Business informatics deals with digitization in business, administration and society. Business informatics is a science that deals with the development and application of information and communication systems in business enterprises. From the point of view of computer science, business informatics is applied computer science. Due to its interdisciplinary nature, it has its roots in economics, especially business administration, and computer science. Findings and methods from the social sciences, especially sociology and psychology, as well as related scientific disciplines such as cybernetics, systems theory and communications engineering are relevant for research, teaching and practice in business informatics.
How Business Informatics (BI) is Classified as a Science
Although business informatics has many features of a so-called interface or bridging discipline that is open to other disciplines, it has its statement area: it deals with theories, methods, tools and develops intersubjectively verifiable knowledge about information and communication systems. It was created to be able to develop and operate increasingly complex systems. It is thus primarily a real science, but also has elements of structural science. Since business informatics deals with the development of information systems, it is also understood as engineering science. First and foremost, however, she deals with information and communication systems, which, like in computer science, are not necessarily understood as computer-aided systems. Rather, business informatics develops models for real, social and economic systems and tries to use them to formulate requirements for information systems and to generate information models. It can therefore also be understood as a social science. Business informatics uses systems theory to develop information systems. The focus is on economic aspects. At many university locations, business informatics is therefore assigned to economics or social and economic sciences. At universities of applied sciences, business informatics was included roughly half in informatics and half in economics. Business informatics also deals with how economically usable data, information and knowledge can be extrapolated from such systems and how these factors can be provided by systems. Please refer to the knowledge pyramid shown on the right, which shows the relationship between the above. Factors made clear. The management of knowledge has gained enormous importance in companies and universities in recent years. The development of the Internet in particular has made efficient processes and methods available for generating, managing and disseminating knowledge. E-learning systems and wikis in particular are powerful tools in this area.
Business informatics has established itself as an independent academic course or as a focused subject in other courses and is an integral part of private and public research.
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Objectives of Business Informatics In Engineering
A more specific objective of business informatics in its capacity around engineering is to explain the effects of information systems and to investigate the question of how to optimize the design of application systems. In the long term, this aims to develop a fully automated operation. However, since full automation is not always feasible or sensible, it often remains with partial automation, i.e. a change in the division of labour between man and machine, but which is below the level of full automation. A more concrete perspective is provided by the distinction between administration and disposition systems, which together form the group of operational systems.
These can be mentioned as objectives of BI:
- Rules for rigorous research and security for researchers
- Criteria for reviewing magazines and conferences
- Criteria for the selection of young academics and appointment procedures
- Criteria for the evaluation of scientists and research institutions
- Positioning of design-oriented business informatics in international research
Fields of Work
Business informatics deals with the planning, development, implementation, operation, further development and economic use of information and communication systems that are used for formalized support of ongoing business processes and structured strategic decision-making in companies and public administration. Non-business-related applications such as finite element systems for calculating stresses in technical components or applications that are not used in a consistent formal framework due to their generalization (e.g. word processing software) are not part of the classic field of business informatics.
Problems in Companies Through Business Informatics
As the productivity paradox, considerable problems can arise when introducing IT systems and implementing IT projects (e.g. software projects) in companies. The following problem areas are often encountered:
- Requirements problem: unrealistic project goals, uncontrolled expansion of the project scope without a plan that allows such expansion;
- Estimation problem: inadequate time planning, no planned process for a new estimate in the event of a change in the project flow, no sensible reviews;
- Quality problems: random quality tests instead of an overarching control process that ensures quality is implemented throughout the project;
- Team productivity problem: poor team productivity, which leads to many work processes having to be repeated because the original result is insufficient;
- Project management problems: missing or incorrect planning, performance values, assessment of the influence of changes and problems etc .;
- Evaluation problems: insufficient target-related evaluation and assessment of objects on the basis of a system of decision-relevant properties (evaluation criteria);
- Cultural problems: other, non-Western cultures have different ideas about work processes and working relationships; For example, in some traditional East Asian cultures so much emphasis is placed on good relationships that problems that arise are not explicitly or inadequately named or concealed.
