Lecture Description

During the last decades we witnessed a growing importance of Information Technology (IT) in the business world along with faster and faster innovation cycles. IT has become core for businesses from an operational company-internal and external customer perspective. Today, IT is considered as key enabler of operational excellence ranging from the enrichment of routine working tasks (e.g., enterprise resource planning systems) to e-enabled integration of entire business eco-systems (e.g., e-supply chains). Complementing this primarily company-internal perspective on IT, we have recently have seen a massive growth of digital extensions of existing products and services across all industries. The disruptive potential of IT has already transformed selected key industries, e.g. media or retail, and its impact is continuously growing in all areas of business and society.
Large-scale information systems (IS) in organizations strongly interplay with work practices of individual employees as well as organizational structures shaping and being shaped by individuals' behavior. Thus, successful implementation of IS requires dealing with transformation beyond technology. The ability to implement and use IS in a way supporting its overall value proposition has become a central success determinant. Accordingly, the course “Management of Information Systems” course is designed to provide a comprehensive insight into theoretical foundations, concepts, tools, and current practice of IS. The lecture is complemented with a case study. Students get the opportunity to analyze and propose solutions for a selected real-world IS implementation.

Learning Objectives

The students will:

• Get an overview on basic concepts and definitions of information systems and understand key characteristics of IS as a foundation for digitization of business processes, products and services
• Understand important characteristics of software products on which IS are built on
• Learn important concepts and theories in order to successfully execute a digital transformation process

Lecture Content

• Definition and key concepts of Information Systems
• Introduction of different types of application systems (organizational process & information-centric systems, customer-centric systems, supplier-centric systems and people-centric systems) and their characteristics
• The digital transformation process: The pre-implementation, implementation and post-implementation phase covering facets such as business/IT alignment, packaged software selection, IS implementation projects, as well as adoption & use of IS
• Practice-oriented case study focusing on real-world IS scenarios