Information Systems in the Organization

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Information Systems in the Organization

• Basic IT Organizational Structure

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Infrastructure Management

• People
• Organization
• Motivation
• Technology
• Hardware
• Software

• System Administration
• Acquiring Resources
• Maintaining Existing Resources
• IT Security

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Emerging IssuesSteve Andriole, If I Only Knew 7
Things, Datamation, July 8,2004

• Regulatory Trends Internet taxation, privacy,
  intellectual property.
• Interoperability Web services,
  interoperability.
• Supply Chain Wal-mart end to end, Dell no
  inventory, dynamic pricing, RFID
• Architecture Thin client/fat client, super
  servers, distributed processing, standards

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Emerging Issues (cont.)Steve Andriole, If I Only
Knew 7 Things, Datamation, July 8,2004

• Sourcing Outsourcing, IT utilities,
  partnering
• Infrastructure Will the Internet survive,
  security, viruses, spam, etc.
• Emerging Technologies Wireless, AI, RFID, etc.

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People
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It is Not All About Technology

• Traditional IT
• Centralized control
• Resource restrictions
• Formal methodologies and discipline
• Careful planning
• Administrative support

• New IT
• Distributed control
• Resource expansion
• Few methodologies and unrestricted access
• Rapid development
• Strategic impact

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Requirements for Successful IT

• Well understood vision
• Single team approach
• Business financial justifications
• Internal marketing
• Reengineering skills
• Political awareness and support

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Roles

• Steering Committee
• CIO
• Manager
• Project Manager
• Analyst
• Programmer
• Systems Programmer
• User

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Organization

• Centralized
• Single IT structure
• Consolidation of functions
• Career paths for IS professionals
• Information control
• Economies of scale

• Decentralized
• IT organizations in divisions
• Closeness to local problems
• Responsiveness to operational requirements
• User ownership of costs and problems

Distributed IT units with joint
reporting Separation of IS and user
functions Identification of corporate data and
functions User ownership of user applications
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Typical IS Organization
Steering Committee
CIO
Development
Operations
Data Administration
Network Architecture
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Relationship with Users

• Formal - user agreements and contracts
• Utility - IS supplies standard information
  resources
• Vendor - IS promotes solutions in competition
  with outside competitors
• Partner - IS and users share common goals and
  rewards

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Consultants/Contractors

• Access to new ideas and standards
• Access to additional resources
• Change agent who can own responsibility
• Managing the relationship

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Ongoing Operations

• Operations management
• Job scheduling
• Error management
• Security management
• Help desk
• Change Control
• Planned
• Emergency
• Access and permissions
• Supported
• Permitted
• Prohibited

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CIO, July 15, 1998
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Critical Questions for IT

• How does IT influence the customer experience?
  
• Does IT enable or retard growth?
• Does IT favorably affect productivity?
• Does IT advance organizational innovation and
  learning?
• How well is IS run?

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IT Goals

• Early Cost Savings and Control
• Mid Alignment with Organization Goals
• Current Integration Into the Business

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Three Rules to Remember

• Don't commit to any technology until after it has
  crossed the chasm.
• Use normal rules of engagement when dealing with
  enabling technology kings and princes and
  application companies of any size.
• Wherever there is an enabling-technology gorilla,
  get on that bandwagon and no other.

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Developing Architecture

• Objectives Define business functions
• Business Analyze service level expectations
• IT Determine requirements
• Technology Specifications and design
• Detailed Requirements Product selection
• System Install new system components

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Business Objectives

• Increase Revenue
• Reduce Cost
• Identify those business functions that will use
  the infrastructure and how IT will promote their
  business objectives. In business terms.
  Technical excellence is not enough!

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Business Expectations Suggested measures

• At the highest level, an IT organization should
  be tracking a number of key ratios and
  indicators.
• These should be reported on in terms of current
  value, trends, and rate of change

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Service Level Objectives
Typically service levels are negotiated with
users or management and carefully tracked.
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Total Cost of Ownership
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TCO

• A standardized environment costs less to
  install and maintain than a heterogeneous one.
• Electronic software distribution ensures
  consistent software installation and eliminates
  the need to physically install software on each
  computer.
• Use remote systems management tools to move
  software and data to and from laptops,as well as
  to store backup images of users' hard disks.
• Use automated technical support tools to reduce
  support personnel staff.

