Integrating information systems and corporate strategy.

• Author: Meyer, N. Dean
• Position: Management Strategy

Integrating information systems and corporate strategy

Imagine that you've just been appointed the executive responsible for information systems in your organization. You find that you're inheriting a clean running DP/MIS shop. You've got a lot of bright people and a lot of good hardware and technology. Transaction processing is going well, as is administrative office automation. But your predecessor was removed for some reason. Clearly, just running a clean DP/MIS shop is no longer enough.

Let's look at some of the pressures you're under. On the one hand, you're being asked to integrate a far broader range of technologies and disciplines than ever before, everything from records management to neural networks. On the other hand, just as you're being asked to integrate, you're also being asked to decentralize the Is function. Business itself is decentralizing to get closer to the customer. And you, as information systems head, must match that decentralization of the business to stay close to your customers. How do you go both ways at once?

Also, your users are clamoring to get these systems more quickly. But as the backlog seems to grow, you're being asked to trim your budgets. These are difficult economic times. And you are overhead, not always seen as a contribution to profits. Again, conflicting objectives.

Moreover, you are expected to play a role in the formulation of business strategy. And yet the financial executive you report to does not view information systems as a strategic resource. Rather, he has an administrative mindset. Therefore, you aren't invited to key business meetings.

All the while, you're being asked to innovate. To do new things in this company. To bring a new way of thinking about information systems. At the same time, you're fighting fires day after day, just struggling to keep your head clear without the budget increases or resources that you'd need to get above it all.

The question is, what will you, our new information systems executive, do?

What are the IS options?

Some common reactions on the part of top management just don't seem to help. For example, the new executive could do nothing. Ninety-eight percent of the CEOs and executive vice presidents of planning were satisfied, said a recent Roper poll, with their IS function. Now, if all they expect is administrative data processing, they're easily satisfied, right? So the person who raises the issue of strategic systems to these top executives has then to deliver; he or she is putting him or herself in the hot seat.

Another option is to build a more responsive information systems organization. But what if the IS executive's past work has been primarily administrative in nature rather than strategic? Then the backlog will be primarily administrative as well. And if the executive builds a more responsive IS organization, he or she is just going to reinforce all the faster the image of IS as a backroom operation that is not really critical to business strategy.

What I'm saying is that somehow this executive has got to do something different. He or she has got to break loose from the administrative mindset, and build a new image of IS as a strategic resource.

In other words, the executive has to demonstrate IS strategic value to the top executives. First, in order to get budgets approved...