Ean Sffffee

Information systems play a vital role in an organizations’ overall performance. They provide many advantages to their users which range fromsimple transaction processing at the operational level to difficult tasks such asmaking important and competitive decisions at the strategic level of theorganization. Several roles played by information systems in an organisation can be identified but O’Brien and Marakas (2008) have identified three fundamentalroles played by information systems in businesses. These are; Informationsystems support business processes and operations. Secondly, they supportdecision making of employees and managers and lastly, they support strategies for competitive advantage. These three fundamental roles encompass any other roles played by information systems in an organisation.Information systems support business processes and operations of anorganization in many ways. In a hotel for instance, customer check - ins andcheck-outs are done by computers and software which makes work easy unlikethe traditional method of using notebooks and paper to record such information.Customers can now even make their own bookings through the hotels websiteinstead of visiting the hotel in person to do so, which may lead to pressure onfront office staff. Systems have now been developed to gather customer information easily and quickly. Now, because of information systems, the variousdepartments of an organization work together with ease. The housekeepingdepartment of a hotel can now inform the front office about which rooms areready for use and which are not, without personal interactions of staff as a result

of information systems. The running of an organization has now becomesmoother with well integrated information systems.Information systems also help employees and managers of a business tomake well informed decisions. This is because information systems have thecapability of analyzing data that has been collected from both within theorganization and from...