2.2 Technology and the Control of Information


2.2 Technology and the Control of Information

From the time of early books and manuscripts to the present day, the ever-increasing role of technology has been to engage in the control and distribution of information. Information in its many forms is an integral part of the process engaged by business to fulfil its mission. Data is the raw material of information, playing an ever-increasing role in the interoperation of business processes, especially in situations when processes become collaborative in their execution. Typically, data is required as an input to a process, is generated by the process and reported when the process reaches its desired end state. Information, on the other hand, is a product of manipulating data by summarization, aggregation, tabulation and other methods to report on a condition or trend that transcends a single piece of data. Put simply, data is the lifeblood of the business process, whereas information reports on the condition of the process during its execution life cycle.

The current generation of technology makes possible the realignment of data, information and process by assigning a relative value to each component and reassessing the relevance of one to another. Reengineering demonstrated that process is the key to how a business functions, and process is often influenced by technology – if not dictated by a technology’s idiosyncrasies. For example, manufacturing companies often developed inventory part numbers comprising numbers and letters, each digit carrying a significant meaning. An inventory item such as a blue 5 watt 12 volt light bulb with screw connector might have a part number ‘BB5W12VS-10-123’. Each number after the dash corresponds to its description, classification or location (for example aisle 10, bin 123.) In most cases, this is a legacy from the old KARDEX paper-based system or early computer file system, indexed by 8, 16 or 32 digit keys. These keys were mechanisms for the computer to retrieve quickly the entire record without having to read the contents of all the data associated with a single record. However, as technology improved the size of keys increased, databases became relational and any piece of data could be used as an index to retrieve itself. Ironically, when reviewing the business accounts in eras before computers, the reference to retrieve an item like a blue 5 watt 12 volt light bulb with screw connector was ‘blue 5 watt 12 volt light bulb with screw connector’. Fifty years of data storage and retrieval technology development now makes it possible to retrieve the item in the same natural language as our grandfathers’. This progression of technological breakthroughs leads to the inevitable question: What is information and how does it affect the execution of a business process? Moreover, it gives us the ability to assess the relative value of the process itself and the steps within a process.

This reassessment of process and its relationship to data and information is the basic premise of reengineering. The challenge facing business in the twenty-first century is how to engage technology in a process of reengineering or, perhaps more drastically, to dismantle their functional structures to accommodate a process orientation. Unlike previous generations of technologies that manipulated information, the combination of PCs, the Internet, PDAs, robots, avatars and biometric devices enables a reworking of the fundamental processes established by post-industrialization or assembly-line processes in order to achieve greater efficiency. The basic intention is to reconstruct the relationship between the work or process steps of a business with the individuals within the organization. In many cases, altering both the process and organization to form a completely new approach to how a firm adds value often requires the rejection of the old process. Technology’s legacy has influenced the way in which tasks are performed and the skills required to fulfil each step within a process. Now technology makes the total assessment and reconstitution of process and organizations possible. Warren Wilson observed that ‘resistance to process management emerges from the realization that people are accustomed to working in vertical functions’.[63] The underlying concern of individuals who see technology as a threat is that when hierarchically organized business process functions are dismantled, circumvented or eliminated by technology, career paths are no longer viable in the traditional sense.

Business processes and their subsequent separation into discrete activities permit individuals greater degrees of specialization, leading to higher salaries and clearer career paths. Technology is now perceived as a threat to areas of specialization within certain industries and job categories. Very often, technology is met with resistance, typically delaying the implementation of technology components and resulting in a low or significantly reduced success rate. Business process redesign in general creates disquiet in the corporate bureaucracy and is magnified by technology in two ways: individuals suddenly realize they are seemingly redundant, and the traditional mechanisms used to control the business are less valuable.

Optimizing the process of business has been a continual quest for companies long before the economic conditions of the twenty-first century. Technology and, to a greater extent, reengineering are merely tools that have been applied to the old pursuit of operational efficiency. In Warren Wilson’s words: ‘It is not surprising, therefore, that massive uncertainty and resistance to change may be present in business transformation and specifically process reengineering and management.’[64] The result of streamlining processes and continually applying technology is clear: information about the business, such as production information, transaction data, customer data and the exchange of internal and external data, creates data which is commoditized. The resistance to technology in this sense stems from the decoupling of process from working in vertical functions. The redefinition of vertical organizations is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 5.

The world of the twenty-first century has been labelled ‘the information society’, but in the context of the need for information all previous generations had the same requirement. A more descriptive term may be the ‘convenient information society’, because the evolution of technology has simply made information easier to obtain or purchase. Conversely, the ability to produce mass information and disseminate it to ever-wider audiences brings into focus the need for quality and fidelity of information. To illustrate the problems regarding the mass distribution of information, one can use the so-called ‘Wicked Bible’ of 1631. In the English Barker Bible the word ‘not’ was erroneously omitted from the seventh commandment, thus resulting in ‘thou shall commit adultery’.[65] This misprinting and rapid distribution of this Bible raised concerns over the control and standardization of content and, more importantly, increased the level of awareness in the importance of quality control. Not surprisingly, the same concern was raised with regard to the Internet in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, when it became evident that the formulas and procedures for bomb making were readily available to anyone who knew how to use a search engine. Nevertheless, the initial novelty of simply being able to find information on the Internet is waning, and now individuals and corporations are turning their attention to the quality and fidelity of the information as well as the integrity of the source. This concern regarding the control and distribution of information can be found in the life cycle of almost every technology used to deliver information.

Technology organizations today are experiencing a loss of control due to several factors such as the ubiquity of infrastructure, smarter technology users and easier software tools. The role of technology organizations is shifting from being a gatekeeper to becoming a guide to using technology and providing a technological capability. As McCarthy puts it: ‘The command of information made possible by the computer should also make it possible to reverse the trends toward mass produced-uniformity started by the industrial revolution.’[66] Technology organizations and their business counterparts have a more fundamental challenge that is no longer associated with making the technologies interoperable. Now information must be gathered and assimilated by people within the business to determine its relativity to current business conditions and, more importantly, to the execution of the firm’s value proposition. Postman puts aside the technological aspects of this challenge and draws our focus to the heart of the matter:

The problem to be solved in the twenty-first century is not how to move information, not the engineering of information. We solved that long ago. The problem is how to transform information into knowledge, and how to transform knowledge into wisdom.[67]

This transformation is one not to be taken lightly; it requires organizations to have skills necessary to synthesize information into a cohesive tool that will direct business decisions and not simply supply fuel for reactionary management. Let us now identify and analyse the skills which will aid modern firms to transform knowledge into wisdom.

[63]W. Wilson, Strategic Business Transformations: Achieving Strategic Objectives through Business Reengineering (Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill, 1996) p. 211.

[64]Ibid., p. 212.

[65]E. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) p. 51.

[66]J. McCarthy, ‘Information’. In G. Rochlin (ed.) Scientific Technology and Social Change (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1977) p. 221.

[67]N. Postman, Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century: How the Past can Improve our Future (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999) p. 98.




Thinking Beyond Technology. Creating New Value in Business
Thinking Beyond Technology: Creating New Value in Business
ISBN: 1403902550
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 77

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