Information Technology (IT) professionals assume that most organizational problems are solvable by technology. These professionals mostly work in back-office operations and do not directly interact with clients. The result of a technology-driven mindset is that the promoted solutions are always what is best in the short term. The nature of technology rapidly changes. However, IT professionals concern more with the simplification of manual tasks to reduce any complexity. Thus to an IT professional, the solution to the identified challenge comes ahead of the means to procure the solution (Amann, Maznevski, & Stege, 2007).
Most existing business intelligence systems concentrate on the inner workings of the organizations. Therefore, for the IT professionals working on the system, it appears that there is no need to have a people-directed outlook. Instead, the IT professionals in this case continue to fine-tune the technology-centric outlook that they already have in the hope that they would obtain more efficient solutions. The actual problem for IT professionals is that they refuse to discard their already existing IT-centric mindset. IT professionals do not see the link between business intelligence and core business process. As a result, they miss how business results are achieved using a combination of the two. Their demise from a business-centric mindset has to do with their initial thought that business functions due to the technology present rather than the relations that make the technology useful (Eckerson, 2011).
IT provides business intelligence tools that facilitate the building of a decision-making engineering culture. IT is customizable and therefore organization leadership can guide the development of prototypes that demonstrate the benefits of structured approaches to decision making. With the demonstration, organizations’ convincing is easier because benefits in the bottom-line performance are measurable. IT provides information and analytical applications that facilitate the embracement and implementation of business intelligence to create business value. Without the technical and analytic capacity of IT, the decision-making engineering culture would be slow and difficult to develop (Amann, Maznevski, & Stege, 2007).
IT processes heavily rely on information processing and push organizations to increase the value they attach to their information. This realignment of the organizational mindsets makes the organization ready for more business process orientations. IT serves as an analysis tool that the organization will use to evaluate the key requirements and competencies for the cultivation of a decision process engineering culture. IT provides automation of routines and recurrent management processes and operations. The use of IT in business intelligence helps in the creation of structures to handle the repeatable decision processes. Lastly, IT makes groupware and workflow facilities a reality such that collaboration on decision-making is possible and simplified (Amann, Maznevski, & Stege, 2007).
The paper by Kumar, Clegg and Bennet (2010) acts as a bridge between studies that identify the risks involved in managing ERP projects and studies that indicate the proper management of those risks. The authors review the literature and carry out a case study. In the literature review, the authors identify critical issues in ERP projects. They then develop a risk management framework that will assist in the management of the issues identified. With the results of the literature review and the framework developed, the authors study a real implementation of ERP. They adopt a UK-based energy service group with the previous demonstration of effective ERP project management. The case study is relevant because the energy group used in the study achieved its growth through acquisitions and mergers. Thus, it represents a conglomerate of individual business units with independent IT systems. The implementation of an ERP project linking up all the independent units serves as a viable study opportunity whose results apply to other industry implementation of ERP.
In the research, the authors note that risk factors affecting the successful implementation of the ERP project fall into various categories. The categories refer to the phase of the project namely planning, implementation and operations. Others are project processes, organization transformations, and IT viewpoints. The main finding of the study is that other projects within the ERP project should get the necessary attention just like the ERP. The management of overall IT architecture, the non-availability of resources combined with other projects within the ERP framework significantly influence the outcome and impact of the ERP project. This article assists managers to achieve success in the plan, implementation, and operation of their enterprise resource planning projects. It especially applies to risk management framework use (Kumar, Clegg, & Bennet, 2010).
The design of enterprise resource systems is to ensure that the business operations of an organization are integrated. Moreover, the proper design facilitates the efficient and effective working of the ERP system. Various researches indicate the failures of organizations in implementing ERP projects. However, despite the reported failures of ERP projects, organizations persist in their adoption of ERP. The appeal of ERP technologies is its ability to integrate smoothly with other technologies such as electronic and mobile commerce. Despite all the research on why organizations prefer ERP projects, there still exist various spots yet to be covered in the research. Currently, major literature on ERP follows curricula. Future research should look into areas that extend the taxonomy of the issues involving ERP in organizations.
References
Amann, W., Maznevski, M. L., & Stege, U. (2007). Managing complexities in organizations. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons.
Eckerson, W. W. (2011). Performance dashboards: measuring, monitoring, and managing your business (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Kumar, P., Clegg, B. T., & Bennet, D. J. (2010). Managing enterprise resource planning projects. Business Process Management Journal, 16(2), 282-296.