In a fast moving economy, no organization can expect good results without implementing new technologies. Computers, networks, software systems are a reality and denying it will eventually lead to a negative impact on the organizations’ results. In this, we refer to some aspects of information technology and the advantages and disadvantages that software systems can provide to a manager or management team and, in the end, to an organization.informational system, informatics system, DSS

Mihai Radu Costescu

English

Research Papers in Economics

 
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Revista Tinerilor Economi ti 
A REALITY FOR ANY FIRM – THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Assoc. Prof. Ph.D. Mihai Radu Costescu 
University of Craiova, Romania 
Abstract: In a fast moving economy, no organization can expect good 
results without implementing new technologies. Computers, networks, 
software systems are a reality and denying it will eventually lead to a 
negative impact on the organizations’ results. In this, we refer to some 
aspects of information technology and the advantages and disadvantages 
that software systems can provide to a manager or management team 
and, in the end, to an organization.
Key words: informational system, informatics system, DSS 
The millennium in which we develop our activity is considered one of 
information, well selected and well invested. The present environment of competition 
growth, of diversification of opportunities on the market, makes absolutely necessary 
valuing the data and the information that we have this being possible only using 
advanced technical methods. 
   Using the computer to monitor the activity of commercial companies has as 
purpose, first of all, systemizing information and easy access to it, and secondly allows 
using a whole series of informational systems, in order to ease the day to day activity. 
The main advantages of using the calculating technique are excluding subjectivity and 
user’s lack of experience in developing the activity, as well as easy access to the data 
base. 
  In the day to day life, computers are something common, even absolutely 
necessary in some cases and we are right to say that we live in an informatics society. 
Today, computers are everywhere, many times connected between them and creating 
thus computers networks. Still, we must not forget that a computer is in fact a 
“machinery“ that processes a series of information which the user provides. Information 
is thus the main element in this chain. In practice, we encounter, among other things, 
two concepts related to this, which are the informational system and the informatics 
system. 
  The informational system represents all the elements implicated in the process 
of collecting, transmitting, processing information, its role being to transmit the 
information between different elements. Inside this system we have: the rumored 
information, the documents carrying information, the personnel, the means of 
communication, information processing systems, etc. 
  Most of the activities meant by the elements inside the informational system are 
being developed based on the calculation technique. The primary data is being 
processed, the result is being transferred forwardly to another processing department 
and the transfer is made electronically. 
  All the elements implicated in this whole electronic process and data 
transmission make up an informational system. 
  We can thus say that, the informational system is included in the informatics 
system, the latter being a main element of the first.  
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  One of the most informatical branches today is economics. From ancient times, 
the man, even without being conscious of this, has been preoccupied with the area of 
economics. The motivation was s simple one – in order to satisfy certain needs, it is 
necessary to use certain goods, certain resources, all the used elements in producing 
new necessary goods are called economical resources. These resources are limited, thus 
needing to be managed correspondingly, in order to satisfy the main needs. 
  Thus it has appeared the general economical problem related to resources 
management and its way of use, which represents a man’s work to choosing and using 
resources to better satisfy his needs. 
We are aware that the process of introducing and use of new information 
technology in organizations is based on the skills of experts, who, along with their 
specific knowledge, have to master a series of interdisciplinary skills, too. Besides 
knowledge, different forms of organizing and managing human resources, long term 
planning, employment, training, motivating, encouraging creative work and proper 
stimulating are significant. Accompanying psycho-sociological and managing processes 
depend also on conditions, forms and area of work, human resources and skills 
available, working atmosphere, and other factors. 
  The informatics system covers all the problems of the economical agent, to 
create interdependencies between components, thus the physical structure from the 
system attached to the economical agent has another structure in the informational plan. 
He comes between the decision and execution systems being subordinated to them. By 
implementation of some mathematical methods and using the electronic calculation 
technique, the informatics system gives increased values to the informational system 
under quantity and quality aspect. Thus, we witness an increase in the calculation 
capacity, under the aspect of the amount of data processing and operations, increasing 
the information exactitude, increasing the information operation, in the conditions of 
increasing the complexity of economical activities. All these determine a closeness of 
all the phenomena and economical processes it coordinates, with all the positive 
economical effects which derive from it. 
