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Analysis & Design of Information Systems

Notes (viz., Manufacturing, Trading, Financial, etc.). The present day systems analysts are expected
to possess a good experience in development of software using 4GLS (such as Oracle,
Sybase, etc.) and object-oriented languages (such as C++).
(e) Creator: The analyst should possess excellent creativity skills that help to convert ideas of
the users into concrete plans. He/she should be capable of creating plans and designing
systems by drawing diagrams, charts and other illustrations.
(f) Trainer: The analyst should be a good teacher for educating and training users in computer-
based information systems.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
5. ................................. is the crucial interface between users, programmers and MIS managers.
6. ................................. analyses the problems of the current system and collects their new
requirements.

1.3 System Analysis & Design

The study of “Systems” is by no means a new or even recent endeavour. Systems have been in
use for the last thousands of years. The Egyptians used bookkeeping system over 5000 years ago
for keeping their accounts, while Phoenician astronomers tried to study the systems of stars for
making predictions.
Systems today are very helpful in running the business efficiently. But a system can function in
an effective way only if the users such as the accountants, business managers and other responsible
individuals within the company make it function in a proper way. Many times, managers are
told that they only need to know how to retrieve required information, thus making them
ignorant of the operations of the system as a whole. In accepting such advice, these managers
are, in essence, relinquishing a substantial part of the control of the organization to the system’s
designers. It is, therefore, necessary that these potential systems analysts should clearly
understand many other things also such as what a system is, what its objectives are, what kinds
of systems there are, what goes with their creation and maintenance, what are their costs and
benefits and how to analyze and monitor systems.
All organizations need systems for processing of their routine transactions. An information
system is a system that provides information to management and other people in an organization.
As computers are becoming part of every activity in most of the organizations, many information
systems now use computer systems for manipulating information. Systems analysis is the
application of the systems approach to develop Computer-Based Information Systems (CBIS) or
a computer-based MIS (Management Information System). Before studying the concepts of
systems analysis, we must understand the basic systems concepts.
System analysis and design refers to the process of examining a business situation with the
intent of improving it through better procedures and methods. Systems development can
generally be thought of as having two major components: System Analysis and System
Design. System design is the process of planning a new system or replace or complement an
existing system. But before this planning can be done, we must thoroughly understand the
existing system and determine how computers can best be used to make its operation more
effective. System analysis, is the process of gathering and interpreting facts, diagnosing
problems and using the information to recommend improvement to the system. In brief, we
can say that analysis specifies what the system should do. Design states how to accomplish
the objective.

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