Analyst: Tom Davenport
Report Name: Linking Decisions and Information for Organizational Performance
Excerpt: We are entering a new period in the era of business information systems. For most of this five-decade period (beginning in the mid-1950s), the primary focus has been on automating core business processes. The era began with custom-developed narrow purpose applications and concluded with broad enterprise system packages provided by external vendors, but the purpose was the same: develop control and efficiency over processes by automating and capturing information from key business transactions. Whether a general ledger entry, a customer order captured, or a vacation balance debited, the transaction has been the primary unit around which this world revolved.
By now, however, we have largely won the transaction war, and a new front is necessary in the war to manage information. While mop-up and maintenance activity on the transaction and application fronts are still necessary, most large organizations have the basic application functionality they need, and their transactions have largely been automated.
What remains to be done is simply to full the promise of the information age from its beginning. That is to use the accumulated information from transaction systems to optimize the management of the business.