles and basic concepts are always apparent. This edition goes further by providing an improved version of the framework used in the previous edition. This framework has been renamed the work system framework (instead of the WCA framework) to emphasize that the analysis of computerized and non-computerized systems should start from a core of ideas related to work systems. Context and infrastructure have been added as elements of the framework. This reflects the reality that work system success depends on issues in the surrounding context and on the operation of infrastructure that is not owned or controlled within the work system. Adding these two elements to the framework makes it much easier to explain how to think about a system from a business viewpoint. The previous edition looked at a single framework from five different perspectives, and some readers found that too cumbersome. The new approach eliminates the idea of five separate perspectives and makes it easier to focus on what the system is, how well it operates, and how it might be improved. Introduction of principle-based analysis Regardless of how clearly conceptual material and technical terminology are presented, students often have difficulty visualizing how it applies to real business situations or to their everyday lives. This edition introduces the principle-based systems analysis (PBSA) method, which anyone can use as a starting point for identifying and organizing issues and improvement goals related to any system. The PBSA method is based on a set of principles linked directly on the elements of the work system framework. (See Table P.1) The analysis of any system comprises defining a problem and the system, using the principles to look at each element of the system in an appropriate amount of depth, and then making a recommendation that addresses the problem and conforms to all of the principles to the extent possible. The combination of the framework and the related principles provide motivation for pursuing the in-depth coverage within the chapters. For example, the chapter on business processes contains sections related to documenting process operation, understanding process characteristics, evaluating performance, and understanding concepts related to communication and decision making. Each of these topics provides a direction for digging deeper when trying to apply the principle "do the work efficiently." Integration of e-business and e-commerce topics The Internet, e-business, and e-commerce are important forces in today's business and are also the object of enormous hype and wishful thinking. It is increasingly clear that e-business should not be viewed as a different, newly invented type of business activity. It is true that the Internet has provided many opportunities for major improvements in serving customers and doing work efficiently, but it is not as though extensive use of computer and communication technology was invented in the last few years. To provide appropriate and balanced coverage of what is becoming the norm in today's business, the new edition contains a large number of new or updated examples and cases that involve e-business and illustrate that information systems are the foundation of e-business. For example, the chapter opening cases about companies such as Dell, Amazon, Schwab, eBay, DoubleClick, and Napster all contain e-business content even though the main point of each case is about the topic of the chapter, regardless of whether it is business processes, information, technology, or human and ethical issues. Chapter by chapter changes Table P.2 shows that the chapters in the book are organized around the work system framework and summarizes how each chapter contributes to an understanding of IT-enabled systems. Although the number and sequence of the chapters have not changed, many of the individual chapters were improved substantially. Chapter 1, "Moving toward E-business as Usual," was renamed and rewritten to emphasize the essential role of information systems in e-business and e-commerce. The coverage of the value chain and supply chain previously in Chapters 2 and 6 was moved to Chapter 1 to help demonstrate why any substantial understanding of today's leading business practices (and e-business) requires an understanding of information systems. Chapter 2, "Understanding Systems from a Business Viewpoint," was renamed and rewritten to clarify and simplify the approach for analyzing any IT enabled system from a business viewpoint. The revised work system framework is explained along with the newly introduced principle-based systems analysis (PBSA) method. This eliminates the cumbersome aspects of looking at one framework from five perspectives and makes it easier to focus on what the system is, how well it operates, and how it might be improved. Chapter 3, "Business Processes," now ends with topics related to communication and decision making because these are an important part of most business processes. Communication and decision making were moved from Chapter 5. "Rhythm" was added to the list of business process characteristics. The section on process performance has a new distinction between activity rate and output rate and has merged the coverage of "flexibility" into the discussion of process consistency. Chapter 4, "Information and Databases," was reorganized to make its flow easier to grasp. Basic concepts about files are now introduced before