The Australian and New Zealand edition of Business Driven Information Systems discusses various business initiatives first and how technology supports those initiatives second. The premise for this unique approach is that business initiatives should drive technology choices. Every discussion first addresses the business needs and then addresses the technology that supports those needs. This text provides the foundation that will enable students to achieve excellence in business, whether they major in operations management, manufacturing, sales, marketing, finance, human resources, accounting, or virtually any other business discipline. Business Driven Information Systems is designed to give students the ability to understand how information technology can be a point of strength for an organisation. Unlike many texts currently available, this edition has been regionalised in order to best reflect the needs of instructors and students in the Pacific Rim. The text therefore not only provides many more regional examples and case studies, but also reflects our business environments with a focus on SMEs.

Common business goals associated with information technology projects include reducing costs, improving productivity, improving customer satisfaction and loyalty, creating competitive advantages, streamlining supply chains, global expansion and so on. Achieving these results is not easy. Implementing a new accounting system or marketing plan is not likely to generate long-term growth or reduce costs across an entire organisation. Businesses must undertake enterprise-wide initiatives to achieve broad general business goals such as reducing costs. Information technology plays a critical role in deploying such initiatives by facilitating communication and increasing business intelligence. Any individual anticipating a successful career in business whether it is in the functional areas of accounting, finance, human resources or operations must understand the basics of information technology that can be found in this text. We have found tremendous success teaching management information systems (MIS) courses by demonstrating the correlation between business and IT. Students who understand this tight correlation understand the power of this course.

Students learn 10 per cent of what they read, 80 per cent of what they personally experience and 90 per cent of what they teach others. The business driven approach in this text takes the difficult and often intangible MIS concepts, brings them to the students’ level and applies them using a hands-on approach to reinforce the concepts. Teaching MIS with a business driven focus helps to:

• add credibility to IS
• open students’ eyes to IS opportunities
• attract students to study a major in information systems
• engage students.