Organizational Change

Creating Process based Organizations via Reegineering

While reengineering a business enterprise, we create a process based organization structure for the enterprise to avoid the inefficiencies and time wasting business process cycles as in a functions based organization. ie – the business process information systems and the enterprise wide information infrastructure are integrated in such a way that the people of various functions or departments could easily form teams for related activities and project works. Such a process based system enables faster business process cycles, workflows and data flows that creates a total quality business setup. The business enterprise is now able to produce its products and services faster and with added value to satisfy its customers.

Often, when we reengineer a business enterprise, a process that took 3 days and 6 persons to get completed, will require say only a single person and a PC and say only 2 hrs to finish the process with all formalities satisfying the business rules.

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Basic approaches to Reengineering

The three basic approaches to reengineering are as follows -

1. STREAMLIING

2. INTEGRATING

3. TRANSFORMING 

1. Streamlining – Streamlining approach to reengineering the business offers a basic, segmented, quick-fix methodology for reengineering. It cleans up and treats symptoms but doesn’t  necessarily transform a process nor find a cure for a bad process. It doesn’t change the way a company conducts its core business nor does it impose whether certain processes should exist at all. For eg: while reengineering an accounts payable process, we may reduce the staffs from the existing number to 7. If we follow a thorough transformation approach, this would require total number of 17 sign offs. The streamlining approach of reengineering the accounts payable process may also increase the level of spending authorization for managers. Another approach would be to translate the current workflow and dataflow via electronic means such as EDI. In essence, the streamlining approach to reengineering is simple, functional and makes operations go faster or better.

2. Integrating – The integrating approach to reengineering integrates discrete business processes, replacing them with a unified process that frequently cut across functions and department responsibilities i.e, it creates a process based organization of workflows within the reengineered process. For eg:, when we reengineer a sample business process that formerly required the functional trailing of workflows among various departments such as accounting, purchasing and warehousing, we re-order the workflows so that the individual functions are closely related by reducing redundancies, cycle-times and unnecessary retention of separate receiving logs and lists of prices. Now, the reengineered process will cut across all the functions and will now require only lesser number of persons and manual labor and lesser process cycle times to perform the tasks. But when we consider the business as a whole, the reengineering by integrating has only changed the accounts payable process, but it doesn’t change the way the enterprise produced / manufactured products nor does it directly affect other major functions of the enterprise, but it has a profound influence on the jobs of the people performing the accounts payable process.

3. Transforming - Transforming approach to reengineering transforms the company as a whole. When such an organizational transformation is carried out, the projects should get complete commitment and sponsorship from the top management and support from the working staff. New strategies, policies, objectives and plans will have to be devised to effect the complete transformation. The enterprise shall search for the appropriate technology and workflows to setup the transformed system. The company shall benchmark its existing system with that of another similar company which has already applied reengineering in its system. The company shall seek help from IT consultants to bring in the right infrastructure and IT solutions.

Copyright (c). www.getallarticles.com – 2011

Strategic alignment of IT resources – A case study in Grocery industry (Part 1)

Strategic Alignment of IT Resources

Grocery Industry

Introduction

 Grocery Industry Introduction

• NAICS 445110: Supermarkets and Other Grocery except Convenience Stores . This U.S. industry comprises of establishments generally known as supermarkets and grocery stores primarily engaged in retailing a general line of food, such as canned and frozen foods; fresh fruits and vegetables; and fresh and prepared meats, fish, and poultry.
• Previously , grocery stores dominated their regional markets, however today, they are evolving into the global market at increasing rate.
• The top 15 global supermarket companies account for more 30% of the world supermarket sales (72).

Sales in billions

 

Global & Regional Players

Global & Regional Players

Industry & Firm Characteristics

Ideals of Openness, transparency Vs confidentaility, secrecy

Is there a conflict between the support of individual rights and the use of e-government for transformational purposes? Why or why not?

