Business information has become a core business process that drives businesses in todays

world. Almost everything in this generation involves the transmission and conversion of data
from one source or form to another. The business dictionary defines a business information
system as a methodical procedure or process that is used as a delivery mechanism for
providing specific goods or services to customers. Managers rely on this information for them
to make timely decisions which would determine their competitive platform and future. In
1998, Lew Platt the CEO of Hewlett Packard stated that If only HP knew what HP knows, it
could be three times more productive a statement which most employees and managers of
HP misunderstood. In essence, Platt meant that HP had a lot and enough information which
they could use for them to be competitive if only they discovered a strategy on how to use
their information in a progressive and productive manner.
To fully understand how organisations benefit from business information systems, it is very
prudent that we understand what decision making and knowledge management are. Decision
making according to Wikipedia, is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection
of a belief or a course of action among several alternative possibilities. However, for a good
decision to be made in decision making process, organisations require knowledge.
Knowledge despite being very useful in decision making, differs from the other resources as
it multiplies itself by using and/or sharing it (Auer, 2004:4). Due to the changing nature of
knowledge, organisations need to manage it for optimum use in decision making. Davenport
(1994) defines Knowledge Management (KM) as a process of capturing, developing, sharing,
and effectively using organizational knowledge. Analysing his definition, knowledge
management refers to a multi-disciplinary approach to achieving organizational objectives by
making the best use of knowledge.
Using systems theory, it becomes easy to understand organisation processes as system theory
is based upon analytic division of the natural world into environment and systems (Luhmann,
1995). Therefore systems theory, divides the organisation into two disciplines namely; the
systems and machines that handle the data processing process and the social environment in
which everything exists. The systems are involved in communicating the information within
themselves and with the external environment. The wider the gap between the intra system
and the inter-system, the more complicated the system is and vice versa.

National Airports Corporation Ltd the company I work for, has got computerised systems that
communicate within themselves by circulating information within a department and between
departments. There are several core business processes handled by my company however, for
the sake of this assignment I will only consider Air Navigation and Ground Handling
Services. The Air Navigation Services Department is responsible for the entire Zambian Air
space embracing the following duties such as controlling the area, tower and approach. It also
handles the metrological services, communication facilities, navigation aids, security
facilities, aeronautical information services and the IT infrastructure and services. This
department determines when to allow a plane to leave the airport and also when to allow a
plane to land. As such, the Air Navigational Services department system has information it
deals with within itself so as to coordinate its activities and also it works hand in hand with
ground handling department. The Ground handling services department handles both
scheduled and charter operators. It controls passengers, ramp, load, check-in and gate
services, VIP handling and transportation, aircraft line maintenance, aircraft cleaning,
facilitating overflight and landing permits, flight clearance and other flight support services.
Considering the systems theory, the Air Navigation Services falls under both the natural
world and systems in the sense that, most of its activities interact with nature. The systems
read the natural environment and then process the information to enable the management at
the National Airport determine when to take an action. The environment at National Airports
deals with receiving planes and letting planes leave. These planes take people away from
Zambia and also bring people into Zambia. The Ground Handling Services which deals with
the actual duties of the airport work, only act after getting reports from the Air Navigational
Services. This means that, after the Air Navigational Services works out its duties as to
whether it is safe to let a plane land or leave, it then informs the Ground Handling Services to
take an action. Therefore, in the context of systems theory, it can be said that the Grounding
Control Services deals with the external environment while the Air National Services deals
with the systems that determines the air space.
Managers in organisations make decisions on a daily basis. The following are among the
decisions organisations make on a daily basis.

Programmed and non-programmed decisions

Routine and strategic decisions
Tactical and operational decisions

Organizational and personal decisions

Major and minor decisions
Individual and group decisions

Despite organisations making a number of decisions as indicated in the list above, under
Management Information Systems these decisions are categorically grouped into three. These
are operational decisions, tactical decisions and strategic decisions.
Operational Decisions
The business dictionary defines operational decisions as types of decisions that are short term
in nature and implemented in lieu of long term strategies at the time of acquisition of
company assets. Operational decisions involve day-to-day operations of the company and for
that reason they need to be addresses before any grand scheme issues. These decisions are
designed to deal with well-structured problems as they happen on a daily basis at lower levels
of

the

organization

structured problems are constrained problems with convergent

pyramid.

