Archive for the 'Information System Implementation' topic

20^th century enterprise management problems are caused by rigid structures laid over the business

The generally accepted “business enterprise” definition is the activity of providing goods and services. The failure of 20^th century management to organize and manage the business enterprise in the activity of providing goods and services creates unsolvable management, business, and performance problems.

The fatal error of 20^th century management, employed by all companies, corporations, and other enterprises today, is laying a rigid enterprise organization structure over the business, rather than organizing the business. Since the business is not organized, the business cannot be managed. Therefore, rigid enterprise management structures for planning, processes, systems, financial and cost accounts, quality, administration, performance, reporting, etc must be contrived and laid over the business. Structures laid over the business conflict with the actual business, restrict business flexibility, move out of “alignment” as the business changes, prevent direct business data capture and management, and do not provide the direct management information needed to manage the business.

20^th century enterprise management improvements can never solve unsolvable problems

We continue to teach 20^th century enterprise management, contrive new 20^th century structures and “business solutions” to lay over the business, and write more 20^th century management books, but we have never solved the top ten problems of 20^th century enterprise management.

1. Reorganization: The business changes while the organization structure remains rigid, causing upheavals to lay a new rigid organization structure over the business and repeat the cycle
2. Accounting and Financial Management: Historic legacies focus on cash control and prevent professional records management and modern capital management of the actual business increasing financial risk and preventing accurate business management information
3. Investment Analysis and Development Project Management: Investments and projects are managed separate from the business, rather than itemizing, planning, and managing the costs, benefits, and return of capital development investments, as part of the business
4. Administration: Performing functions, while leaving tangible and intangible capital utilization and improvement unmanaged
5. Performance Management: “Performance” definitions mix actions executed with the result accomplished, so business processes, performance management, and KPIs mix results and performance and manage “performance quality”
6. Business Complexity: Each organization, plan, processes, system, administration, or other structure is defined separately with different definitions creating business and information complexity and preventing business collaboration and common solutions applicable to any business
7. Information Technology: Business systems, data, information solutions, networks, and architectures are designed to process overlaid structures and managed as technology, not capital, creating costly IT infrastructures and continuing capital management problems
8. Change Management: Change management addresses the conflicts between structures laid over the business and the actual business to change structures, while the business remains undefined and unmanaged
9. Corporate Governance: Problems are addressed from the governance side to restrict and control management, rather than organizing the business to be governed by management on the corporate side
10. Alignment: Rigid overlaid structures go out of alignment as the business changes requiring continual changes to the structures to align closer to the business

These and other unsolvable 20^th century enterprise management problems are discussed, in detail, here at the Business Change Forum.

Solutions to he top 10 management, business, and performance problems of 20^th century enterprise management are described in a referenced article.

The top 10 problems are eliminated by 21^st century business management

20^th century enterprise management problems are unsolvable, because they can never be solved by laying new or improved structures over the business. [more...].

Information Technology is one of the top 10 problems of 20^th century management!

Information Technology incorporates a wide variety of unsolvable problems

Information Technology (IT) employed today has many inherent problems that many expensive solutions have never been able to solve:

• Information technology is managed as technology, rather than as capital preventing integration with the business
• Information technology employs large monolithic information systems that are laid over the business, instead of information processing solutions that are utilized by the business
• Information Technology defines different architectures to define and align the business, systems, hardware and networks, and data and information, rather than integrating each with the business
• Different categories of information capital are mixed in many systems using different entity names and definitions producing information complexity and preventing proper information capital management
• Since the business is not organized, information systems manage information related to structures laid over the business and do not capture, process, or report actual business data or report actual business management information
• Information Technology is difficult to manage because it mixes business, facility, and management capital that require diverse management and operating capabilities
• It is difficult to manage return on IT investments since the investments are lumped together and do not produce direct measured business improvements
• Information Technology has grown into a large expensive empire that involves much unnecessary processing, extensive overheads, and unsolvable problems

These problems can never be solved with 20^th century management that tries to improve the enterprise by laying new or improved structures over the business.