Based on my reflection on E-Governance reference materials and experience, I am concluding that e-government initiatives cannot be truly transformational unless the socio-political environment is favorable and open-minded to bring about highly participatory democracy with high level of citizen involvement through innovative technology usage. Two forces are in play that hinders transformation – narrow mindedness of political powers to establish highly interactive e-government mediums and/or the citizen’s lack of exposure to a particular medium of innovative technology due to its unavailability or fear of attack towards his individual rights of privacy and security. The first force factor is very obvious in the way almost all government setups works. Effect of individual rights on supporting /hindering e-government transformation is rather not very obvious – but could be easily analyzed and a decision point can be reached.

The issue of conflict comes into picture when socio-political setups transform into the 4th stage of ‘Interactive Democracy’ as West coins the ultimate and desired stage of e-government setup. In this stage of e-government setup, there would be high level interaction where lot of personal feedbacks, opinion and other personal information is being exchanged, stored, processed and analyzed that has high potential of being accounted for in variety of decision within the administrative processes. This raises huge privacy and security concerns for common citizens – their personal information being trapped in isles of information systems. Only way to gain confidence in promoting the usage towards transformation would be to implement means to protect privacy and security during information exchange. Again, this would happen only if political system truly focuses on transformation.

Another dimension of individual rights issue is availability of technology for all common citizens to access the e-government services – commonly called digital divide. The more the transformation without proper citizen exposure to technology, the greater would be the digital divide and its effect on this particular dimension of individual right. Political systems should take steps to reduce these divisions and make the public receptive to the new technology so that transformation would have some meaning.

Analyzing the above two dimensions of individual rights, usage of e-government for transformational purposes seems to conflict with individual rights of privacy/security AND right to be exposed to latest technology. The conflict appears to be present not due to voicing citizens, but due to the lack of implementation of appropriate steps at administrative level to handle privacy/security concerns and to reduce digital divide.

Bibliography:

1. West D. M. (2005). Digital Government – Technology and public sector performance. Princeton University Press.

Article copyright (c) 2010 – 2020 – Deepesh Joseph (deepeshjoseph@yahoo.com)

True Transformation – Is it ever possible in e-government setup?

This is an interesting and very scholastic topic to share and discuss. The basic question being raised is – Are e-government initiatives capable to bring about transformation within the ecosystem (citizens, government agencies and all public administration setup) that it functions and serves? To answer the question, we really need to define what ‘transformation’ are we talking about. From current readings and past, the level of transformation that we are looking at can be defined as – bring a major change in the way citizens interact with the government in such way that all interactions are highly participatory, collaborative, transparent and leading to participatory democracy through interactive models of technology (viz. Internet and Broadband). This transformation does not happen on a rapid basis, but is gradual (secular change as West puts it) and we are potentially in the childhood stages of this transformation through G2C interactive services, but as we see, there are several factors that restrict this transformation and shift the path towards true participatory democracy.

Now, once we have defined what transformation is in e-government context, we need to analyze if transformation in e-government is really meaningful or can be achieved or is there even need to focus on transformational nature of e-government initiatives. The reason behind this concern is the mere fact that technology is shaped by socio-political and economic factors that govern the government and social setup. No matter how innovative the technology is, it is not useful enough to be transformational in nature, unless the e-government ecosystem is free from these inherent constraints to realize the true benefits of technology. One could say financial constraints is the major hurdle for transformation, but apart from this, the main reason for this resistance towards transformational change in political or government system is the mere fear among political/administrative people that their actions will be held accountable if e-government services are made transformational through its virtue of being 100% interactive and responsive with its citizens. Another factor is citizens being masked out of usage/reception of positive usage of a major technology due to battle for power by technology companies and/or digital divide.

