Value in a System

  The value in a system completely depends on how your business is set up, the products that you deal with and you clientele. For example, ancestory.com which is in the business of giving out family tree information, would find more value in a knowledge based information system compared to a robotic information system. The e-commerce aspect of Business Information Systems has changed the way many companies exchange currencies. E-commerce has allowed business to expand and connect with customers that would have never been in there demographic due to the internet. This has allowed companies to be very competitive in pricing and have instant payment procedures as one aspect of e-commerce. When you look at ancestory.com, they gather, process and discriminate information to their clients about their family going back hundreds of years. If they do not have a strong knowledge based information system, then their whole company’s integrity would be in jeopardy. Their business comes solely from giving information to their customers via information systems on the internet and receiving payment via e-commerce. I believe ancestory.com shows a great example of how an information system has to work. First you give the company money through e-commerce. The company then does research and gathers data about your family. This is the input process. Ancestory.com then goes into the processing phase making sure the information it is giving the customer is correct, reliable, verifiable and relevant. Once this process is complete then the output is given to the customer, which is the ancestral information obtained during the company’s research. These knowledge based and e-commerce systems are the most important because if they were not around then neither would the company. If you wanted ancestral information you would have to hire a private investigator to dig up information on your family. The investigator then would have to put in the actual man hours of digging through hundreds of papers and then typing up a family tree. I can imagine with the man hours needed this could cost a pretty penny. This is why e-commerce and knowledge based systems have such a high value to ancestory.com.