How can information systems affect a company’s bottom line (such as financial performance)?

Answer 1

An INCREDIBLE amount.

One example: An ecommerce website that has gross sales of 12 million per year and net operating margin of 25%. ($3MM profit per year). EVERY part of the business is dependent on IT, servers, etc. Downtime, even for 30 minutes is a killer. (just figure 3MM profit/bottomline per year and calculate the loss for 30 minutes of downtime.

And this isn't only lost sales from new customers, but also current customers that cannot access their account info, and employees sitting there with nothing to do. (and they're being payed).

Answer 2

It can help coordinate production and purchasing resulting in improved financial management. It can allow company's to research and understand their customers to better provide products and services their customers want while avoiding bad decisions. It can allow companies to better coordinate their logistics chain to insure proper product for retail at the proper location(this is considered the key to Wal-Mart's success)....and the list goes on and on.