TOOL KIT: Mastering the Three Worlds of Information Technology.
By: McAfee, Andrew,
Harvard Business Review,
November 2006, Vol. 84, Issue 11
There are three categories of IT, each of which provides different organizational capabilities–and demands very different kinds of management interventions
The Three Categories of IT
Function IT (FIT)
Network IT (NIT)
Enterprise IT (EIT)
EIT's primary capabilities include the following:
• Redesigning business processes. EIT gives managers confidence that employees will execute processes correctly.
• Standardizing work flows. Once companies identify a complementary business process, they can implement it widely and reliably along with the EIT.
• Monitoring activities and events efficiently. EITs can allow managers to get an accurate and up-to-date picture of what's happening throughout the enterprise, often in something close to real time.
Andrew McAfee (amcafee@hbs.edu) is an associate professor at Harvard Business School in Boston. Visit his blog at blog.hbs.edu/faculty/amcafee.
Showing posts with label IT systems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IT systems. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Information Technology - HBR 2006
Information Technology
Mastering the Three Worlds of Information Technology
Andrew McAfee
November
Reprint R0611J
Mastering the Three Worlds of Information Technology
Andrew McAfee
November
Reprint R0611J
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
THE NEXT REVOLUTION IN PRODUCTIVITY
By: Merrifield, Ric, Calhoun, Jack, Stevens, Dennis,
Harvard Business Review, June 2008, Vol. 86, Issue 6
Service-Oriented Architecture
Over the past 25 years, rapid advances in IT and operations design and practices revolutionized the way organizations conducted business and yielded huge productivity gains. Capitalizing on information technology, reeingineering, and other process-redesign techniques helped organizations eliminate some tasks and integrate others that had been imprisoned in functional silos. The result was much more efficient, cross-functional processes for procuring supplies, taking and fulfilling orders, manufacturing products, providing services, delivering offerings to customers, and so on. Collectively, these innovations have helped companies reduce costs by hundreds of millions -- sometimes even billions -- of dollars, cut order-delivery times by 50% or more, and significantly boost quality.
For the most part, however, reengineering has involved recasting processes and the information systems that support them in a proprietary, rather than a standardized, form -- that is, customized for individual organizations. Such designs make it difficult and expensive for businesses to share, consolidate, and change processes. For example, you can't rip out FedEx's order-fulfillment process and the computer systems behind it (or any component of the process or the systems) and plug them into another company. That limitation has made it tough for FedEx to integrate the many logistics companies it has acquired.
The result: Virtually all large companies suffer from an enormous duplication of activities; they continue to create and perform hundreds of noncore tasks that would ideally be outsourced; and they are spending exorbitant amounts on IT projects in order to support redundant and nonstrategic operations and to update core processes.
One reason that reengineering focused on creating better proprietary processes is that 20 years ago, in the early days of the process-redesign revolution, the internet was not what it is today:
Also missing until this decade were methods of designing computer systems that permit capabilities to be shared over the internet as web services. That's the essence of SOA: It provides guidelines that allow software developers to design systems in stand-alone chunks of computer code, each specifying the critical outcomes, performance metrics, and interfaces between a discrete activity and other services.
SOA has a great potential to improve productivity. At this point in time,still many companies are still wary of SOA. Even companies that have adopted SOA, are not using SOA to create more productive and focused organizations or to slash costs by purging duplicative operations and technologies. They are not revisiting the fundamental design of their operations.
Harvard Business Review, June 2008, Vol. 86, Issue 6
Service-Oriented Architecture
Over the past 25 years, rapid advances in IT and operations design and practices revolutionized the way organizations conducted business and yielded huge productivity gains. Capitalizing on information technology, reeingineering, and other process-redesign techniques helped organizations eliminate some tasks and integrate others that had been imprisoned in functional silos. The result was much more efficient, cross-functional processes for procuring supplies, taking and fulfilling orders, manufacturing products, providing services, delivering offerings to customers, and so on. Collectively, these innovations have helped companies reduce costs by hundreds of millions -- sometimes even billions -- of dollars, cut order-delivery times by 50% or more, and significantly boost quality.
For the most part, however, reengineering has involved recasting processes and the information systems that support them in a proprietary, rather than a standardized, form -- that is, customized for individual organizations. Such designs make it difficult and expensive for businesses to share, consolidate, and change processes. For example, you can't rip out FedEx's order-fulfillment process and the computer systems behind it (or any component of the process or the systems) and plug them into another company. That limitation has made it tough for FedEx to integrate the many logistics companies it has acquired.
The result: Virtually all large companies suffer from an enormous duplication of activities; they continue to create and perform hundreds of noncore tasks that would ideally be outsourced; and they are spending exorbitant amounts on IT projects in order to support redundant and nonstrategic operations and to update core processes.
One reason that reengineering focused on creating better proprietary processes is that 20 years ago, in the early days of the process-redesign revolution, the internet was not what it is today:
Also missing until this decade were methods of designing computer systems that permit capabilities to be shared over the internet as web services. That's the essence of SOA: It provides guidelines that allow software developers to design systems in stand-alone chunks of computer code, each specifying the critical outcomes, performance metrics, and interfaces between a discrete activity and other services.
SOA has a great potential to improve productivity. At this point in time,still many companies are still wary of SOA. Even companies that have adopted SOA, are not using SOA to create more productive and focused organizations or to slash costs by purging duplicative operations and technologies. They are not revisiting the fundamental design of their operations.
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