the more abstract topic of entity-relationship diagrams. Data warehousing was moved here from Chapter 5 in order to link data warehousing more directly with database topics. Chapter 5, "Different Types of Information Systems," was reorganized into two major sections. The first introduces important information system categories such as CAD, EDI, SCM, MRP, CIM, CRM, and EFT that are linked to specific functional areas of business. The second section looks at idealized types of information systems such as TPS, MIS, and DSS that are equally applicable across all of the functional areas. The sections on communication and decision making were moved to Chapter 3. The concept of "execution systems" was eliminated because these systems are covered along with the functional area systems. Enterprise systems were introduced as a new category. Expert systems and other decision-related systems derived from AI research are now included with other methods for supporting decision making. They were moved to this chapter from Chapter 9, Software, Programming, and Artificial Intelligence, because their real world applications are most easily understood by placing them with other methods for supporting decision making. Chapter 6, "Product, Customer, and E-commerce," provides a more extensive coverage of e-commerce and provides a new section on e-commerce challenges such as establishing and integrating systems, attracting customers, and providing an effective self-service environment. It also replaces the product positioning concept with a more useful three-dimensional grid for describing the products and services a system produces. It replaces the term "customer involvement cycle" with the simpler term "customer experience. Chapter 7, "Human and Ethical Issues," contains updated examples that emphasize e-commerce and Internet-related issues that were not as important when the previous edition was published. Chapter 8, "Computer Hardware," contains updated examples and factual updates. Chapter 9, "Software, Programming, and Artificial Intelligence," provides more coverage of operating systems and simplifies the coverage of types of software. Although topics such as expert systems and neural networks were moved to Chapter 5 to emphasize applications rather than intellectual origins, trends toward making computers more intelligent are still covered in three places in the chapter. Chapter 10, "Networks and Telecommunications," has a new section on different types of networks, ranging from home networks to wide area networks and the Internet. The discussion of telecommunications standards was moved earlier in the chapter. Wireless networking and IP telephony receive more coverage. The section on telecommunications policy is updated. Chapter 11, "Information Systems Planning," incorporates updated examples. Chapter 12, "Building and Maintaining Systems," starts with a new example about building an e-commerce Web site to demonstrate that building and maintaining e-commerce sites involve the same issues as building and maintaining virtually any important information system. Chapter 13, "E-Business Security and Control," provides many updated examples along with an expanded coverage of e-business security and control techniques such as public key encryption and digital signatures. PEDAGOGICAL FEATURES This book's pedagogical features start with the typical pedagogical features of a good current textbook. Each chapter contains study questions, a chapter summary, keywords, review questions, and discussion questions. Pedagogical features that help differentiate this book include the following: Streamlining. This fourth edition maintains the streamlining that was accomplished in the third edition. Information systems texts tend to get longer and longer as new topics emerge. Careful integration of the topics around a powerful framework allows this fourth edition to stay at 13 chapters after being reduced from 20 and 15 chapters in previous editions. Unifying framework. All good books in this field provide a thorough coverage of terminology. This book's most unique pedagogical feature is its use of a unifying framework that motivates the book's outline and is the core of a systems analysis approach that any business professional can use. Direct and indirect references to the framework keep the big picture visible and show how current terminology is related to a simple set of ideas that the students can use long after a new generation of business and technical practices emerges. Real world cases. Another key pedagogical feature is its inclusion of real world cases. Some students learn best by focusing on examples and seeing how they are related to concepts and theories. Others learn best by focusing on a theory and seeing how examples validate it. This book is designed to serve both groups. Each chapter starts with an interesting, current, real world case and ends with two more. These cases genuinely support the material in the chapter and are not thrown in as an afterthought. Furthermore, the body of every chapter contains real world examples that are integrated into the explanation of the concepts rather than being put in isolated boxes. -To provide a balanced representation of the real world and to avoid implying that technology is a magic bullet, the cases and examples include both successes and failures. Table P.3 explains how each opening case illustrates important topics within each