What is business informatics?

               

Business informatics or organizational informatics is a discipline combining information technology, informatics, and management concepts. The BI discipline was created in Germany, from the concept of "Wirtschaftsinformatik". It is an established, successful academic discipline including bachelor, master and diploma programs in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and is establishing in an increasing number of other countries as well as Australia. BI integrates core elements from the disciplines' business administration, information systems, and computer science into one fie.

Business informatics (BI) is a discipline combining economics, the economics of digitization, business administration, information technology (IT), and concepts of computer science. The BI discipline was created in Germany (in German: Wirtschaftsinformatik). It is an established academic discipline including bachelor, master, diploma and Ph.D. programs in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, The Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and is establishing in an increasing number of other countries as well as Australia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, Malaysia, Poland, and Mexico.BI shows similarities to information systems (IS), which is a well-established discipline originating from North America. However, there are a few differences that make business informatics a unique own discipline. Business informatics includes information technology, like the relevant portions of applied computer science, to a larger extent than information systems do.

Business informatics includes significant construction and implementation-oriented elements. I.e. one major focus lies in the development of solutions for business problems rather than the ex-post investigation of their impact. Information systems (IS) focuses on empirically explaining the phenomena of the real world. IS has been said to have an "explanation-oriented" focus in contrast to the "solution-oriented" focus that dominates BI. IS researchers make an effort to explain the phenomena of acceptance and influence of IT in organizations and the society applying an empirical approach. In order to do that usually qualitative and quantitative empirical studies are conducted and evaluated. In contrast to that, BI researchers mainly focus on the creation of IT solutions for challenges they have observed or assumed and thereby they focus more on the possible future uses of IT.

Tight integration between research and teaching following the Humboldtian ideal is another goal in business informatics. Insights gained in actual research projects become part of the curricula quite fast because most researchers are also lecturers at the same time. The pace of scientific and technological progress in BI is quite rapid, therefore subjects taught are under permanent reconsideration and revision. In its evolution, the BI discipline is fairly young. Therefore, significant hurdles have to be overcome in order to further establish their vision.

Business informatics or organizational informatics is a discipline combining information technology, informatics, and management concepts. The BI discipline was created in Germany, from the concept of "Wirtschaftsinformatik". It is an established, successful academic discipline including bachelor, master and diploma programs in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and is establishing in an increasing number of other countries as well as Australia. BI integrates core elements from the disciplines' business administration, information systems, and computer science into one fie.

Business informatics is quite a broad field and its definition is rather blurry. I would say it focuses on information technology with respect to business questions.

Some quite frequent included fields might be:

1 Big data
2 Business process analysis for processes that can be facilitated by means of IT
3 Operations research (this actually is a distinct research area but it has large intersections with business informatics)
4 Decision support systems/data warehousing/business intelligence
5 IT-based quality management or quality management for software/IT processes or general processes that are controlled via any kind of 6 IT
7 IT-based risk management
8 IT-project management

It has many, many intersections with a ton of other areas so that it is nearly impossible to define an area that is really distinct to business informatics. You can major in it and will learn a very broad area of fields. This has been my approach because I wanted to learn in breadth which is out there before specializing and narrowing down myself too much.

Having done this I learned that I would like to go into a more quantitative area, so fewer studies, fewer “talking” about things, or weighting up arguments whether to implement some system or not. I rather like to work with models, implement those, and build software architectures. I am not yet completely clear of where I want to go but currently, I work on my Ph.D. in supply chain management which, also, has many intersections with the more quantitative parts of business informatics - if you also study supply chain management quantitatively.