69018 - Information Systems And Strategic Decision Making (Laboratory)

Academic Year 2019/2020

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: First cycle degree programme (L) in Management and Marketing (cod. 8406)

    Also valid for First cycle degree programme (L) in Business Administration (cod. 8871)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course student masters a broad array of issues managers face in the selection and management of information technology. He/She learns how information technology systems support business operations and help implement business strategies.

Course contents

Introduction to information systems.

Data & big data management.

Databases.

CRM.

ERP systems.

IT strategy and planning.

Applications (in laboratory / real business cases)

Office automations examples.

Business Intelligence in MS Excel through functions, pivoting, vlookup, primary keys, calculated fields, power pivoting, DAX functions, dashboarding.

Business Intelligence in MS Access through queries and macros.

Business Intelligence in Power BI.

Readings/Bibliography

Turban, Volonino, Wood / Information Technology for Management - International students version, Wiley, 2015 (10th edition) - chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 12 and 13.

Collie, Singh / Power Pivot and Power BI: The Excel User's Guide to DAX, Power Query, Power BI & Power Pivot in Excel 2010-2016, Holy Macro! Books, 2016 (2nd edition) - chapters 1 to 7. 

Jelen, Alexander / Pivot Table Data Crunching Excel 2016, Que Publishing, 2015 (2nd edition).

Teaching methods

Lectures and practical applications in laboratory.

Important note: up to 20 Erasmus students can be accepted, the criteria will be "first come, first served".

COVID update:

Lectures take place on Microsoft Teams, at the online lectures link.

Students are supposed to connect in time to the lectures and are responsible of the following:

  • Having a 64-bit computer firmly connected to the power network and (possibily via cable) to the Internet with a working camera and a working microphone;
  • Having 64-bit Microsoft Windows installed and running - in case of a Mac, see here possible solutions to install Windows on Mac computers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuAVOpO7yFc&t=77s

    https://www.pcmag.com/news/how-to-run-windows-on-a-mac

  • Having 64-bit Microsoft Office installed (Unibo provides a free copy to its students, to get it they are required to connect to www.office.com and login with their Unibo credentials, then download the 64-bit WINDOWS Microsoft Office, NOT the Mac one) and Power Pivot activated and running (as an alternative it is possible to download 64-bit Power BI Desktop for free here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=58494).

Assessment methods

Practical test at the PC on MS Excel Power Pivot, MS Access queries and Excel Pivots and VLOOKUP, plus a few theory open questions.

COVID update:

Final tests take place on Microsoft Teams, the link will be automatically sent by mail to the students that applied on Almaesami.

Students are supposed to connect 15 minutes before the official start, for identification and troublshooting, and are responsible of the following:

  • Having a 64-bit computer firmly connected to the power network and (possibily via cable) to the Internet with a working camera and a working microphone (also, an ID showing a picture must be at hand, to be identified);
  • Having 64-bit Microsoft Windows installed and running - in case of a Mac, see here possible solutions to install Windows on Mac computers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuAVOpO7yFc&t=77s

    https://www.pcmag.com/news/how-to-run-windows-on-a-mac

  • Having 64-bit Microsoft Office installed (Unibo provides a free copy to its students, to get it students are required to connect to www.office.com and login with their Unibo credentials, then download the 64-bit WINDOWS Microsoft Office, NOT the Mac one) and Power Pivot activated and running (as an alternative it is possible to download 64-bit Power BI Desktop for free here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=58494);
  • Having all the above mentioned softwares, plus a tool to convert a word into a pdf (PDFCreator can be downloaded for free here: https://www.pdfforge.org/pdfcreator/download) ready to work, running and tested;
  • Applying in time on AlmaEsami to book the final test (no students will be accepted if out of the list, unless a specific agreement has been taken, with specified reasons).

When the application deadline on AlmaEsami is met, the Professor will send a mail to all the students that applied on AlmaEsami for that test date, sharing a folder where the datasets and the test files will be available, plus additional instructions, if needed. Students will have to check themselves their ability to upload and download files from that shared folder and inform the Professor with a mail in case something is wrong, so that issues are solved BEFORE the date of the test.

Teaching tools

Blackboard, slides, PCs.

Office hours

See the website of Francesco Bergamaschi