Information system implementation converts business performance problems
Information system planning often only plans system implementation
Enterprises make large investments to implement all kinds of resource planning, human resource, accounting, customer, logistics, manufacturing, and other information systems. The objective of many of our business change projects is information system implementation that converts existing business operations and data. When you ask anyone involved what they are doing they answer “implementing a new system” or what is their objective they answer “to get he system into operation”. Management consultants have methodologies to implement information systems. The information system implementation objective prevents the needed benefit from business change.
System implementation converts existing business problems to the new system
Is system implementation the proper objective? Does system implementation make existing business problems converted to the new system easier or harder to solve? What is the benefit of system implementation? System specification, acquisition, development, implementation, and operation are all costs and provide no benefit, per se. So we are always implementing costs with no attention to developing benefits.
We make high cost capital investments and then fail to manage the capital in operation to manage costs and the benefits and return from the utilization on the capital. Benefits from new information systems tend to be incidental in completing some work faster, gaining more accurate information, etc, rather than planning and implementing real business change and the benefits possible.
The problem is the lack of a framework to plan and manage costs and benefits of business change
The fundamental problem is the inability to plan and manage business change. This is because the business itself is not organized or managed. The output results of value produced by the business that provide the benefits of change and the capital solutions that incur the costs to produce the results are not defined and managed as sets. Without an organized business there is limited understanding of the actual business and difficulty in analyzing information system implementation related to the business.
Result-performance Management (R-pM) shows how to implement information systems for benefit
Result-performance Management (R-pM) organizes the business as economic output results of value required for business success, capital solutions of worth required by the business to produce the results, and performance in the utilization of capital solutions to incur the costs to produce the result value and create result value-added after total solution costs. Result value-added is planned and managed to provide the return of all capital solution investments including new information systems.
R-pM implements information systems and supporting solutions to increase result value-added for the benefits and return
Information systems are business process capital that integrates system and business processing utilized to produce results. Information system implementation is part of the implementation of the full set of new and improved solutions needed to increase the value added to results produced directly and indirectly by the information system. Information system acquisition and implementation is justified by the planned result value-added that provides the return on the information and other solution development investment. The investment is substantiated by result value-added goals for the utilization of solutions after implementation. Implemented solution utilization is managed against result goals to manage the benefits of the new information system and return on investment.
R-pM is available today to manage information system investments
R-pM can be utilized to plan and manage any information system implementation. The methods are explained in downloads “How to Manage Business Change” and “How to Manage Projects in the 21st Century”. The full use of R-pM to organize and manage the enterprise business is documented in the R-pM Toolkit. These documents and explanations of Result-performance Management are available at result-performance-management.com.
January 25th, 2006 at 15:39
Let me say I find this site thought provoking but short on answers. I hope you are provoking thought first and will provide answers later, like this rpm thing that was mentioned. I wanted to comment on system implementation, because I have seen so often that consultants and management just want to get the system in. Afterward I had to solve problems with file structures, etc. that would have been so easy to change before implementation, but were costly projects afterward.