Essence of the Information Technology Landscape in Business Organizations

Any manufacturing organization would ideally have their Vision and Mission to guide them through their future course.

But does the organization have an information technology vision in place? Some organizations may question this need, they may feel that the organizational focus should be in their core competence and Information Technology only plays a facilitating role. But, on the contrary, these organizations have a greater need for an information technology vision. The role of information technology is that of a business driver in today’s competitive environment and not just an enabler.

Now let’s discuss the necessity and essence of the information technology landscape for a business organization.

Consider an XYZ organization, which after half a decade of existence had entered a phase of business growth. To date, the role of information technology would have been that of a support system. My experience is that most organizations in such a scenario tend to focus on their core competency and seize more business opportunities, with little attention paid to the key role that information technology can play.

Taking into account the type of competition and constraints faced by the business organization, such as high demand and the need for a rapid increase in manufacturing capacities, the need for considerable investment to enter new markets or a larger approach to business links, apparently difficult to focus and believe that information technology can be a business engine. But the fact is, it really is. So the question is how can it be done?

Organizational requirements can be mainly divided into functional requirements (very specific to the industry domain), routine transactional requirements, content management requirements, workflow requirements, and infrastructure requirements.

Now the organization must have an information technology landscape plan, based on its current and future business landscape.

There may be a phased implementation of the information technology landscape plan. Start by covering the functionalities of the domain (R&D, F&D, etc.), the benefits would be evident in this case. Followed by transactional systems (like ERP) and then content management systems. The benefits of such systems will be realized over a period of time, ideally after the stabilization period.

For workflow systems, they must be built at the enterprise level. These workflow systems are of vital importance to an organization. The effectiveness of previous systems can be greatly hampered by an ineffective workflow system.

The information technology infrastructure is a continuous process in the implementation of an information technology landscape. Any effective technology solution would have to be the proper collaboration of business software applications and hardware infrastructure.

The most critical of all is to always have an Integration Route, which would follow the implementation strategy of the Information Technology landscape. This well-planned integration path is necessary for a holistic view of information technology.

Gradually, as the information technology landscape builds in the organization, there will be corresponding benefits in terms of business process automation, business process management, and ultimately leading to effective knowledge management within the organization. In such a scenario, information technology acts as a business engine; Moving forward, the information technology perspective will be part of any future organizational strategy to scale business growth.