Introduction
Transactions are the routine day-to-day activities performed by most organisations.
· some are commercial transactions (buying, selling products and services, paying bills etc)
· others involve recording or retrieving data (making a booking, enrolling a student at university looking up results etc)
Most individual transactions are relatively simple, but in most organisations, there are very large numbers of them - so speed and efficiency are important considerations.
What is a TPS?
A transaction is any business-related exchange such as a payment to an employee, a sale to a customer, and a payment to a supplier.
- A Transaction Processing System (TPS) is an organized collection of people, procedures, databases, hardware and software to record completed business transactions.
- Most TPSs consist of all the components of a CBIS including databases, telecommunications, people, procedures, software and hardware.
- For most organizations, the TPS is the basis of the day-to-day activities that occur in the normal course of business, adding value to its products or services.
Transactions
Transaction processing is often the core of most major activities in organisations and the systems that collect this data often support other systems that might be decision support, management information or executive information.
A transaction is a fundamental unit of activity in organisations and are generally indivisible. They often involve multiple steps, but if any of the steps fail then the whole transaction cannot proceed
Analysing transaction patterns and volumes of transaction data is an important middle management activity in any business process.
Objectives of a TPS
¨Increase labor efficiency
¨Capture, process and store transactions and produce output
¨Maintain error-free data input and processing
¨Ensure data and information integrity
¨Produce timely documents and reports
¨Provide increased and enhanced service
¨Increase customer loyalty
¨Achieve competitive advantage
Early systems
Typically, transaction processing business processes were among the first to be automated/computerised in most organisations, thus a lot of this early work with this type of system provides the foundation for current thinking about information systems.
The reason behind this is that:
· computer equipment was relatively expensive in these early days
· these systems were among the easier to create
· small savings in the costs to process large numbers of transactions added up to significant amounts that would cover the costs of the expensive equipment
· few other business processes within typical organisations could provide these benefits
At this point, it is also worth noting that centralised systems were initially easier to control and could achieve economies of scale. Grosch's Law claimed that computing power was proportional to the square of the cost of the processor this favoured ever larger centralised mainframes over smaller distributed systems.
Transactions in business to business are usually in huge quantities and involve huge cash expenditure. Businesses usually buy in large quantities to sell to many customers. Businesses also buy raw materials in large quantities to finish the raw materials into final products and sell them in large quantities. On the other hand, business to customer involves transactions related to the sale of one product and this involves less capital expenditure (Barschel, 2007). Most of the customers do not buy in large quantities. No customer will buy two vehicles since this would be expensive. Even though business to business transaction may be for final consumption, the quantity dealt with is usually large because the number of users in the organization is usually high.
For a transaction processing system, New Century could use it for financial related things like payments, how much is due off from a customer, what kind of medicine they have, and transactions in general. Business support systems would be used to determine the help needed for the employees
They have a strong core transaction processing infrastructure for meeting operational needs of a company this size.
Transactional Processing The accounting software packages developed and distributed by Sage and Microsoft, respectively, each use their own methods for recording accounting information. Sage 50. There are three different areas that must be discussed. These are the revenue, expenditure, and financing cycles. These areas are written about from the author's own knowledge from using the software, as learned from the book by Carol Yacht (2013).
Every interaction your company has with a customer or supplier likely generates a data trail and this data provides a wealth of information for marketers. Extracting that information and getting it into usable shape requires sophisticated data mining tools. One example of this technology is the used by police departments to identify patterns in crime. We will define, explain and discuss main aspects of data mining. Also its benefits and negative issues.
The book Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis by Dr. Eric Berne, is one introducing the fundamental concepts of transactional analysis (TA). Transactional analysis a theoretical approach that focuses on the ways in which individuals interact with one another. Berne describes interactional patterns among individuals as “social intercourse” which thrives off of basic human principles.
Databases becoming a web service. E.g. a database exposes an interface in the web that allows direct execution of store procedures.
System performance is one of the most critical issues faced by companies dealing with vast amounts of data. Companies use database systems and their applications to store, retrieve and handle this data.
It simplifies the storage and processing of large amounts of data, eases the deployment and operation of large-scale global products and services, and automates much of the administration of large-scale clusters of computers.
ERP provides an integrated real-time view of core business processes, using common databases maintained by a database management system. ERP systems track business resources—cash, raw materials, production capacity—and the status of business commitments: orders, purchase orders, and payroll. The applications that make up the system share data across the various departments that entered the data. ERP facilitates information flow between all business functions, and manages connections to outside stakeholders.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems integrate (or attempt to integrate) all data and processes of an organization into a unified system
Transactional Analysis, according to Eric Berne is a powerful tool for human well-being. Eric Berne deals with the psychology behind our transactions. Transactional Analysis determines which ego state is implemented by the people interacting.
In our world, people rely heavily on the power of technology every day. Kids are learning how to operate an iPad before they can even say their first word. School assignments have become virtual, making it possible to do anywhere in the world. We can receive information from across the world in less than a second with the touch of a button. Technology is a big part of our lives, and without it life just becomes a lot harder. Just like our phones have such an importance to us in our daily lives, database management systems are the same for businesses. Without this important software, it would be almost impossible for companies to complete simple daily tasks with such ease.
Curtis G. & D. Cobham (2002: 4th edition) Business Information Systems: Analysis, Design and Practice. Essex: Pearson Education Limited
“From early on the ambition of ERP-systems has been used to integrate all transaction systems within the one system which combines all information and practices across full organisation, and gives proper information for decision-making in real-time” (Bjorn-Andersen & Johansson 2007)