Information system and company growth

Conférence invitée, Université de Mansfield, PA, USA,

30 janvier 2003

Maryse Colletis-Salles

Information system and company growth

Dr. Maryse Colletis-Salles

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Our approach

Our goal: to put in place good information systems to improve company/organization performance

A question: how to conceive such systems?

Our orientation: to start from the company/organization needs

What it means to have good performance

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What does a performing organization have to do?

To understand its missions and its nature Who it is serving, what ethical frame applies to it . . .What its core competence is

To understand its environment and anticipate changes

What its markets, customers/users expectations are What the competitors, potential partners are What foreseeable technological advances are

To conceive A new product, a new process, a new organizationA new market

To decideA new location, discard some activities, modify pricing

To actTo produce, to sell, to organize

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Organizations as thinking beings

Organizations have their own capabilities

to solve problems and create new knowledgethat do not exist at the level of each componentand are not simply the sum of all components capabilities

How does the information system contribute to develop this knowledge and these capabilities?

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Outline

1. What is an information system?

2. How does it appear, develop, and how is it managed?

3. Different types of information systems

4. The role and influence of information technology (IT) on an information system (IS)

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What is an IS?“the whole of signifying formal and informal

symbols in circulation within an organization” Any organization (any system) can be broken down into 3 sub-systems

the “operating” (doing, producing) sub-system that performs the very mission of the systemthe information sub-system, whose role is to represent all material or immaterial entities (flows, actors, products, tools) appearing in the company The decision sub-system, establishing the objectives for the operating sub-system, controlling and regulating it

Therefore the IS is a language

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A language to do what?To distinguish and describe:

the company itselfthe objects it produces or usesprocesses structuring its activity immediate environment (external actors with whom it interacts)its broader environment

As any language, the IS is:a model, a filtering system, a representation of realitywhat is not named does not exist

It is important to manage this language, this IS

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How does an IS develop?An IS has diverse origins

in part, the company develops it internally in part, it is imposed from the outside; the company has to adopt itin part, the company elaborates this language in cooperation with its partners, in order to work with them on shared projects

Certain parts of the IS are comparatively easy to build, others are more complex

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What are the objectives of managing the IS?

To manage the IS is to conceive it, to implement it, to operate it . . .

In order to bring changes to the company representation system . . .

To:warrant company cohesion, i.e. secure a stable common language

favor the emergence of new representations, and regulate them

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The components of the IS

Common information system

Specialized information system

Individual information system

Those 3 types of IS are linked by a higher level structure: the Cooperative information system

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The Common IS

The Common IS: a collective language representing entities related in one way or the other to all company members

products, organization chart, accounting plans

The difficulty appears to be the semantic level and not the lexical oneThe Common IS is stable, non-evolving; it is very often computerizedIt guaranties the necessary coherence of the company

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The Specialized IS

It is a language common to all the actors of a sector of the company (service, subsidiary, office, profession…)It is a specific and detailed language

stock control department will add its own information to describe products: maximal storage life, out of stock warning level, preferred location

It is mostly computerized in companies, but not always in local government and institutions

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The Individual IS

It is the representation system that the actors of the company build for their own use

It is the necessary disorder that might bring a new order, i.e. new representations that can be shared by a group or by all

It is not appreciated by computer system specialists

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The Cooperative ISIt organizes exchanges between various actors or parts of the system in order to:

make cooperation possible between themfacilitate the collaboration towards creating new knowledge

The Cooperative IS is conveyed by three means:means of communication (in a physical sense) means of sharing data (how various actors modify the data they have accumulated on “objects ,” how they transfer or acquire data produced by other actors)means of cooperation at work (how various actors’ actions can be organized within a process, a project)

IT has increased tremendously the capacities of Cooperative IS, but it did not created them, and is not in a capacity to do so

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The risks of an imbalance in the management of the various IS

A reminder of the two objectives of managing the ISto insure company cohesion through a shared languageto favor the appearance of new representations

A major risk: to favor one of the objectives above the other

The temptation exists to “collectivize” all Specialized IS in order to create a single global Common IS that would be complete and extremely detailed with the risk of sclerotic uniformity The opposite temptation is a generalized “permissiveness ,” a multiplication of horizontal contacts, poorly controlled, that may lead to an atomization of the company (with some categories of factors fixing their own objectives and their own evaluating processes), as well as to a risk of hyper-reactivity

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The role of IT in the ISBecause of its own potential, IT has a determining role in the IS managementBy helping to formalize and structure information in a way that promotes sharing it, IT is a great ally of the Common and Specialized ISSince it gives a form to information that lacks one, IT can end up freezing the organization,without necessarily wanting that to happenBut IT can be a powerful leverage to put in place re-organizations that have been decided (for example in the case of business process reengineering—BPR)

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IT in a company: What’s at stake?

“[There is] no significant positive productivity impact from IT investment, no relationship between expenses for computers and business profitability, no process innovation, except for companies that changed their work process radically” (Strassman)According to Solow, “You see computers everywhere, except in productivity statistics”What’s at stake with IT is linked to what happens in the IS and is more organizational than technical

See for example the difficulties in implementing some types of computerized systems (ERP in particular)

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People above the machineThe Web and associated tools (search engines and intelligent agents) are thought to have tremendously facilitated access to useful information for decision makersSome authors are skeptical

“The information that today’s decision makers can access after implementing all these costly technologies, is not of a higher quality than that they received prior to doing it” (Davenport)

Information useful for the company performance is information that has been interpreted, i.e. treated by humans