So to succeed in business today, including any e-business initiatives, companies need information systems that can support the diverse information and decision making needs of their managers and business professionals. In this section, we will explore in more detail how this is accomplished by several types of management information, decision support, and executive information systems. We will concentrate our attention on how the Internet, intranets, and other Web-enabled information technologies have significantly strengthened the role information systems play in supporting the decision-making activities of every manager and knowledge worker in business.

Artificial intelligence is making its way back to the mainstream of corporate technology. Designed to leverage the capabilities of humans rather than replace them, today’s AI technology enables an extraordinary array of applications that forge new connections among people, computers, knowledge, and the physical world. AI-enabled applications are at work in information distribution and retrieval, database mining, product design, manufacturing, inspection, training, user support, surgical planning, resource scheduling, and complex resource management. Indeed, for anyone who schedules, plans, allocates resources, designs new products, uses the Internet, develops software, is responsible for product quality, is an investment professional, heads up IT, uses IT, or operates in any of a score of other capacities and arenas, new AI technologies already may be in place and providing competitive advantage [56].