  The fast changes in the business environment determine informatics systems to 
reach an essential component of the organization in fulfilling its purpose (mainly, 
obtaining profit). Thus, using information technology has become a necessary in the 
organization’s functioning especially today when we sense new tendencies in the 
evolution of organizations like: 
- using the Internet al organizational level locally or globally, which has become 
a main means of communication for the commercial activity, an important 
means of promotion etc; 
- the emergence of Internet organizations, which develop their business only in 
this area, these organizations using Internet, Intranet and Extranet as well as 
other networks to ensure commercial activity support; 
- globalization, the relation of this phenomenon being a relation in which every 
factor determines the other one, both being ample elements, cu tendencies of 
emphasizing (developing); 
- reformulating the business process, a consequence of the globalization 
tendencies, because the business environment is in continuous change and new 
techniques and methods of elaborating this process are being imposed. 
In a company with more activity spheres, any activity must be founded at the  
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Revista Tinerilor Economi ti 
level of product groups’ level which will be the purpose of commerce and not at a level 
of a corporative strategy. The company is afterwards divided in main activities, like, for 
example, the sale process, and auxiliary activities, like human resources management 
which creates the necessary general frame for the functioning of the company, but 
which cannot be directly correlated with any of the individual parts, examining 
afterwards the way in which we consider that each part contributes to generating value 
inside the company and the difference towards competitors in the area. 
Economical modeling has proved to be a very helpful instrument in this 
situation, which in time has become a main element of the decision founding process 
inside companies. Economical modeling represents an instrument useful to the 
managers, economics being an area in which the application of experimental methods is 
rarely used, because in most of the cases it leads to extremely negative results (maybe 
even bankruptcy) for the economical agent, proportionally direct with the number of 
possible action alternatives. 
  Modeling and simulating economical processes – frontier economical area with 
mathematics and calculation technique – deals with founding managerial decision, in 
conditions of efficiency for the company, with the help of some flexible models and 
with the possibility of using the simulation technique. 
  The necessity of elaborating some economical models resides in the fact that 
the economical problems cannot be accurately modeled through strict, fixed models, 
mainly due to the fact that they cannot identify the special dynamics of the economical 
phenomenon, preferably we will use multiple elements from the theory of probabilities, 
heuristics, vague sets, dynamic programming, simulation techniques etc. Thus, in 
elaborating some models for the economical problems we must take into account, for 
example, the economical aspects, the decision type, the human behavior or the 
informatics systems, all these influencing directly the managerial decision. 
  Thus, the necessity for a market for developing solutions has appeared – 
decisions founded according to the evolution of commerce and the existing business 
environment. And the question the managers must answer is: which would be the most 
feasible way of founding and implementing a decision in such a manner in which to 
offer good advantages to the firm at a good relation between quality and price? 
  The answer derives from the opportunity of the technical environment itself, 
through administration programs of internal resources, of manager programs, soft 
programs for achieving different investments. The achievements in computer area and 
electronic industry have opened a lot of doors for product and services diversity. One of 
these fully developing sectors has resulted from the continuously increasing 
telecommunication industry. This sector is formally names “information technology”. 
The concept of “information technology” (and the products and services it implies) as 
well as computer integration and networks, have changed the way in which business 
and personal communication are done. In the present competitive and difficult business 
environment, the process of finding clients is very important, of satisfying their 
expectations and of obtaining profit from that. In order to achieve this, the firms need 
improved strategies, improved business proceedings as well as that necessary 
organizational agility to take advantage of emerging opportunities. 
  Change is inevitable and the rate of technology change is continuously 
increasing, business, the processes implicated in business and the business models must 
permanently adapt to the economical climate and the competition pressures.  
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Business Statistic – Economic Informatics 
Computerized decision support systems became practical with the development 
of minicomputers, timeshare operating systems and distributed computing. As 
technology evolved new computerized decision support applications were developed 
and studied. Today, many computer programs are converging to provide integrated 
support for managers working alone, in teams and in organization hierarchies to 
manage organizations and make more rational decisions. 
Starting from this point, in time, within the organizations’ management, a new 
area has appeared that of “information” management, which means the activity of 
collecting, organizing, depositing and using internal or external “information”, which 
sum up interest aspects for the organizations. 
 The emergence of this new area of management has imposed the necessity of 
its reflection in the international technologies plan, which meant creating and 
developing Knowledge Management Systems (KMS), and as a following “step”, the 
emergence of decision support systems (DSS).  
Knowledge Management System (KMS) refers to a (generally IT based) system 
for  managing knowledge in organizations, supporting creation, capture, storage and 
dissemination of information. It can comprise a part (neither necessary nor sufficient) of 
a Knowledge Management initiative. The idea of a KMS is to enable employees to have 
ready access to the organization's based documented of facts, sources of information, 
and solutions. 
