Enhancing Performance with Enterprise Systems

Posted on Feb 25, 2025 in Business Administration and Innovation Management

Enhancing Performance with Enterprise Systems

Enterprise applications are designed to coordinate multiple functions and business processes. Enterprise systems integrate the key internal business processes of a firm into a single software system to improve coordination and decision-making.

  • Supply Chain Management Systems: Help the firm manage its relationship with suppliers to optimize the planning, sourcing, manufacturing, and delivery of products and services.
  • Customer Relationship Management Systems: Coordinate the business processes surrounding the firm’s customers.
  • Knowledge Management Systems: Enable firms to optimize the creation, sharing, and distribution of knowledge.
  • Intranets and Extranets: Private corporate networks based on Internet technology that gather information from disparate systems. Extranets make portions of private corporate intranets available to outsiders.

The Importance of Collaboration and Social Business Systems

Collaboration is working with others to achieve shared and explicit goals. Social business uses internal and external social networking platforms to engage employees, customers, and suppliers, enhancing collaborative work. Collaboration and social business have become increasingly important in business because of:

  • Globalization
  • Decentralization of decision-making
  • Growth in jobs where interaction is the primary value-adding activity

Collaboration and social business enhance innovation, productivity, quality, and customer service. Tools for collaboration and social business include:

  • Email and instant messaging
  • Wikis
  • Virtual meeting systems
  • Virtual worlds
  • Cyberlockers
  • Collaboration platforms (Google Sites/Google Apps, Microsoft SharePoint, and Lotus Notes)
  • Enterprise social networking tools (Chatter and IBM Connections)

The Role of Information Systems in Business

The information systems department is the formal organizational unit responsible for information technology services. It maintains the hardware, software, data storage, and networks that comprise the firm’s IT infrastructure. The department consists of specialists, such as programmers, systems analysts, project leaders, and information systems managers, and is often headed by a CIO (Chief Information Officer).

Complementary Assets: Maximizing IT Investments

To obtain meaningful value from information systems, organizations must support their technology investments with appropriate complementary investments in organizations and management. These complementary assets include:

  • New business models and business processes
  • Supportive organizational culture and management behavior
  • Appropriate technology standards, regulations, and laws

New information technology investments are unlikely to produce high returns unless businesses make the appropriate managerial and organizational changes to support the technology.