Books by Robert J. Thierauf

Virtual reality - one of the most advanced and exciting technologies to emerge in recent decades - offers businesspeople a new way to grasp information and use it quickly and effectively. This book offers a detailed analysis of how it works, why it is valuable and where it is going.

Focuses on the essentials of knowledge management, business intelligence, and smart business systems. This publication highlights the shortcomings of information systems. It explores a holistic approach to exploring an organization's opportunities and solving its problems. It also looks at connecting points of wisdom.

This work highlights the coming age of management information systems for all types of executives by focusing on executive information systems, or EIS.

A common complaint heard in today's business office is, There is paper everywhere but I cannot find the document that I'm looking for! Such an approach is found in this unique and useful volume. Essentially, image processing systems in business use today's computer technology to solve paper processing and storage problems.

In the second part, Thierauf reviews the current state of development for programming languages in expert systems, the computer hardware necessary to run expert systems, and expert system shells useful in developing business expert systems.

This book is designed to help MIS and information center managers and their staffs to efficiently and cost effectively meet the needs of end-users in their organizations.

Hence, the power of the computer can be an important means to assist managers in doing what they do better when employing a creative computer software approach. Initially, the text looks at a number of areas that are impacted by creativity, with special emphasis on creative computer software.

Offers an insight into those elements of electronic data interchange systems that have relevant applications to finance and accounting. The author cites various case studies explaining the development and implementation of EDI systems and examines both hardware and software.

Written primarily for information systems managers, systems analysts, and end users who interface with them, this volume explores the group approach to decision support systems. As Thierauf points out, group decision making enhances the effectiveness of overall organizational decision making by eliminating some of the shortcomings--particularly the potential for uncorrected error--of individual decision making. When the collective expertise of the group is combined with the objective findings from a computerized mode of operation designed to help the decision making process, group decision support systems are the result. Thierauf explains the principles of group decision support systems, demonstrates their practical applications, and describes methods that can be used to design effective group decision support systems.The book begins by presenting the underlying framework for group decision support systems and examining the characteristics of decision making in the group environment. There follows two chapters which offer a comprehensive treatment of the hardware and software necessary and one devoted to work redesign and the development of group decision support systems. The final section addresses the applications of group decision support systems to strategic planning, marketing, manufacturing, accounting, and personnel. Numerous figures illustrate points made in the text. An important contribution to the MIS literature, this book both delineates the need for more widespread use of group decision support systems and clearly explains how to implement such systems in every area of business operations.

Thierauf's work develops a number of interesting and potentially useful approaches to management information systems (MIS) practice. The author presents a number of techniques (some well known, others more recent) that practicing MIS managers may adopt to facilitate effective MIS planning for the 1990's by focusing on problem finding rather than on problem solving. A primary recommendation of Thierauf's is the restructuring of the MIS organization using a functional (end-user) departmental approach. Discussed at length are various issues relevant to this restructuring, such as staffing, motivating MIS personnel and end users, and MIS `soft' controls. Recommended for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students as well as practicing managers and MIS specialists. ChoiceWith new developments in hardware and software, MIS managers are increasingly faced with the need to develop more sophisticated managerial--as opposed to purely technical--skills. Here, an acknowledged expert in the field of information systems draws on his own original research and experience to develop a set of workable strategies and techniques that MIS managers can use to function more effectively as we move into the next decade. Thierauf identifies probable trends in the field in coming years and outlines ways in which MIS managers can anticipate predictable problems, apply improved management skills to the end-user interface, and effectively motivate MIS personnel.Thierauf concentrates particularly on four major areas of managerial responsibility: planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling. In planning, he shows how to use problem-finding techniques to anticipate and solve potential problems between MIS personnel and end-users. To help reduce this conflict, Thierauf argues, there is a need for a new direction in organizing MIS departments. He proposes bringing MIS and end-use departments together by using a functional departmental approach. In motivating MIS personnel, there is need to go beyond self-actualization by emphasizing mutual actualization as well as self donation. Finally, in the area of control, Thierauf advocates the use of soft controls to replace stringent controls that have had a tendency to restrict personal freedom on the job. A common thread througout the discussion is a focus on effective guidelines for the MIS manager to follow in order to come to grips with the changing realities of the 1990s.

One of the first books to probe the latest direction in computing technology, Thierauf's and Hoctor's innovative text explores ways in which smart business systems can help pick the best, most optimal or near-optimal solutions from among hundreds, even thousands of possibilities that threaten to swamp organizational decision makers daily.

By utilizing some form of internal and external computer networks and providing some type of knowledge discovery software that encapsulates usable knowledge, Thierauf shows how to create an infrastructure to capture knowledge, store it, improve it, clarify it, and disseminate it throughout the organization, then how to use it regularly.

Today's MIS manager must understand and apply the latest thinking on the crucial management functions: planning, organizing, directing, and controlling.

On-line analytical processing (OLAP) is clearly a new approach to information system technology-offering a much-needed way to make informed decisions better and faster. One of its most important characteristics is multidimensional analysis-analysis that goes beyond the conventional two-dimensional analysis and provides users with rapid retrieval of data from organizational databases, data warehouses, or both. Not only that, but most importantly, says Dr. Thierauf, it allows users to look at different dimensions of the same data, thus enabling them to do analyses across departmental and even corporate boundaries. How it works and OLAP's many benefits to aid users in the public and private sectors is spelled out here, comprehensively yet concisely, and with the author's customary well-developed examples and clear prose. His book will be important reading for people at all levels of management and in all types of organizations.Another way of viewing OLAP is getting a typical company out of the custom-report-writing business and into the data-cube-server building business. An OLAP data structure can be thought of as a Rubik's Cube of data that users can twist and twirl in different ways to work through what-if and what-happened scenerios to get at the whys of the situation. Within an OLAP environment, the focus is on performing dictionary definition and maintenance as well as mapping flat files or relational columns to dimensions and measures. Although this may sound like a lot of work, managing one data cube is more efficient than writing a number of custom reports. Currently, some vendors provide administrative tools to get the data into the cubes in the first place, in the proper form, and on a regular basis. Hence, the job of managing data has been simplified for users.

This work seeks to show how to appreciate and use Mis technologies to acquire a better understanding of a company's total operations toward the goal of achieving a higher level of competitive advantage.