Managing_and_Using_Information_Systems_A_Strategic_Approach_

Managing and Using Information Systems: A Strategic Approach – Sixth Edition

Keri Pearlson, Carol Saunders, and Dennis Galletta

Chapter 4 IT and the Design of Work

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American Express Opening Case

What is the “Blue Work” program?

What was the strategic thrust behind the Blue Work program?

What are “hub,” “club,” “home,” and “roam” employees?

What is the role of technology in these arrangements?

What was the impact of Blue Work?

Have other firms found roaming employment useful?

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It represents a flexible workplace: staggered hours, off-site work areas (such as home), shared office space, touch-down space (laptop-focused, temporary), and telecommuting.

American Express viewed workplace flexibility as a strategic lever. Also, AmEx had a corporate focus on results rather than hours clocked.

Hub: Work in the office; Club: Share time between the office and other locations; Home: work at home at least 3 days a week; Roam: Are on the road or at customer sites

Technology drives the flexibility, it doesn’t just enable productivity

American Express saves $10 million annually. Productivity improvements, office expense savings, employee satisfaction are all up. Managers are happy too.

IBM, Aetna, AT&T use this approach for a third or more of their employees. Sun Microsystems has saved $400 million in real estate costs by allowing half of their employees to roam.

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Work Design Framework

IT Has Changed Work

IT has:

Created new types of work

Bureau of Labor Statistics: IT employment in the USA is at an all-time high

New jobs such as:

Data scientists/data miners

Social media managers

Communications managers

Enabled new ways to do traditional work

Supported new ways to manage people

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How IT Changes Traditional Work

Changes the way work is done

Broadens skills; faster but more tasks

Sometimes IT disconnects us from the tasks

Sometimes people can perform more strategic tasks

Few staff are engaged in order entry any longer

Crowdsourcing is now possible at very low cost (M.Turk)

Changes how we communicate

More asynchronous and more irregular

Social networking has provided new opportunities for customer interaction

Collaboration allows a firm to look “big” with new tools

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Zuboff provides an example of disconnection from the task at a paper mill where the masters could no longer smell and squeeze the pulp to make sure of the chlorine content (to know the pulp was ready).

Also, the skills of salespeople have turned from order takers and stock counters to marketing consultants.

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How IT Changes Traditional Work

Changes decision-making

Real-time information; more information available

Data mining can identify new insights

Ideas can be gleaned from social networks

Middle management ranks have shrunk as Leavitt/Whisler predicted

Changes collaboration

Work is now more team oriented; more collaborative

Sharing is easier than ever, using multiple methods

Crowdsourcing can now provide quick answers from tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people

We now can disconnect PLACE and TIME (Figure 4.2)

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Example of collaboration: Dell uses IdeaStorm and 23,000 ideas have been submitted, 747,000 votes recorded, and over 100,000 comments have been made. Dell’s management have implemented over 500 of the ideas.

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Collaboration Technologies Matrix

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How IT Changes Traditional Work

New ways to connect

Many employees are always connected

Lines between work and play are now blurred

For many, home technologies are better than work technologies

New ways to manage people

Behavior controls – direct supervision

Outcome controls – examining outcomes not actions

Personnel controls – pick the right person for the task

The digital approach provides new opportunities at any of those three levels (Fig. 4.3)

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Example of personnel control: Apple’s hiring of Steve Jobs while on the verge of bankruptcy. Apple didn’t know exactly what Steve’s task would be. Evaluating him if he didn’t do the stellar things he did would be difficult because the goal was unclear.

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Changes to Supervision/Evaluations/ Compensation/Hiring

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Where Work is Done: Mobile and Virtual Work

Much work can be done anywhere, anytime

People desire the flexibility

Telecommuting = teleworking = working from home or even in a coffee shop

Mobile workers work from anywhere (often while traveling)

Remote workers = telecommuters + mobile workers

Virtual teams include remote workers as well as those in their offices, perhaps scattered geographically

Virtual teams have a life cycle (Figure 4.4)

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Key Activities in the Life Cycle of Teams

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Telecommuting: Global Status

A poll of 11,300 employees in 22 countries: 1 in 6 telecommute

When employees in 13 countries were asked if they need to be in the office to be productive:

Overall 39% said “yes”

But specific countries differed in the “yes” votes:

Only 7% in India, but

56% in Japan

57% in Germany

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Driver	Effect
Shift to knowledge-based work Changing demographics and lifestyle preferences New technologies with enhanced bandwidth Web ubiquity “Green” concerns	Decouples work from any particular place Workers desire geographic and time-shifting flexibility Remotely-performed work is practical and cost-effective Can stay connected 24/7 Reduced commuting costs; real estate energy consumption; travel costs