Well-

solutions that engage the

application of a limited number of rules and principles within well-defined parameters and
are dealt by transaction processing systems.
Tactical Decisions
Tactical decisions relate to the implementation of strategic decisions. The managers at these
level deal with decision problems coming from executives. They are a transformation of
strategic decisions into operational decision. Managers at this level are involved in
developing divisional plans, structuring workflows, establishing channels, acquisition of
resources such as men, materials and money. These decisions are processed by Management
Information Systems (MIS) and lie in between the strategic and operational levels hence
managers at this level are at middle level management.
Strategic Decisions
Strategic decisions form the major choices of actions and influence the whole or major parts
of the business enterprise. These decisions are very long term in nature and contribute
directly to the achievement of common goals of the enterprise. In simpler terms, strategic
decisions are unstructured in nature meaning that, a manager at this level needs to apply his
business judgement, evaluation and intuition in the definition of a problem. Because of their
unstructured nature, these decisions are processed by Executive Information Systems. Such

systems and decisions take place at the higher level of management as shown in the pyramid
below.
Figure 1.1: Pyramid showing Three Levels of Decision making in organisations

Source:http://www.chris-kimble.com/Courses/World_Med_MBA/Types-of-InformationSystem.html
The creation and implementation of these decisions create knowledge for the organisation.
The types of knowledge created include tacit knowledge, explicit knowledge, information
and basic data. According to Wikipedia the online dictionary, tacit knowledge as opposed to
formal, codified or explicit knowledge is the kind of knowledge that is difficult to transfer to
another person by means of writing it down or verbalising it. Helie, Sebastien; Sun, Ron
(2010) define explicit knowledge as knowledge that can be readily articulated, codified,
accessed and verbalized. Information is processed data while data is unprocessed
information. The pyramid in figure 1.2 shows the relationship between these different types
of knowledge.
Figure 1.2: Pyramid showing different types of knowledge

Source:http://www.chris-kimble.com/Courses/World_Med_MBA/Types-of-InformationSystem.html
The knowledge created by these levels of management is so vital for organisation
development and future problem resolution. For this reason, Knowledge Management
becomes so vital such that should similar problems occur in future it would be easy to resolve
them using information managed in the Knowledge Management systems. The traditional
approach of Knowledge Management was to focus on improving the existing, traditional
resources and their deployment following the DIKAR model developed by Venkatraman
(Murray, 2002:74).
Applying the DIKAR and RAKID models in Ground Handling Services business process at
National Airport Limited would show a diagram like one in Figure 1.3.
Figure 1.3 The DIKAR model

Source:http://www.chris-kimble.com/Courses/World_Med_MBA/Types-of-InformationSystem.html.
The DIKAR and RAKID models explain the movement of information from the low level of
business operations to the higher level. It is the transformation of data to information to
knowledge leading to actions and results. The models also emphasise on the quality of data
produced. Data quality refers to the degree to which data accurately reflect the real-world
object or event. Data is captured by the low level operations in the transaction processing
systems which is then convert it to information. At the low level, most of the work is
computerised as it is routine in nature. At this stage data captured must be accurate and
relevant so that it does not mislead higher levels of management in decision making. The
systems that are involved in data processing and conversion should also be up to date so that
they dont cause errors in the information produced for management.
The low level operations act as suppliers of data to other levels of management whereas the
highest level demands for information so as to create business value. These are routine
activities that are conducted by low level employees. At my organisation under the grounding
services, data capture involves activities such load handling, passenger handling and
clearance etc. The passengers data is captured in the computer systems and converted into
information for decision making. When it becomes information, managers at middle level
management are able to determine how many passengers travelled at a particular period so as
to help generate knowledge concerning the number of passengers traveling in certain periods
of the year. This information also helps middle level management determine the capacity of
planes landing at the airport so as to help senior management come up with forecasts that
determine the need to involve airlines with big planes. If the forecasts show that really bigger
planes or more flights are required, the senior management would act by involving airlines
that have big planes so as to manage the large number of people flying.