On the other hand, Decision Support Systems (DSS) are a specific class of 
computerized information system that supports business and organizational decision-
making activities. A properly designed DSS is an interactive software-based system 
intended to help decision makers compile useful information from raw data, documents, 
personal knowledge, and/or business models to identify and solve problems and make 
decisions. 
Consolidating the society based on knowledge has lead to evolutions in the 
plans of informational and informatics technologies with a role in planning the 
organization’s resources. The result was developing under quality and quantity aspect 
of informatics systems which “offer” a support in planning the organization’s resources 
and, from this, of a support regarding the whole decision process of the firm. 
Projecting decision support systems is based on the idea that quality 
information (from the content’s point of view as well the presentation’s type) is 
essential for the decisional process and the decision quality. 
Research in the area of tactic and especially strategic management has 
confirmed that decisional processes at these levels are generally unstructured. Today, 
the major concern of the specialists in the area of informatics systems is to satisfy the 
increasing demand of the managers for information which will allow them to evaluate 
more rapidly and correctly the performances of the organizations that they lead. 
The support systems for decision can satisfy this quality information demand 
and can improve the efficiency of the decisional work of the managers. 
The dynamics of economical life and the contemporary information explosions 
make a necessity out of using the different types of assisting systems for the managerial 
process. In spite of the imposed limitations by the impossibility of perfect reproduction 
of the human judgments by a computer, informatics systems for management represent 
today absolutely necessary instruments of modern management, most of the routine 
decisional activities, the amount of all information necessary for the decisional process 
together with techniques of research and finding of information being completely  
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Revista Tinerilor Economi ti 
overtaken by these systems. More, their perfection continues, doubled by improving 
computer performances, offering increased possibilities of taking over more and more 
comprising segments of the reasoning activity developed by humans. 
The role of informatics systems for management consists of, first of all, 
reducing costs, increasing the potential of business growth and mechanization or 
assisting the decisional process. The advantages of introducing software systems in 
decision assisting consists of collecting and rapid processing of a huge amount of data, 
using economical and rough mathematical methods and models in the analysis and 
interpretation of the information, as well as achieving multiple correlations between 
elements and phenomena characteristic to the analyzed decisional situations, 
correlations which offer the possibility of some complex analysis and interpretations 
founded, and most of the time, presented in a most suggestive manner. 
  At the same time, we must also consider certain limits of a system like this one, 
limits deriving, first of all, from the impossibility of completely and perfectly 
substituting the human judgment, of the low level in which we take into account the 
uncertainty of the economical environment and the dependency between these software 
systems and the calculation systems upon which they are implemented. Even so, the 
influence of informatics systems for management upon increasing decisional activity 
efficiency cannot be doubted. 
  The support given by informatics systems for management differs according to 
the level of management and the type of decision it addresses. Some researches have 
showed that informatics systems for the executive are the most frequently used among 
all the types of systems for assisting the decisional process, at different levels of 
management. 
  The main advantage imposed by using informatics systems consists of time 
reduction of management decision founding, aspect which resides from the existence of 
a dynamic change of information between organization and partners (internal and 
external environment) provided by these – compulsory implementing and functioning 
of the systems in need of an adequate informational infrastructure, INTRANET 
technologies, VPN, etc. 
  Introducing information and computer technology, more exactly internal 
software programs of developing and improving the activity of a firm, within the 
processes of a firm, it is absolutely necessary for improving its availability and 
performance. Today, a firm’s availability to do business is considered implicitly by 
potential customers to be 24/7. 
Using information technology can thus offer an advantage of the firm in front 
of its competitors – the capacity to achieve something that the competitors cannot and 
something which is valuable to potential customers. Thus, the firm will be able to offer 
products to its customers more rapidly, cheaper and better than its competitors that do 
not use the information technology and software programs with the purpose to help the 
internal process of activity developing.  
REFERENCES
1. Filip. F.G.     Decision Support Systems, Technical Publishers, Bucharest, 
2004 
2. Filip. F.G.     Computer Aided Decision-Making: Decisions, Decision 
Makers and Basic Methods and Tools, Technical Publishers  
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Business Statistic – Economic Informatics 
& Expert Publishers, Bucharest, 2002 
3. Power, D.J.  A Brief History of Decision Support Systems. 
DSSResources.COM, World Wide Web, 
http://DSSResources.COM/history/dsshistory.html, version 
4.0, March 10, 2007. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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