Drivers of Remote Work and Virtual Teams

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Advantages of Remote Work	Potential Problems
Reduced stress: better ability to meet schedules; less distraction at work Higher morale and lower absenteeism Geographic flexibility Higher personal productivity Housebound individuals can join the workforce Informal Dress	Increased stress: Harder to separate work from home life Harder to evaluate performance Employee may become disconnected from company culture Telecommuters are more easily replaced by offshore workers Not suitable for all jobs or employees Security might be more difficult

Some advantages and disadvantages of remote work

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Virtual Teams

Virtual Teams: geographically and/or organizationally dispersed coworkers:

Assembled using telecommunications and IT

Aim is to accomplish an organizational task

Often must be evaluated using outcome controls

Why are they growing in popularity?

Information explosion: some specialists are far away

Enhanced bandwidths/fast connections to outsiders

Technology is available to assist collaboration

Less difficult to get relevant stakeholders together

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Challenges	Virtual Teams	Traditional Teams
Communications	Multiple time zones can lead to greater efficiency but can lead to communication difficulties and coordination costs (passing work). Non-verbal communication is difficult to convey	Same time zone. Scheduling is less difficult. Teams may use richer communication media.
Technology	Proficiency is required in several technologies.	Support for face-to-face interaction without replacing it Skills and task-technology fit is less critical
Team Diversity	Members represent different organizations and/or cultures: - Harder to establish a group identity. - Necessary to have better com. skills - More difficult to build trust, norms - Impact of deadlines not always consistent	More homogeneous members Easier group identity Easier to communicate

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Challenges facing virtual teams.

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Second level

Third level

Fourth level

Fifth level

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Managerial Issues In Telecommuting and Mobile Work

Planning, business and support tasks must be redesigned to support mobile and remote workers

Training should be offered so all workers can understand the new work environment

Employees selected for telecommuting jobs must be self-starters

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Managing the Challenges

Communications challenges

Policies and practices must support the work arrangements

Must prepare differently for meetings

Slides and other electronic material must be shared beforehand

Soft-spoken people are difficult to hear; managers must repeat key messages

Frequent communications are helpful (hard to “overcommunicate”)

Technology challenges

Provide technology and support to remote workers

Use high quality web conferencing applications

Clarify time zones for scheduling

Information should be available for everyone (cloud storage can help)

Policies and norms about use of the technology can be important

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Managing the Challenges

Diversity challenges

Concept of time differs throughout the world

Anglo-American cultures view time as a continuum (deadlines are important; many prefer not to multitask)

Indian cultures have a cyclical view of time (deadlines are less potent; many prefer to multitask)

Team diversity might need nurturing:

Communications differences

Trust building

Group identity formation

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Gaining Acceptance For It-induced Change

Many changes might be a major concern for employees

Changes might be resisted if they are viewed as negative impacts

Several types of resistance:

Denying that the system is up and running

Sabotage by distorting or otherwise altering inputs

Believing and/or spreading the word that the new system will not change the status quo

Refusing to use the new system (if voluntary)

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Kotter’s Model

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Managing and Using Information Systems: A Strategic Approach – Sixth Edition

Keri Pearlson, Carol Saunders, and Dennis Galletta

Managing and Using Information Systems: A Strategic Approach – Sixth Edition

Keri Pearlson, Carol Saunders, and Dennis Galletta

Chapter 5 IT and Business Transformation

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Sloan Valve

What was wrong with their Product Development Process?

What did Sloan do? What is NPD?

Did it help?

Are all enterprise system implementations this successful?

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Complex and slow; 16 units had to coordinate; took 18-24 months to bring new products to market; >50% of ideas didn’t make it; nobody accountable

New Product Development: Adoption of ERP. Process: team included members across the firm; proposed new process of (1) ideation (2) business case development, (3) project portfolio management, (4) product development, (5) product/process validation, (6) launch

Results: Time to market reduced to 12 months, poor ideas filtered out early; better access to info and customer feedback; better accountability

Other firms: No, some failed, such as: Overstock.com, Levi Strauss, Avis Europe

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SILO PERSPECTIVE VERSUS BUSINESS PROCESS PERSPECTIVE

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Silo (Functional) Perspective

Specialized functions (sales, accounting, production, etc.

Advantages:

Allows optimization of expertise.

Group like functions together for transfer of knowledge.