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TCO

• Consider replacing personal computers with
  "thin clients" such as network computers.
• Client/server technology offers another take on
  TCO, without the need to invest in network
  computers.
• Use automated network management and monitoring
  systems to reduce the infrastructure costs of
  WANs.

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IT Requirements

• Standards
• Logical Topology
• Centralization, distribution, separation and
  duplication of the appropriate components
• Management Strategy
• Primary and secondary control points, definition
  of responsibilities
• Security Policies and Strategies

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Network ArchitectureUniversal Goals

• Interoperability work with other users
• Scalability ability to expand
• Flexibility ability to add or move users
• Security keep outsiders out
• Central Control manage from one place

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Detailed Requirements

• LAN technologies and boundaries
• Internetworking technologies
• WAN access strategies
• Server operating systems and middleware
• Product restrictions and capabilities

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System Acquisition and Installation

• Acquisition Strategy
• Make or buy
• Installation
• Direct, phased, pilot, parallel
• Training and Evaluation
• Centralized or distributed
• Mandatory or voluntary

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Strategic Information Systems

• Information systems designed to support or shape
  competitive strategy.
• Long-range planning
• Response Management
• Innovation

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Strategic Advantage

• Only when SIS combine with structural changes
  can they help provide stategic advantage.

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Competitive Advantage

• Techniques for competitive achieving competitive
  advantage.
• Build barriers to competition
• Increase customer switching costs
• Change the basis of competition
• Change the nature or environment of business
• Optimize pricing strategy

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Frameworks

• Value chain
• Competitive forces
• Global business drivers
• Customer resource life cycle

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Porters Value Chain
Administration Human Resources Technology
Development Procurement
SUPPORT
Inbo- und
Out- bound
Service
PRIMARY
Mar- keting
Opera- tions
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Porters Value Chain

• This framework can help understand how
  Information Technologies can support different
  ones of the nine activities to add value.

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Competitive Forces

• New competitors
• Bargaining power of suppliers
• Bargaining power of customers
• Substitute products
• Rivalry from existing firms

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Competitive Forces

• Responses to maintain industry excellence
• Cost Leadership
• Differentiation
• Focus

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Global Business Drivers

• Joint resources
• Flexible operations
• Risk reduction
• Global products
• Quality
• Suppliers
• Corporate customers

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Incremental vs Radical Change TQM vs
Reengineering

• Incremental
• Focus on processes to eliminate, rather than
  correct problems.
• Radical
• Focus on inputs and outputs to completely revise
  the methods

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TQM

• Total Quality Management
• Goals
• Measures
• Root Causes
• Total quality management is a cultural change
  designed to take advantage of the desire of
  individual workers to do a better job.

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TQMW. Edwards Deming Joseph Juran

• A philosophy, not a business practice
• Incremental Process Change
• Control what you measure
• Empower employees
• Prevent rather than correct defects

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Reengineering

• The fundamental rethinking and radical redesign
  of business processes to achieve dramatic
  improvements in critical contemporary measures of
  performance such as cost, quality, service and
  speed.
• Customers knowledgable and demanding
• Competition continuously increasing
• Change constant

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Reengineering

• Redesign
• Find new ways to accomplish business goals
• Retool
• Create the (IT) systems needed to support the new
  design
• Reorchestrate
• Bring about the organizational changes needed to
  support the new system.

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Principles of Business Process Reengineering

• Combines jobs
• Empowers employees
• Natural and parallel pocess steps
• Multiple versions of processes
• Work done where most appropriate
• Minimal controls, checks and non-value added
  work
• Reduce extermal contacts and increase alliances
• Single point of customer contact
• Hybrid centralized/decentralized organization

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Increment vs Radical
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Issues

• Nurturing creativity and employee participation
• Planning strategic information systems
• BPR is major surgery that fails up to 75-80 of
  the time
• IT changes the ethical environment

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Organization