Systems and most of all information systems invade our personal and or business lives. This simple overview could be used to understand some basics about systems and their place in an organization.

Technically speaking, any (information processing) system has a user-interface, a database to store the information that is to be managed and an engine the process the information.

Functionally speaking, an information systems is used to support a business process. If the systems supports the business process directly the systems could be categorized as an operational system, if it supports the business process indirectly it is better categorized as infrastructural or supporting system. If your phone (PBX) system is used to channel calls from clients it is directly operational, otherwise it supports the organization indirectly. This example shows that (in some cases) a system can harness both.

In the area of operational systems there are three main variants: A system dedicated to production. In this case the information system directly assesses the manufacturing process and holds information about parts and requirements, where they are located and indication of quantities to be used. The main goal of such a system is to increase the quality and reduce the time-to-.market. Obviously there are many different types of production systems.

Another area of operational systems is distribution and exchange. This is another wide area dedicated to handle existing products and services: delivery, distribution, but also storage. The delivery of a financial order from a client to the stock-exchange could be typed as such a sub-system.