The above reasoning of why true transformation (linking back to definition in first paragraph) is hindered in delivering e-government services, I am forced to agree to the fact that e-government initiatives cannot be transformational unless the basic socio-political setup is open minded and is willing to pave way for transformation. Rohr’s point that public administrators should use their discretionary powers to balance their power with individual rights, still holds in most of the government setups and administrators are not so open minded to reach that level of open interaction with its citizens. This is true from what we saw in above paragraph and thus, government initiatives are truly ‘models of limited than transformation change’.

Bibliography:

1. Rohr J. A. (1986). To Run a Constitution – The Legitimacy of the Administrative State. Chapters 1-4, 9-11. University Press of Kansas

2. West D. M. (2005). Digital Government – Technology and public sector performance. Princeton University Press.

3. Shar A.R., Toporkoff S. (2008). Public Technology Institure & ITEMS Internationa

Article copyright (c) 2010 – 2020 – Deepesh Joseph (deepeshjoseph@yahoo.com)l

Would such blogging in a Government office be appropriate? Why or why not?

Blogging has its relevance in supporting electronic government only if it is accepted within that localized setup and is strictly monitored and controlled by the inherent information systems. Now let us see how blogging would support electronic government initiatives in such a localized setup (Homburg V., 2008).

The pre-requisite in using blogging as a part of e-government would be the fact that it is a part of the core government information systems framework and is fully monitored and linked to result oriented reviews and actions. Blogging would help employees to make their work life public and in doing so, reduces the gap between common man and administrative processes. This also increases approachability and openness of the government. Also appropriate reviews and feed backs (requires highly controlled and monitored setup) ensures result oriented blogging

Reference:

1. Homburg V. (2008). Understanding E-Government -Information Systems in Public Administration. Chapter 8, p. 126. Routledge

Article copyright (c) 2010 – 2020 – Deepesh Joseph (deepeshjoseph@yahoo.com)

Did the state of technology generally available when the scholarly authors wrote affect the topics on which they wrote and their assumptions about government?

This reading materials as listed in the Bibliography, sets the stage for deeply analyzing the origins of the most long lasting government setup of the world and how does one appreciate Lincoln’s far reaching vision of – ‘a government of the people, by the people, for the people’ – as related to various points of time when a literature is written. Both Rohr and others (as in Open Government) are addressing the same theme – How to bring about effective public administration through a governing body that cares about citizen involvement in its decision making and effective government-information assimilation.

However, if we closely examine the stage setting, analysis and conclusion of each chapter in Rohr and Open Government, it is clear that, apart from the sharing the above common theme, they clearly are affected by the technology settings that was available to them which apparently molded their thinking process and analysis.

Lets take the case of Rohr’s ‘To Run a constitution’. This was written during mid of eighties when Internet was just about to take its birth and government information systems (as mainframe systems and other tightly coupled client server systems written in C, C++ etc) were reaching their mid ages with the focus of improving the administrative process. There was no scope large scale collaboration and citizen involvement at that time. This fact underlies the reason why Rohr took the most academic approach to define what a perfect administration is and linking it to the Constitutional setup that its framers dreamed of and how it was shaped into a form that existed during mid eighties. The era from 1930 to 1985, marked the gradual establishment of the ‘modern administrative state of the New Deal’ without much focus on free, collaborative citizen involvement as it might have possible through Internet and the like. Hence, Rohr’s point of view of citizen involvement is centered around the administrative employees themselves and how they ‘fulfill aspirations of citizenship i.e –to be ruled and be ruled’.

In contrast, when we look at the diverse chapters written by Malamud, Noveck, Dierking and Robinson et. Al, there is clear diversion to a totally new dimension of energetic involvement of citizens – not necessarily the administrative employees – but the common layman citizens themselves. Malamud stresses on the importance of how government documents, meetings etc need to be made so transparent and accessible to the general public so that they can have active participation in government-information assimilation and thus truly reflect the theme of ‘for the people’. Noveck on the other hand highlights the very important aspect of open and collaborative democracy where all citizens take active role in various administrative initiatives – all made possible through collaborative websites in the Gov 2.0 and Web 2.0 era. She drives the point clear that closed decision making grounds as which existed during the mid eighties is a failure that results from poor information distribution and management.

