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Management Information Systems

Notes integrating discrete business processes such as sales, production, finance, and logistics, the
entire organization can efficiently respond to customer requests for products or
information, forecast new products, and build and deliver them as demand requires.

2.4.2 The Challenge of Enterprise Systems

Although enterprise systems can improve organizational coordination, efficiency, and decision
making, they have proven very difficult to build. Employees must take on new job functions
and responsibilities. Enterprise systems require complex pieces of software and large investment
of time, money, and expertise.

Daunting Implementation

Enterprise systems bring dramatic changes to business. They require not only deep-seated
technological changes but also fundamental changes in the way the business operates.

High Up-front Cost and Future Benefits

The costs of enterprise systems are large, up-front, highly visible, and often politically changed.
Although the costs to build the system are obvious, the benefits often cannot be precisely
quantified at the beginning of an enterprise project. One reason is that the benefits often accrue
from employees using the system after it is completed and gaining the knowledge of business
operations heretofore impossible to learn.

Inflexibility

Enterprise system software tends to be complex and difficult to master, with a worldwide
shortage in people with the expertise to install and maintain it. The software is deeply intertwined
with corporate business.

Realizing Strategic Value

Companies may also fail to achieve strategic benefits from enterprise systems if integrating
business process processes using the generic models provided by standard ERP software prevents
the firm from using unique business processes that had been sources of advantage over
competitors.

2.4.3 Enterprise Information Systems

Enterprise Information System is generally any kind of computing system that is of “enterprise
class”. This means typically offering high quality of service, dealing with large volumes of data
and capable of supporting some large organization (“an enterprise”).

Enterprise Information Systems provide a technology platform that enables organizations to
integrate and coordinate their business processes. They provide a single system that is central to
the organization and ensure that information can be shared across all functional levels and
management hierarchies. Enterprise systems are invaluable in eliminating the problem of
information fragmentation caused by multiple information systems in an organization, by
creating a standard data structure.
A typical Enterprise Information System would be housed in one or more Data centers, run
Enterprise software, and could include applications such as Content management systems and
typically cross organizational borders.

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