Chapter VII

Information Technology &

Reengineering

•WHICH ALL COMPANIES CANNOT REENGINEER?

•A company that cannot change the way it thinks about information Technology cannot reengineer.

•A company that equates technology with automation cannot reengineer.

•A company that looks for problems first & then seeks technology solutions for them cannot reengineer.

•A company which applies Information Technology to support process cannot reengineer.

Which all companies can reengineer?

•A company which thinks inductively.

•A company which applies Information Technology not to support the process but to simplify it.

•A company which uses information technology not for automation, but for doing things that they were not doing till now.

A company commits a fundamental error when it asks itself “How can it use the technological capabilities to enhance or streamline or improve what we are already doing?” The company can do better by asking itself “How can we use technology to allow us to do things that we are already not doing?”

Reengineering unlike automation, is about innovation.

It is about exploiting the latest capabilities of technology to achieve entirely new goals.

One of the hardest part of reengineering lies in recognizing the new, unfamiliar capabilities of technology instead of its familiar ones.

Old Rule: Information can appear only one place at one time.

Disruptive technology: Shared database.

New rule: Information can appear simultaneously in as many places as it is needed.

Old Rule: Only experts can perform complex task.

Disruptive technology: Expert system

New Rule: A generalist can do the work of an expert.

Old Rule: Business must choose between centralization and decentralization.

Disruptive Technology: Telecommunication network.

New Rule: Business can simultaneously reap the benefits of centralization & decentralization

Old Rule: Managers make all decisions

Disruptive Technology: Decision support tools (database access, modeling software).

New Rule: Decision-making is part of everyone’s job.

Old Rule: Field personnel need offices where they can receive, store, retrieve, and transmit information.

Disruptive technology: Wireless data communication and portable computers.

New Rule: Field personnel can send and receive information wherever they are.

Old Rule: The best contact with a potential buyer is personal contact.

Disruptive technology: Interactive videodisk

New Rule: The best contact with a potential buyer is effective contact.

Old Rule: You have to find out where things are

Disruptive technology: Automatic identification and tracking technology

New Rule: Things tell you where they are.

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Old Rule: Plans get revised periodically.

Disruptive technology: High performance computing.

New Rule: Plans get revised instantaneously

Exploiting the potential of technologies to change a company’s business processes and move it dramatically ahead of its competitors is not a one-time event. Nor it is something that the companies can do occasionally.

On the contrary, staying on the top of new technology and learning how to recognize and incorporate it into an organization must be an ongoing effort.