Information Technology problems disappear when organizing the business for 21^st century business management

The only way to eliminate the Information Technology problems is by organizing the business with to enable 21^st century business management. Information technology must be integrated in the business as capital defined as specific solutions utilized to produce specific business results. Business management enables the following measures to eliminate the unsolvable Information Technology problem:

• The actual business is organized as specific capital solutions, including IT solutions, utilized in performance to produce specific business results
• Information system solutions are defined and integrated with the business process as modules to produce a specific result or a chain of results
• Information systems focus on managing actual business data in result value and quality, performance cost and effectiveness, capital worth, and return on capital investments that is not processed today
• Information Technology is defined and organized as capital, with other capital of the same category, for proper capital management by those with the professional capability
• Information capital is defined and managed as business data, human knowledge, facility records, and management intelligence to produce information solutions needed by the business
• Enterprise information is integrated by capital solution utilized, result produced, supplier, customer, time period, business transaction, etc in an enterprise Business Information Base for one set of complete and accurate business information
• Information systems and processing devoted to managing arbitrary structures laid over the business and special systems to address problems in data reconciliation, information integration and extraction, and management reporting are discontinued, if not directly needed by the business
• New information system implementation integrates business and information processing with other capital solutions to produce specific output results needed by the business
• The business is organized for a new generation of 21^st century business management systems and business-information process modules, to process the actual business result by result, and provide one set of consistently-defined management information

Managing information technology as capital utilized by the actual business eliminates the unsolvable IT problems in business alignment, information complexity, data reconciliation, unknown costs and value, unknown capital worth and returns, CIO and IT management capabilities, data integration and control, and on and on.

The Information Technology Problem

Enterprise information systems include a wide variety of systems that are laid over the business

Since the business is not organized, different management structures must by laid over the business to manage the enterprise. [more...]

Alignment is one of the top 10 problems of 20^th century enterprise management!

Alignment covers many problems arising from conflicts between the actual business and overlaid structures

We keep hearing about alignment problems. Alignment problems are caused because the business is not organized. Alignment problems arise from actual business change in results produced and capital utilized as solutions in performance, which remain undefined and unorganized. Instead, the enterprise is organized, planned, directed, controlled, and reported through separate and distinct structures laid over the business. With every business change, rigid overlaid structures go out of alignment with the business. Many solutions are available supposedly to enable alignment. Many books have proposed alignment solutions. However, in spite of all of these solutions and books, alignment problems remain. The alignment solutions attempt to align organization and management structures with each other with nothing to align against. [more...]

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.< [more...].

The typical corporation has enormous IT overheads, but still has no system to manage the business

The typical corporation spends enormous sums on Information Technology and has a large IT overhead with many complex information systems. But with all this, the corporation still does not have the one information system really needed to manage the actual business. Information systems lay additional structures over the business or manage other structures laid over the business. This produces enormous business and information complexity. Corporations invest in additional systems for data reconciliation and information management, rather than simplifying information to one consistent set that reports the actual business.

The corporation has much capital administered as Information Technology instead of being managed for corporate benefit, and has much information administered as technology instead of being managed to provide information solutions for business and management results. There are no unifying business entities to be referenced to control all information in, entering, or leaving the enterprise, including emails, Internet downloads, and file transmissions.

Result-performance Management (R-pM) manages the business as one integrated information system

Result-performance Management (R-pM) uses IT to manage the actual business as one simplified Result-performance Management System. R-pM manages other simplified application programs as performance solutions integrated with the business process, where needed, to produce a specific result.

R-pM eliminates overlaid 20^th century business information systems and the need for a large IT overhead. [more...].

Processes and systems are monolithic entities laid over the business

Over the past 15 years, corporations and other enterprises have implemented business process and packaged information systems, like ERP, SCM, MRP, and CRM. These processes and systems are laid over the actual business and provided general improvement, but usually still include extra costs and inefficiencies. Often old performance problems remain after new process and system implementation. Many enterprises want to improve their process and system utilization, but lack a fundamentally-sound method. This subject is explained further in the article “How to maximize Benefits from existing Processes and Systems” published in 21^st Century Management Magazine.

R-pM can make significant improvements to existing processes and systems

R-pM provides the method by identifying and managing the actual business that lies hidden under the processes and systems. Performance problems are inherent in specific performance solutions. R-pM redefines processes and systems as value-quality chains, so the enterprise knows the specific results produced and performance solutions utilized along the chain. R-pm integrates the business and system processing as the business process solution and separates other solutions utilized. The enterprise can then solve performance problems with specific solutions, and minimize the performance and maximize the result produced at each link in the chain. This enables the enterprise to solve problems, reduce performance costs, and manage result value and quality across existing processes and systems.

