Computing Notes: The Role of IT in Business – Today • Creating office documents, maintaining schedules etc • Allowing employees to communicate with each other and with customers/suppliers • Capturing business transactions The Data, Information and Knowledge Continuum • Data – Facts and figures without any real context or meaning. • Information – Data that has been made meaningful and helps someone understand something. • Knowledge – Information that has been incorporated into someone’s view of the world. Big Data & Information Systems Data that organizations don’t know how to get value out of it because it is sitting in its most raw form or in a semi-structured or unstructured format Three characteristics that define Big Data: – volume, – variety and – Velocity – Business Analytics Is the term used to refer to the application of various technologies to enable analytical processing, data mining, performance management, and reporting, so supporting better business decision-making Business Analytics takes three forms: • Descriptive Analytics: The use of data to understand past and current business performance and so make informed decisions. • Predictive Analytics: Analysis of past performance in an effort to predict the future by examining historical data, detecting patterns or relationships in these data (i.e. creating a “model”), and then extrapolating these relationships forward in time. • Prescriptive Analytics: Using a model where the output of the model can be optimised (maximised) by adjusting the input alternatives, so “prescribing” what the best decision is. Decision Support System (DSS) • A DSS is a type of Information System that includes a model based set of procedures for processing data, to support judgments that must be made when making decisions (‘What-IF’ ?)