Textbook material for this class:

Information Technology for Management, 12th Edition (2021)

Efrain Turban, Carol Pollard, Gregory Wood John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Paperback ISBN: 978-1-119-70290-0 Electronic ISBN: 978-1-119-70291-7

CSCI 740

Assignment 3

Chapter 3, Page 98

IT at Work 3.5

Note: this assignment relies on information presented in Chapter 3, and Chapter 6 sections 1 & 2.

Electronic Records Management Systems (ERMS) in Action

Here are some examples of how companies use ERMS in the healthcare, finance, and education sectors:

Example 1: Healthcare

Anne Arundel Medical Center (AAMC) is a regional health system headquartered in Annapolis, Maryland and serves an area of one million people. Like many hospital systems, AAMC has made information available to employees to enable better decision-making for patients and AAMC. To do this, they implemented an electronic medical record system for patient care and billing. They also use multiple tools for reporting and leveraging information collected as part of normal patient care and hospital operations. Using these new technologies, IT analysts at AAMC actively created new reports. Unfortunately, employees often found it challenging to find the data they needed.

Example 2: Finance

American Express (AMEX) uses TELEform, developed by Alchemy and Cardiff Software, to collect and process more than one million customer satisfaction surveys every year. The data are collected in templates that consist of more than 600 different survey forms in 12 languages and 11 countries. AMEX integrated TELEform with AMEX's legacy system, which enables it to distribute processed results to many managers. Because the survey forms are now readily accessible, AMEX has reduced the number of staff who process these forms from 17 to 1, thereby saving the company more than $500,000 a year.

Example 3: Education

Many higher education institutions including Princeton, University of Cincinnati and the University of Texas at Austin maintain their student records, as defined by FERPA, in an ERMS. To make best use of it, they rely on electronic written communication media, such as email, instant messaging, discussion boards, and chat sessions, to communicate with students and each other. Under FERPA, students dissatisfied with services they receive can file claims of lack of service, incorrect information, and faculty bias and then petition to view their records. To reduce institutional risk, university faculty, staff, and administrators try to maximize effective communication with their students by keeping careful electronic notes of how they delivered a service as well as documenting the knowledge and assistance they provided to the student.

Example 4: Healthcare (from 11th Edition of the textbook)

The Surgery Center of Baltimore stores all medical records electronically, providing instant patient information to doctors and nurses anywhere and at any time. The system also routes charts to the billing department, which can then scan and email any relevant information to insurance providers and patients. The ERM system helps maintain the required audit trail, including the provision of records when they are needed for legal purposes. How valuable has ERM been to the center? Since it was implemented, business processes have been expedited by more than 50%, the costs of these processes have been significantly reduced, and the morale of office employees in the center has improved noticeably.

Questions

1. What are the business benefits of BI?

2. What are two related challenges that must be resolved for BI to produce meaningful insights?

3. What are the steps in a BI governance program?

4. What does it mean to drill down into data, and what is it important?

5. What four factors are contributing to increased use of BI?

6. What is ERMS a strategic issue rather than simply an IT issue?

7. What might a company have a legal duty to retain records? Give an example.

8. Why is creating backups an insufficient way to manage an organizations documents?