Analyze existing processes and systems as a value-quality chain

The only method available to redefine existing processes and systems is explained in the download “How to Build Value-quality Chains“. The only method to manage business change effectively is explained in the download “How to Manage Business Change“. The only method to manage a business change or capital development project properly is explained in the download “How to Manage Projects in the 21^st Century“. The full details to improve existing processes and systems are provided in The R-pM Toolkit, your 21^st Century Management Manual. These downloads are available now at Result-performance-Management.com. .

Most companies find it difficult to implement new information systems and management solutions and to implement the benefit of business change. Business change is a mysterious unknown that is very difficult to manage.

Reasons for problems with solution implementation and business change

There are several reasons for the problems in business change, mainly:

• The company does not organize and manage the actual entities that change
• The company does not have a good method to ensure beneficial business change
• We do what everybody else does and employ conventional wisdom, which ensures that we have the same problems as everybody else and that we make bad decisions
• We implement change on a rickety foundation of uninvolved management, resistant users, administrative objectives, consultant methodologies, no goals for return, etc.

This situation is explained in the article Implement the Benefit of Business Change. The article outlines a typical business change situation for an information system implementation.

How to manage information system implementation and business change

The article also introduces Result-performance Management (R-pM), the only method that manages the actual entities that change as one integrated business structure, provides the foundation for change, and implements both the cost and benefits of change. Join the R-pM community and download “How to Manage Business Change” to take the mystery out of business change and learn how to implement the benefit of new systems, solutions, and business change.

Review the articles under Learn the Basics of R-pm for an introduction to R-pM.

21^st Century Management eliminates 20^th century problems

Result-performance Management (R-pM) eliminates business change and system implementation problems and other costly 20^th century problems. Slash costs, simplify business management, and boost competitive advantage through R-pM, the conventional method for 21^st Century Management.

Download your 21^st Century Management Manual today

Your 21^st Century Management Manual, The R-pM Toolkit, is available today and is under continual development to expand and refine 21^st Century Management. Get your R-pM Toolkit, and future updates, at result-performance-management.com.

On 1 February 2006, we posted an article Solution Implementation the Objective of Our Development Projects. This article pointed our how most of our business change projects concentrate on solution implementation. When business problems arise, the enterprise takes the easy way out by implementing a proscribed solution that they hope will solve the problem.

The enterprise is not organized to manage business change

The problem is that we have never organized and managed the business, so we are unable to manage change to the business. A business change is a change to the performance solutions utilized by the business to produce results. We must manage results and performance solutions in order to manage business change.

The solution is R-pM to organize the business and manage change

Result-performance Management organizes the business to manage business change as described in the R-pM community download “How to Manage Business Change“.

The 20th century enterprise manages overlays on the business, so most business change is through additional overlays

The enterprise has problems identifying and solving business problems, so the approach is to implement a proscribed solution, like an information system or industry best practices as a proscribed overlay. Immediately the original problem has been replaced by a much bigger problem to implement the proscribed solution. [more...]

We lack a sound structure for packaged solutions

We have had a basic problem in developing packaged solutions for use by enterprises, due to the lack of a fundamentally sound structure for the enterprise. This is particularly true for application software solutions. The solutions have to overlay contrived data collection and processing requirements on top of whatever organization is in place, rather than implementing the natural data capture and processing of the organization.

Packaged solutions are becoming more complex for specific applications

At first packages were fairly high-level and incorporated the most widely used functionality, so they could be utilized by diverse enterprises. Then packages became more complex providing more than the 20 percent of the potential functionality used 80 percent of the time, making the 20 percent more difficult to use. Each industry wanted industry-specific solutions. Different solutions labeled their own set of methods as “industry best practices”. So, different solutions installed different best practices, requiring the same solution be used across collaborating enterprises.

Package solutions are dictating the enterprise organization and management

Package solutions are getting more specific for industry functions covering everything that the enterprise does. Different solutions enforce different ways of doing the same thing. [more...]>

Information system management consulting started out to solve business problems

In the 1960s and 1970s, information system consultants developed information systems from the ground up, but they did not implement the system. They implemented the methods and procedures to improve the business using the system.

Information system management consulting became a business service to implement systems

Then in the 1980s, things began to change. Application packages replaced custom development. Consultants developed methodologies for system implementation. Methodologies spread to other aspects of consulting. Professionals, who already had their own way, were replaced with inexperienced people who could learn and follow the methodology to produce deliverables. Consultants no longer needed analytical ability and business knowledge. Information system management consulting went from professional consulting to a business service to follow methodologies and implement systems.

There is a need to put professionalism back into information system management consulting

But did this change benefit the client. [more...].