Dierking’s chapter was very interesting as it draws the distinction between best government software pattern and its anti-pattern and also distinction between an ideal object oriented government class model and a destructive blob (stove types that existed during late eighties and early nineties) model. He makes the point clear that the current trend towards open government and effective citizen to government collaboration could be made possible only through an efficient software design model that is highly cohesive and less tightly coupled. Chapter by Robinson et. al concludes the state of the art e-Government that is going on currently which has a great impact from the collaborative technologies such as advanced data mining, Web 2.0, Mashups, APIs etc that offers wide opportunities for the common citizen to connect and collaborate with government systems.

As seen above analysis, we can conclude that Rohr’s line of thought was greatly affected by the closed decision making models of the late eighties (whose drawbacks as linked to by Noveck in her chapter) that focused on actual administration and its efficacy, but less focus on common citizen collaboration which might have been otherwise possible through more advanced technology. Whereas all ‘Open Government’ authors were greatly influenced by advanced technology and systems that has already paved the way to open and collaborative government which is in its mid ages, slowly stepping toward more robust and open collaborative architecture bringing citizens more closer to the government.

Bibliography:

1. Rohr J. A. (1986). To Run a Constitution – The Legitimacy of the Administrative State. Chapters 1-4, 9-11. University Press of Kansas

2. Ed. By Lathrop D., Ruma L. (2010). Open Government – Collaboration, Transparency and Participation in Practice. Chapters 3-6. O’Reilly Media Inc.

Article copyright (c) 2010 – 2020 – Deepesh Joseph (deepeshjoseph@yahoo.com)

A revolutionary supposition – Advice for improved Education system

The educational system should revise the curriculum according to the current technology demands in the society and to build creativity of students. I think the engineering schools in US are already doing it. If not, it is sad and the management should take necessary actions to consult the industry and experts to see what subjects are most strategic and valuable to the students so that learning it will enable them to build a better society, nation and world.

I don’t agree to the idea of liberation by allowing students to learn what interests them, without proper direction. It will be like unrestricted actions, mostly immature, having no clear direction. A universal principle that we forget is that experienced direction and wise restriction leads to the real educational success and wisdom to build a better society. What will happen if all youth mind and power goes to learning some skating classes and thinks that its their means of liberation? Does that lead to a better well build society?

Looking back to the educational system in India, I think the real drive that is going on is to bring IT to the most common man and reduce the digital divide. The move happening in the schools is not different. I don’t think it has any negative aspect. The world is already moved to the phase of “global village”. Its a wise decision by schools and technological institutions to adopt policies that makes IT a easily available commodity.

Article copyright (c) 2010 – 2020 – Deepesh Joseph (deepeshjoseph@yahoo.com)
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What can be learned from educational experiences where all students in certain school districts have been given computers?

The lesson learned should be lack of effective direction and control in implementing the plan. I remember from IST 601 that we should control technology, reverse should not happen. As wise users of technology, we should devise clear plans as how technology will be used, especially when it is to be used by kids. If we would have done that, things would have been far better.

I would suggest XO model laptops which are tailor made with the specific usage in schools and by kids. There should be restriction on the kind of websites or URLs that could be visited using the limited web capability of the device (A firewall which allows only listed websites, is a good choice). I am not going into detail how we can secure the unintended usage of web and multimedia.

I was just hearing the news on TV which showed a school in US that encourages students to use drugs and do sex. If the standard in schools drop to this level, there is no surprise that there is no proper control over usage of laptops which were intended for academic purposes. What I mean here is that it is the facility or the management or the party who implement the technology program, should make sure that it is well utilized.

Article copyright (c) 2010 – 2020 – Deepesh Joseph (deepeshjoseph@yahoo.com)
Get all articles from www.getallarticles.com. Be informed and gain knowledge. Good resource for research and reviews.