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ChaPter 11 • Designing effeCtive outPut 295

Figure 11.1
The corporate
The customer
logo and name A turnaround document for
writes the
are preprinted Minigasco’s data processing.
amount of the
on the billing
payment in
statement.
this area.
An area is
provided for
1000 N St.
customers to
Lincoln, NE 68501
enter a change Account Number Please Indicate
Amount Paid
of address.
Check here if 640-056-175
and write your new address below.
Information about
the account is
Amount Due
printed by a
computer. $17.38
Service Address
Account Number
Eckert Caryn S Billing Date Payment must be
640-056-175
123 Oak Street 7/8/2012 received by this
Lincoln, NE 68501 Previous Reading date to be credited
Meter Reading
1517 on your next bill
1547
Aug 5, 2012

own printer. An analyst needs to recognize the trade-offs involved in choosing an output method.
Costs differ; for the user, there are also differences in the accessibility, flexibility, durability, dis-
tribution, storage and retrieval possibilities, transportability, and overall impact of the data. The
choice of output methods is not trivial, nor is it usually a foregone conclusion.

Relating Output Content to Output Method
The content of output from information systems must be considered as interrelated to the output
method. Whenever you design output, you need to think of how function influences form and
how the intended purpose will influence the output method that you choose.
Output should be thought of in a general way so that any information generated by the
computer system that is useful to people in some way can be considered output. It is possible
to conceptualize output as either external (going outside the business), such as information that
appears to the public on the Web, or internal (staying within the business), such as material avail-
able on an intranet.
External output is familiar to you through utility bills, advertisements, paychecks, annual
reports, and myriad other communications that organizations have with their customers, vendors,
suppliers, industry, and competitors. Systems analysts sometimes design external output, such
as utility bills, to serve double duty as turnaround documents. Figure 11.1 is a gas bill that is a
turnaround document for a gas company’s data processing. The output for one stage of process-
ing becomes the input for the next. When the customer returns the designated portion of the
document, it is optically scanned and used as computer input. With the advent of green IT (also
called green computing, or ICT sustainability), many organizations are trying to encourage cus-
tomers to think about environmental savings, ease of use, and 24-hour access to accounts so that
they switch from paper statements to online bills. Electronic transactions would then lessen the
environmental impact of paper output, and would further computerize the business to consumer
relationship.
External output differs from internal output in its distribution, design, and appearance. Many
external documents must include instructions to the recipient if they are to be used correctly.
Many external outputs are placed on preprinted forms or websites bearing the company logo and
corporate colors.