When Should We NOT Incorporate IT?

With the CEO memo due today, I was obviously thinking a lot about the role of IT in business and business strategy nowadays. I came across an interesting article in Businessweek that suggests maybe it's not always a good thing to rush to implement technology into standard business practices.

Many foreclosure proceedings are getting held up due to lack of sufficient (physical and legal) documentation. Back when the market was booming, an overwhelmed mortgage industry decided to create a digital database to handle all the paperwork. However, once information and promissory notes were entered into the database, they were promptly shredded, to "avoid confusion immediately upon conversion to an electronic file." This may have created loopholes in terms of bringing foreclosure proceedings against someone when no physical record of a promissory note exists. In the legal system, you must see the note to confirm the ownership of the property being foreclosed. No note means lots of problems.

I thought this article was really interesting because it highlighted the point that IT can be very effective for businesses-- but only if it is used effectively. The mortgage industry uses technology to organize, code, monitor, and store millions of records. Computer programs can help cut down on the time it takes to assemble information and data. However, many of the current problems arose due to the attempt to keep the flow of information going, even if it meant cutting corners.

Where is the future battle field for IT companies

Tim O'Reilly provides a wonderful picture of strength and weakness of top players on a list of services in his blog “State of the Internet Operating System Part Two: Handicapping the Internet Platform Wars”. I like the category to classify IT services, however, I think, the battle field for these IT companies should be beyond these listed services.

First of all, most of the listed services focus on individual consumers, while business users like companies have not been cared much. The demand of information from business users is different from individual consumers. Let’s see consumers’ demand, music, books and movies, these products have been produced by other industry and delivered by IT. So, the focus is on format of delivery. While business user’s demand is on customers’ preference, sales forecast and etc. these are knowledge sometimes not provided by other functions and business users expect to get it from IT. IT may have collected raw data to prepare for these knowledge, but the leap from data to information to knowledge is not easy to be achieved. I think, the knowledge to business users should be another important battlefield for IT companies.

Value chain analysis could provide us another perspective about IT industry. For traditional product, value chain includes a vertical chain of sales order, manufacturing and distribution. Now, most of IT company focus on the last part, information distribution. For manufacturing of information, it’s what we’ve covered in last paragraph, a transformation from data to information to knowledge. For sales order of information, (customers show their preference on type or contents of information), social media functions partly to collect customer’s needs. IT companies will develop competitive advantage if they can get these needs quickly, produce it fast and delivery it in time.

In summary, the future battle field for IT companies could be market of not only consumers, but also business users, not only different services to users, but also transformation from data to knowledge and gathering customer needs.

Welcome to IS714 Course Blog

We believe that education and learning happens before, during and after the class sessions. Moreover, we are all (mostly) online and come across links, arguments, comments and articles that could elaborate and inform on the issues that we are discussing in this course.
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So, why not take advantage of the power and functionality of information technology to continue our learning beyond the classroom?  That's the focus of this blog.
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So, you can contribute in one or more ways.

1. Start a new conversation with a question or a comment and invite others to comment or contradict your position.

2. Post an interesting article or news or link that complements what we have discussed in class.

3. Comment on blogposts created by your fellow students not only in your section but also in the other section. Since we have two separate sections, this is an effective way to create cross-section discussions on emerging themes.

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I look forward to vibrant and productive conversations both in class and online.

Best,