Disadvantages:

Sub-optimization (reinvent wheel; gaps in communication; bureaucracy)

Tend to lose sight of overall organizational objectives.

Executive Offices CEO President

Operations

Marketing

Accounting

Finance

Administration

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The Process Perspective

Examples of processes:

Fulfill customer orders

Manufacturing, planning, execution

Procurement (see below)

Processes have:

Beginning and an end

Inputs and outputs

A process to convert inputs into outputs

Metrics to measure effectiveness

They cross functions

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Receive Requirement for Goods/Services

Create and Send Purchase Order

Receive Goods

Pay Vendor

Verify Invoice

Cross-Functional Nature of Business Processes

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How to Manage a Process

Identify the customers of processes (who receives the output?)

Identify the customers’ requirements (how do we judge success?)

Clarify the value each process adds to the organizational goals

Share this perspective so the organization itself becomes more process focused

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Comparison of Silo Perspective and

Business Process Perspective

	Silo Perspective	Business Process Perspective
Definition	Self-contained functional units such as marketing, operations, finance	Interrelated, sequential set of activities and tasks that turns inputs into outputs
Focus	Functional	Cross-functional
Goal Accomplishment	Optimizes on functional goals, which might be suboptimal for the organization	Optimizes on organizational goals, or the “big picture”
Benefits	Highlighting and developing core competencies; functional efficiencies	Avoiding work duplication and cross-functional communication gaps; organizational effectiveness
Problems	Redundancy of information throughout the organization; cross-functional inefficiencies; communication problems	Difficult to find knowledgeable generalists; sophisticated software is needed

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Second level

Third level

Fourth level

Fifth level

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What do you do when things change?

Dynamic and agile processes

Examples:

Agile: Autos are built with wires and space for options

Dynamic: Call centers route incoming or even outgoing calls to available locations and agents

Software defined architectures (see chapter 6)

IT is required to pull this off well

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Techniques to Transform a Static Process

Radical process redesign

Also known as business process reengineering

Incremental, continuous process improvement

Including total quality management (TQM) and Six Sigma

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Incremental Change

Total Quality Management

Often results in favorable reactions from personnel

Improvements are owned and controlled

Less threatening change

Six-Sigma is one popular approach to TQM

Developed at Motorola

Institutionalized at GE for “near-perfect products”

Generally regarded as 3.4 defects per million opportunities for defect (6 std dev from mean)

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Time

Improve-ment

Radical Change

Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

Sets aggressive improvement goals.

Goal is to make a rapid, breakthrough impact on key metrics in a short amount of time.

Greater resistance by personnel.

Use only when radical change is needed.

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Time

Improve-ment

Comparing the Two

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Improve-ment

Key Aspects of Radical Change Approaches

Need for quick, major change

Thinking from a cross-functional process perspective

Challenge to old assumptions

Networked (cross-functional organization)

Empowerment of individuals in the process

Measurement of success via metrics tied to business goals and effectiveness of new processes

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Workflow and Mapping Processes

Workflow diagrams show a picture of the sequence and detail of each process step

Objective is to understand and communicate the dimensions of the process

Over 200 products are available to do this

High-level overview chart plus detailed flow diagram of the process

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BPM

Information systems tools used to enable information flow within and between processes.

Comprehensive, enterprise software packages.

Most frequently discussed:

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning),

CRM (Customer Relationship Management),

SCM (Supply Chain Management)

Designed to manage the potentially hundreds of systems throughout a large organization.

SAP, Oracle, Peoplesoft are the most widely used ERP software packages in large organizations.

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BPM Architecture

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Standardization vs Integration

		Business Process Standardization
		Low	High
Business Process Integration	High	Single face to customers and suppliers but standards not enforced internally	High needs for reliability, predictability, and sharing; single view of process
	Low	Decentralized design; business units decide how to meet customer needs	Tasks are done the same way across units, but there is little need for business units to interact

Source: J. Ross “Forget Strategy: Focus IT on your Operating Model,”

MIT Center for Information Systems Research Briefing (December 2005)

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Enterprise Systems (Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP)

Seamlessly integrate information flows throughout the company.

Reflect industry “best” practices.

Need to be integrated with existing hardware, OSs, databases, and telecommunications.

Some assembly (customization) is required

The systems evolve to fit the needs of the diverse marketplace.

