Organizations are commonly organized into four major functional departments. Information is a fifth major functional area that may be a stand-alone department or may fall under the finance functional area. Although in most organizations the operations department is the only functional area that actually transforms the inputs into the outputs of goods and services that are sold to customers, all functional departments use the systems process.

Within each department, employees also use the systems process to transform inputs into outputs based on the work flow. Other department members rather than other departments may receive their outputs. Feedback is needed for improvements.