chapter. Debate topics, reality checks, aced Web checks. The debate topic following each chapter-opening case is designed to encourage active interest and participation by students. The reality checks following major sections within the chapters serve a similar purpose. The Web checks ask the students to see how points in the text are reflected in the Web sites of companies mentioned in cases and examples. Look Aheads and Reminders. Many topics are introduced in one chapter as part of an overview and are then explained later. Since students use hypertext links to navigate the Web, they have become more likely to use these forward and backward references to obtain more complete explanations that exist elsewhere in the text. Web site. This book's Web site is designed to supplement the coverage in the book and will be updated periodically to make sure it provides links to the most current case material. Included with many of these examples are several questions for discussion. In addition, it provides a list of Web sites that delve more deeply into major issues discussed in the chapters. TEACHING SUPPLEMENTS Instructor's Resource CD-ROM (0130646164). A complete set of teaching supplements is available for instructors who adopt this book. These supplements are designed to enhance the accessibility, versatility, and teachability of the text material. The Instructor's Resource CD-ROM includes the Instructor's Manual, Test Item File, PowerPoint slides, Image Library, and Test Manager. Instructor's Manual. This supplement explains approaches for teaching with this text. It is available on the Instructor's Resource CD-ROM and for download from the password protected instructor's section of www.prenhall.com/alter. It contains teaching suggestions for each chapter, suggested answers for Reality Checks, Debate Topics, and Web checks, and answers to end-of-chapter questions and cases. PowerPoint slides. The slides illuminate and build upon key concepts in the text. Most figures and photos found in the text are provided and organized by chapter for your convenience in the Image Library on the Instructor's Resource CD-ROM. These images and lecture notes can be easily imported into Microsoft PowerPoint to create new presentations or to add to existing presentations. If desired, the PowerPoint slides can be printed and used as transparency masters. Testbank and Test Manager. The testbank contains approximately 80 multiple choice, true-false, and essay questions per chapter. The questions are rated by difficulty level and answers are referenced by section. For instructor convenience, the Prentice-Hall Test Manager is included in the Instructor's Resource CD-ROM MyPHLIP/Companion Website. Available at www.prenhall.com/alter is a Web site that provides an Interactive Study Guide, access to the Instructor's Manual, PowerPoint slides, and Internet links. Features of this new site include the ability to customize your home page, real-time news headlines, In the News (IS related news articles summarized by a selected team of professors and supported by exercises and activities), and Internet Exercises that are continually added to the site. Prentice Hall's Guide to E-Commerce avid E-Business. This useful guide to e-business and e-commerce introduces students to many aspects of e-business and the Internet. It allows students to discover the role the Internet can play in continuing their education, distance learning, and looking for jobs. This guide is free when packaged with this text. Online Courses www.prenhall.com/blackboard Prentice Hall's on-line content, combined with Blackboard's popular tools and interface, result in robust Web-based courses that are easy to implement, manage, and use-taking your courses to new heights in student interaction and learning. www.prenhall.com/coursecompass CourseCompass is a dynamic, interactive on-line course management tool powered exclusively for Pearson Education by Blackboard. This product allows you to teach market-leading Pearson Education content in an easy-to-use cutomizable format. Tutorial Software For instructors looking for Application Software support to use with this text, Prentice Hall is pleased to offer PH Train IT and PH Assess IT for Office 2000. These tutorial and assessment products are fully certified up to the expert level of the Microsoft Office User Specialist (MOUS) Certification Program. These items are not available as stand-alone items but can be packaged with this text at an additional charge. Please go to www.prenhall.com/phit for an online demonstration of these products or contact your local Prentice Hall representative for more details.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Information Systems, 4/E, emphasizes the essential role of information systems in the works systems through which today's businesses operate. Understanding information systems from a business perspective is essential for understanding e-commerce and e-business. Chapter topics include information and databases; types of information systems; customer, product, and e-commerce; human and ethical issues; computers in a networked world; software, programming and artificial intelligence; networks and telecommunications; information systems planning; building and maintaining information systems; and e-business security and control. For professionals in the field of information systems.

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