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ERP Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages	Disadvantages
Represent “best practices” Modules throughout the organization communicate with each other Enable centralized decision-making Eliminate redundant data entry Enable standardized procedures in different locations	Enormous amount of work Require redesign of business practices for maximum benefit Require customization if special features are needed Very high cost Sold as a suite, not individual modules Requires extensive training High risk of failure

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ERP II

Makes information available to external stakeholders too

Enables e-business applications

Integrates into the cloud

Includes ERP plus other functions (see Figure 5.8)

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ERP and ERP II Functions

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Customer Relationship Management

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a natural extension of applying the value chain model to customers.

CRM includes many management activities performed to

obtain,

enhance relationships with, and

retain customers.

CRM can lead to better customer service, which leads to competitive advantage for the business.

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CRM

Common systems are:

Oracle

SAP

Salesforce.com (web-based cloud system)

Oracle and SAP integrate into their ERP systems

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Supply Chain Management (SCM)

An enterprise system that manages the integrated supply chain

Translation: processes are linked across companies

The single network optimizes costs and opportunities for all companies in the supply chain

Every part of the supply chain has the latest information about sales expected and inventories from source materials at all stages

Bullwhip effect occurs when the supplier at each stage adds a small “buffer” for it’s suppliers in case demand is higher than expected

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Difficulties in Integrated Supply Chains

Information integration requires agreement of what information to share, how to share it, and the authority to view it.

Trust must be established

Planning must be synchronized carefully

Workflow must be coordinated between partners to determine what to do with the information they obtain

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Enterprise Systems

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The Adoption Decision

The enterprise system sometimes should drive business process redesign when:

Just starting out.

Organizational processes are not relied upon for strategic advantage.

Current systems are in crisis.

It is inappropriate for the enterprise system to drive business process redesign when:

Changing an organization’s processes that are relied upon for strategic advantage.

The package does not fit the organization.

There is a lack of top management support.

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Managing and Using Information Systems: A Strategic Approach – Sixth Edition

Keri Pearlson, Carol Saunders, and Dennis Galletta

Discussion: The Future of Offices

Given the growth in telecommuting and other mobile work arrangements, how might offices physically change in the coming years? Will offices as we think of them today exist in the next ten years? Why or why not?

Please make your initial post substantive. A substantive post will do at least TWO of the following:

· Ask an interesting, thoughtful question pertaining to the topic

· Answer a question (in detail) posted by another student or the instructor

· Provide extensive additional information on the topic

· Explain, define, or analyze the topic in detail

· Share an applicable personal experience

· Provide an outside source (for example, an article from the UC Library) that applies to the topic, along with additional information about the topic or the source (please cite properly in APA)

· Make an argument concerning the topic.

At least one scholarly source should be used in the initial discussion thread. Be sure to use information from your readings and other sources from the UC Library. Use proper citations and references in your post.

Research Paper: Business Process Redesign

If you have you been involved with a company doing a redesign of business processes, discuss what went right during the redesign and what went wrong from your perspective. Additionally, provide a discussion on what could have been done better to minimize the risk of failure. If you have not yet been involved with a business process redesign, research a company that has recently completed one and discuss what went wrong, what went right, and how the company could have done a better job minimizing the risk of failure.

Your paper should meet the following requirements:

• Be approximately 4-6 pages in length, not including the required cover page and reference page.

• Follow APA6 guidelines. Your paper should include an introduction, a body with fully developed content, and a conclusion.

• Support your answers with the readings from the course and at least two scholarly journal articles to support your positions, claims, and observations, in addition to your textbook. The UC Library is a great place to find resources.

• Be clearly and well-written, concise, and logical, using excellent grammar and style techniques. You are being graded in part on the quality of your writing.

Attachments:

· File influence of digital technology.pdf (1.308 MB)

· File Technology Adoption by Global Virtual Teams.pdf (12.823 MB)

·

Chapter 4, “Digital Systems and the Design of Work” pp. 83-98

Harris, W. J. (2018). Technology adoption by global virtual teams: Developing a cohesive approach. SAM Advanced Management Journal, 83(1), 4-21. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=shib&db=buh&AN=135806019&site=eds-live

Chapter 5, “Information Systems and Digital Transformation” pp. 109-121

Strutynska, I., Kozbur, G., Dmytrotsa, L., Sorokivska, O., & Melnyk, L. (2019). Influence of digital technology on roadmap development for digital business transformation. 2019 9th International Conference on Advanced Computer Information Technologies (ACIT), 333-337. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1109/ACITT.2019.8780056

PowerPoints

· File ch05.pptx (2.401 MB)

· File ch04.pptx (2.779 MB)

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Research Paper: Business Process Redesign

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