What are the three business functions an mis infrastructure supports?
What are the three business functions an mis infrastructure supports? is a question we are often asked. Your business is much more than just a website and some products. The various technologies that support your organization’s business functions are part of what turns the necessary parts of your company into profitability, efficiency, and growth.
The three main functions your IT infrastructure supports is:
-Processing information: You need to be able to process transactions; analyze data sets; produce reports, newsletters, brochures and other documents for customers or employees when necessary; engage in online learning with students or internal staff members as appropriate; etc.
-Communicating with others: Whether it’s communicating with your customers, government, vendors, manufacturers or exte
tended members of your organization (e.g. members of a church or school), you need to be able to send and receive messages.
-Storing information and files: Information is useless unless you have someplace to store it so that you can access it again and again. That’s where data storage comes into play. Data storage is also called Information Management (IM) or Enterprise Content Management (ECM). It relates primarily to storing documents electronically but can also include audio/visual materials.
The three functions that technology can support for your organization are:
-IT infrastructure: The physical hardware, software and networks (including wireless) that support computing needs, such as processing transactions, producing reports, etc.
-IT process integration: The processes and procedures needed to run your organization’s business, including processes for providing customer service, managing information flows and documents (it’s all tied together), maintaining stock levels and accounting records; etc.
-IT data integration: Connecting structured data to create meaning in a business context. This is the backbone of how you use IT effectively in today’s economy.
IT infrastructure:
The hardware, software and networks that you use to run your organization’s business. IT process integration: The processes and procedures that run your organization’s business, including customer service, document processing and storage and information gathering.
IT data integration: Connecting structured data so it is available in a business context. This is the backbone of how you use IT effectively in today’s economy. The three IT functions are only part of the equation for supporting your business functions. The other necessary parts are business policies and procedures (e.g. the organization’s vision, mission and values), the skill sets of your IT staff, business and technical oversight of IT projects, etc.
A generic business process consists of three things:
-People: Your customers as well as internal staff members who will perform the process on a regular basis including management.
-Business functions: The tasks in the process, ranging from what needs to be done all the way down to how it’s to be performed.
-Technology: The tools that are used to perform the business function, including the information technology (IT) resources such as a computer, software, or networks.
A business process can be broken down into task steps. Tasks may include:
-Collect data: Information has to come in and go out of your organization. You need several different sources of data, but they all support whatever purpose the process serves.
-Validate or confirm the data: You must make sure that the data that comes in is what you want and is true, so this step ensures it meets both of those criteria before proceeding any further with the process steps.
What are the benefits?
-Decrease in costs associated with manual business processes
-Increase in the speed of business processes
-Improvement of quality and reliability in business processes
-Better control over IT resources
-Ensuring both the intended and unintended use of technology
Business Process Management (BPM) is a widely used practice for managing business processes. BPM is an approach to supporting your organization’s business functions not an end in itself. Some organizations combine the BPM approach with an IT function called Business Process Management Systems Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) are a specific type of enterprise software that supports activities such as performance monitoring, process architecture, process design, process execution and process improvement for both manual and automated tasks.
Are there any drawbacks?
-Lack of planning when implementing a new process
-Challenges with managing multiple processes, each of which requires different IT resources
-Lack of integration among processes and systems which can lead to confusion
-Difficulty with getting the systems to do what needs to be done
-A need for constant training with new employees who are unfamiliar with the business functions
-A tendency for an organization’s culture to accept everything as “business as usual” and not be challenged when business processes do not perform as intended. The focus remains on performing the function, regardless of whether or not that function is effective.
The benefits of BPM go way beyond just reducing costs and improving performance.