Quality features expected in information systems

"Information quality" is a measure of the value which the information provides to the user of
that information. "Quality" is often perceived as subjective and the quality of information can
then vary among users and among uses of the information.
Business Information Systems should produce quality information. These systems should
produce information that contain the following features:
1. Intrinsic Information Quality:
Intrinsic Information Quality considers factors such as accuracy, objectivity, believability and
reputability. Accurate systems are required so that they do not produce information full of
errors. The information systems should produce objective information without any
subjectivity at all. This helps management come up with decisions without any form of
biasness. The information produced should also be reputable and believable. This means that
the information must have some relation to some known facts so that information users will
not have inference in accepting the contained detail. Data that lacks accuracy, objectivity,
believability and reputation can causes serious loss of customers as data with errors will make
them loss confidence in the organisation.
2. Conceptual Information Quality:
Contextual Information Quality refers to information relevancy, value added, timeliness,
completeness and amount of information contained. This is an important feature for decision
making. The management need to act on relevant and timely information which is complete
with all facts contained. Business Management Systems which process information on time
and provide and the needed amount of information are required in businesses. Systems
without these information production attributes cause organisations to come with irrelevant
and untimely information which lacks content. As such, there would be serious
unproductiveness in an organisation to irrelevancy and untimely information production.

3. Representational Information Quality:

Representational Information quality deals with issues to do with interpretability, format,
coherence and compatibility of information produced. Information systems should produce

information in formats easily understood by the recipients and also in compatible version.
The recipients should be able to easily understand the information contained. Data that lacks
coherence and compatibility is difficulty to understand. As such systems unable to produce
kinds of data that is interpretable and compatible should be discareded.

4. Accessibility Information Quality:

Accessibility Information Quality deals with how accessible and access security data may be.
Data must be accessible to intended users all the time they need it in organisations. Business
information systems should have enough security to identify legitimate users of data so as to
prevent unauthorised access. Business information systems that lacks such features are likely
to suffer from attacks.
Conclusions
Business information processing is so cardinal to the operations of every organisation. Data is
always captured at lower levels of organizations and used by middle management to come
with weekly and monthly forecasts. These middle managers report the information to senior
managers who come up with long term organisation policies that affect the operation of the
organization. To ensure quality in the data processing life cycle, the DIKAR and RAKID
models of business information systems are used. These models explain how data is created,
then converted to information, later used for actions to produce results. In every stage, the
information quality is considered making sure that no errors exist. This provides synergy and
competitiveness in organization with well-defined business information systems.

References
AUER, T. 2004. Knowledge management: vogue word or mandatory for sustainability?
Sustainability

Economic

Society

of

Switzerland.

p.

http://www.hrmauer.ch/downloads/WIV-NL_e.pdf Date of access: 15 March. 2016.

Davenport, Thomas H. (1994). "Saving IT's Soul: Human Centered Information
Management". Harvard Business Review 72 (2): 119131.
Helie, Sebastien; Sun, Ron (2010). "Incubation, Insight, and Creative Problem Solving: A
Unified Theory and a Connectionist Model". Psychological Review 117 (3): 9941024.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?
q=cache:http://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/knowledge-management-as-a-sustainedcompetitive-advantage. Date of access: 15 March. 2016.
http://www.chris-kimble.com/Courses/World_Med_MBA/Types-of-InformationSystem.html. Date of access: 15 March. 2016.
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/business-system.html#ixzz438pHRtQ8.

Date

of access: 15 March. 2016.

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/operational-decisions.html#ixzz439x5Zhd4.
Date of access: 15 March. 2016.
Luhmann N (1995). Social Systems. (Translated J Bednarz Jr, D Baecker). Stanford
University Press: Stanford, CA, USA
Wang, R.; Strong, D. (1996). "Beyond Accuracy: What Data Quality Means to Data
Consumers". Journal of Management Information Systems: 534.