Since the early eighties companies have endeavoured to use new technologies to make better decisions: Executive Information Systems, Decision Support, Data Warehouses and Data Marts, Business Intelligence, OLAP (Online Analytical Processing), and now CRM.
All of these technologies have provided significant business benefits too many early adopters them, but for all their success there have been just as many organisations that have failed to reap the expected benefits.
The reasons behind these disparities have been much commented upon with some organisations using the failure of others as justification in itself not to proceed themselves and instead to continue with business as usual. The most common grounds for failure have been quoted as:
· The technology didn’t work
· The information was unreliable
· IT didn’t understand what the business required
The most successful adopters recognised early on that technology was simply the enabler, not an end in it self. Yes, sure there would be the occasional bug in the latest software but these had to be overcome. Probably the most prolific area for disparities between success and failure are with the comprehension of the business requirements.
Here, as with all projects, if the requirements are not clear to all concerned then success is jeopardised and the business will certainly suffer as a consequence. The main barrier is all too often the lack of an enterprise-wide culture, with no sharing of knowledge or resources. These "turf wars" are fuelled from two directions. Firstly from the traditional establishment structures that support the natural tendency to contain information within departmental boundaries and a reluctance to share information within the business. Secondly they are fuelled by the technical complexity and high level of investment in IT systems meaning that control and access remain vested in the upper echelons.
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