Week 3 - Information Systems

Question 1

What is external structured data?

Answer 1

Structured data gathered from outside the organisation.

Question 2

What is an example of external structured data?

Answer 2

 Mobile phones / GPS
 Credit history
 Travel history
 Real estate records
 Census data

Question 3

What is internal structured data?

Answer 3

Structured data generated within an organisation.

Question 4

What is an example of internal structured data?

Answer 4

 CRM
 Web profiles
 Sales records
 HR records
 Financials
 Inventory

Question 5

What is external unstructured data?

Answer 5

Unstructured data gathered from outside the organisation.

Question 6

What is an example of external unstructured data?

Answer 6

 Google
 Twitter
 Facebook
 Instagram
 Pinterest
 Blogs
 External sensor data

Question 7

What is internal unstructured data?

Answer 7

Information from within an organisation without any pre-defined structure such as a data table.

Question 8

What is an example of internal unstructured data?

Answer 8

 Online forums
 Web feeds
 SharePoint
 Sensor data
 Text documents

Question 9

What is structured data?

Answer 9

 Clearly defined data fields (e.g. name, age, address, phone number, etc).
 The data is easily searchable.
 Additional work undertaken to copy data from organisation systems into a data warehouse specifically for reporting and analysis.

Question 10

What is unstructured data?

Answer 10

 Found mostly in external (big data) sources.
 The data not as easily searchable.
 Hard to manage and creativity is required to pull relevant data for analytics.

Question 11

What is the process to convert data into information?

Answer 11

Data -> Contextualise, categories, calculate, quality, condense = Information

Question 12

What are the three management decision types?

Answer 12

• Unstructured decisions
• Semi-structured decisions
• Structured decisions

Question 13

What are unstructured decisions?

Answer 13

Require judgement, evaluation and insight to solve the problem.
Example: deciding if the company should enter into a new market or would it be more beneficial to stay in their current market only.

Question 14

What are semi-structured decisions?

Answer 14

Have elements of both structured and semi structured decisions.
Only part of the problem has a clear cut answer via accepted procedure.
Partially programmable but still requires human judgement.

Question 15

What are structured decisions?

Answer 15

Having well-documented processes in place to handle a situation.
Structured decisions solve recurring problems.

Question 16

What are golden records?

Answer 16

 Golden records for data are accepted as the most accurate and reliable of its kind. The data has been prepared or verified to represent the objective truth as closely as possible.
 Requires the use of data standards, data quality, metadata and master data management.
 Enables trusted decision-making.
 Enables joining of data.
 Provides a single view of data across part, or all, of the enterprise.

Question 17

What are data standards?

Answer 17

The rules by which data are described and recorded.

Question 18

What is data quality?

Answer 18

The ability of a given data set to serve an intended purpose.

Question 19

What is metadata?

Answer 19

Data about data.
It is a description giving structure, context and meaning.

Question 20

What is master data?

Answer 20

The consistent set of identifiers and extended attributes that describes the core entities of the enterprise.

Question 21

When are golden records mandatory?

Answer 21

In government and compliance reporting.

Question 22

What are the three types of metadata?

Answer 22

• Structural
• Administrative
• Descriptive

Question 23

What is structural metadata?

Answer 23

How is it organised? How does it relate to other data sets.
E.g. books, photos, music, articles, products etc.
Structural book metadata includes page numbers, sections, chapters, index, table of contents.

Question 24

What is administrative metadata?

Answer 24

When was it created? When was it modified? Who can access it? How large is it?
E.g. author, publish date, access, file location, license types, camera mode used to take the photo, light source, resolution.

Question 25

What is descriptive metadata?

Answer 25

Who owns it? What does it contain? Describes the asset to be used for identification and discovery. E.g. unique identifiers, physical attributes and bibliographic attributes including author, creator, title, keywords, tags, subjects, description.

Question 26

What are the four types of master data?

Answer 26

- Less volatile - More complex - Valuable or mission-critical - Non-transactional

Question 27

What is an inner join?

Answer 27

Focuses on the common items (intersection) between the two tables.

Question 28

What is an outer join: left?

Answer 28

Keeps all data in the left table and adds to it using matching entries from table 2.

Question 29

What is an outer join: right?

Answer 29

Keeps all data in the right table and adds to it using matching entries from table 1.

Question 30

What is an outer join: full outer?

Answer 30

Combines and returns all data from two or more tables, regardless of whether there is a match between tables. Also called the union between tables.

Question 31

What does OIS stand for?

Answer 31

Organisation information systems.

Question 32

What are the three parts of organisation information systems (OIS)?

Answer 32

- Back-end (data preparation. Extract, transform and load into the data warehouse). - Front-end (visualisation. Dashboards, scorecards, reporting). - User-end (business user).

Question 33

What is an organisation information system (OIS)?

Answer 33

A system that accesses the data, converts it into information and transports it across an organisation. An OIS is about providing data to the right person in the right place at the right time to enable operations.

Question 34

What does EIM stand for?

Answer 34

Enterprise information management.

Question 35

What is an enterprise information system (EIM)?

Answer 35

A set of business processes, policies and software to manage Organisation Information Systems, i.e. data and information flow across an organisation through its daily operations.

Question 36

What are the seven building blocks of enterprise information management (EIM)?

Answer 36

 Infrastructure (connect disparate technologies, sources and opportunities without wholesale replacement. E.g. connect mobile, cloud and new external sources of data).  Vision (data and analytics leaders understand the organisation’s vision including strategic initiatives, objectives and threats).  Strategy (a long term plan for realising the EIM vision that requires commitment, a roadmap, systems, standards, policies and procedures).  Metrics (measuring the value of an initiative e.g. speed of getting a product to market, customer satisfaction).  Governance (responsibility, authority and accountability for setting decision rights, policies and goals for data and analytics programs).  People (getting people to follow good policies and procedures through training and education).  Process (Master Data Management: define and document processes and information lifecycles otherwise data accumulates and becomes unmanageable).

Question 37

What does MDM stand for?

Answer 37

Master data management.

Question 38

What is master data management (MDM)?

Answer 38

The tools and processes an organisation uses to establish a single source of truth for all its critical data i.e. their Master Data. MDM is:  Adherence to data standards.  Data quality assurance.  Ensuring metadata is present and accurate.  Converting data to information.

Question 39

What are the three things master data management (MDM) needs to be?

Answer 39

- Available - Useable - Reliable