Simha R. Magal, Ph.D. is Professor of Management (MIS) and Director, ERP initiative, in the Seidman College of Business, Grand Valley State University, Michigan. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. His primary research interests include e-business and enterprise systems. His articles have appeared in such publications as MIS Quarterly, Journal of MIS, and Information and Management, among others. He is Editor of AISWorld Net www.aisworld.org and has served on the editorial boards of several journals. He served as co-chair of the inaugural conference of the Midwest Association for Information Systems (MWAIS) in 2006 and as the president of MWAIS during 2008-2009.

Jeff Word, Vice President of Product Strategy, SAP AG. Mr. Word is responsible for defining SAP’s future product strategy and fostering product innovation inside SAP.

Mr.. Word has more than 14 years’ experience in business consulting and IT strategy working for Global 1000 companies in the high tech industry. Over the last 8 years at SAP, he has driven the evolution of enterprise technology strategy with focus on corporate process improvement initiatives and services-based IT architecture design.

Mr.. Word is currently completing a doctorate in Information Systems at Manchester Business School in England. His research focus is on event-driven process design and next-generation enterprise architecture. He earned an MBA in International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management (1999.)

This supplement text bridges the gap between the fundamentals of how businesses operate (processes) and the tools that business people use to accomplish their tasks (systems). The authors have developed this text for an introductory MIS or general business course to establish a fundamental understanding of business processes. Business students, regardless of their functional discipline, will be able to apply the real-world concepts discussed in this text immediately upon entering the workforce.

As more and more businesses adopt enterprise systems globally, it becomes increasingly important for business schools to offer a process-based curriculum to better reflect the realities of modern business. Given the integration of business operations and enterprise systems, Magal and Word have designed this text to reflect, in a practical and accessible format, how real-world business processes are managed and executed.