Operations Support Systems

Information systems have always been needed to process data generated by, and used in, business operations. Such operating support systems produce a variety of information products for internal and external use. However, they do not emphasize producing the specific information products that can best be used by managers. Further, processing by management information system is usually required. The role of business firm's operations support systems is to efficiently process business transactions, control industrial processes, support enterprise communications and collaboration, and update corporate databases. Operation support systems include the major categories are: Transaction processing systems, Process Control Systems and Enterprise Collaboration Systems.
Transaction Processing Systems record and process data resulting from business transactions. Transaction processing systems process transaction in two ways. In real-time processing, data is processed immediately after a transaction occurs.
Process Control Systems operations support system also make routine decisions that control operational process. Examples are automatic inventory reorder decisions an production control decisions. This includes a category of information systems, which decisions adjusting a physical production  process are automatically made by computers.
Enterprise Collaboration Systems are information systems that use a variety of information technologies to help people work together. Enterprise collaboration systems help us collaborate-to communicate ideas, share resources, and coordinate our cooperative work efforts as members of the many formal and informal process an project teams and other workgroups that are a vital part of today's organizations. For example, many businesses from teams of engineers, marketing specialists, and other knowledge workers to develop new products or improve existing ones. They may form virtual teams of people from several departments and locations within a company, and include outside consultants as a team members. Such teams would make heavy use of the Internet, corporate intranets and extranets, and collaboration software know as groupware. Then they could easily collaborate via electronic mail, discussion forums, data and video conferencing, and multimedia project web sites on the company's intranet. In this way, a product development team could efficiently communicate with each other and coordinate their work activities, and effectively collaborate in the development or improvement of products and services.