Information Systems

An information system is a set of elements that interact in order to support the activities of a company or business.

The computer equipment: hardware needed for the information system to operate.

The human resource that interacts with the Information System, which consists of people who use the system.

An information system performs four basic activities: input, storage, processing and output of information.

Entry Information: The process whereby the information system takes the data required to process information. Entries can be manual or automatic. The manuals are those that are provided directly by the user, while automatics are coming data or information or are from other systems or modules. The latter is called automatic interfaces.

Typical units for data entry terminals are computers, magnetic tapes, floppy drives, bar codes, scanners, voice, touch screens, keyboard and mouse, among others.

Data storage: Storage is one of the most important activities or capabilities that have a computer, since this property through the system can recall the information stored in the section or previous process. This information is often stored in data structures called files. The typical unit of storage are magnetic disks or hard disks, floppy disks or diskettes and compact discs (CD-ROM).

Information Processing: The ability of the Information System to perform calculations in accordance with a predetermined sequence of operations. These calculations may be made with data recently introduced in the system or data that are stored. This feature allows processing systems source data into information that can be used for decision making, making it possible, inter alia, that a decision maker to generate a financial projection based on data that contains a state performance or a balance sheet of a base year.

Departure Information: Departure is the capacity of an information system to get the information processed or outside input. Typical units of output are printers, terminals, floppy disks, tapes, voice, graphics and plotters, among others. It is important to clarify that the output of an information system can be the gateway to other information system or module. In this case, there is also output interfaces automatically. For example, the Client Management System has an automatic interface with output accounting system, because it creates the accounting policies of procedural motions from customers.