This document outlines an approach for jointly evolving an organization's information systems and structure to effectively support the business. It proposes assessing the current organization, processes, and IT strategy/alignment. Based on findings, the MIS may be improved or replaced. Key steps include defining value indicators, building a decision support base, and monitoring outcomes. The goal is a viable organization with an information system that facilitates, produces, and creates value at different levels for the evolving enterprise.

1. Organization and Information systems for
the viable enterprise
Perspectives for a path of value:
Joint evolution for effective support to business
Giuseppe Pilotto
Associated
www.leading.it
Updated December 9, 2013

2. The context
Organization and Management Information System (MIS) are the cornerstones
supporting the modern enterprise business.
Both elements are strictly interlaced, demanding continuous and joint
adaptation to the evolution of the habitat where the firm operates and to
the changes of the firm’s environment.
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3. Permanence and change
Organization is concretised on people’ knowledge, way of working…, processes,
praxies, goals: also if based on persons, it is essentially intangible.
In principle, it is open to change, while new business targets, new challenges,
new circumstances arise.
MIS is apparently intangible, but in reality it’s founded on a set of rules and
way of operating, cast at the moment of its first activation into the
company’s reality.
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4. The challenge
Consider the necessity of the symbiosis of permanence and change and the
contractictory nature of the two: the process of maintaining viable the MIS
while the organizational paradigms paced by the business of the firm evolve,
represents the challenge every entrerprise has to face.
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5. MIS and entreprise organization: basic levels of contribution to value
Modern Information systems should act at different levels of value:
– As facilitators: the minimum level the Information system operates. It symplifies the
entreprise processes, making them smooth and predictable;
– As value producers: increasing the process efficiency , allowing their control and
performaces measurement; in this acceptation the MIS can be considered as a
strategic foundation of the firm;
– As value creators: “contributing “to company decisions, giving suited information,
analyzing plausible scenarios, estimating in advance the results of a direction the
company intends to follow.
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6. MIS and entreprise organization: strategic levels of contribution to
value
Corporate strategy is concerned with deploying the available resources to
achieve company’s objectives; so, MIS participates to strategic value in the following
interpretations:
a)
b)
c)
MIS as strategic foundation of the organization and business: MIS underpins and casts the
company’s processes, having a pregnant role in how operations are performed;
MIS as strategic company’s behavioural repository and incremental improvements: MIS
contains company’s rules and design of processes in a concrete, shared and personindependent format. It contains the way the company is working, the company’s operating
knowledge, deriving from the company’s people operating knowledge. It can drive the people
and be useful as basis for continuos improvements, by endless contribution of the persons;
MIS as strategic value for driving a change initiative: MIS can drive a change process in the
company.
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7. A path of value: the evolutive information system
The professional growth I had the opportunity to acquire in different firms is the fasins
for the building of a set of methods and tools: these are useful to cooperate with the
company in order to contribute to the organizational , business and MIS viability.
This set:
• Is based on well-known high-quality methologies and best practices;
• Is pragmatic;
• Is proved on the field and evolving with practical experiences.
Using the here depicted directions of intervention, the firm is capable to get conscious
of the most suited actions that is worth to activate in the organization, processes
and information systems: this approach creates synergic outcomes able to support
the evolution of business.
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8. A path of value: directions of intervention (1/2)
The following lines of intervention are worth be activated:
• Status of organization and processes:
• Aimed to verify the company organization and the related business processes. The outcomes are
decisional clues and concrete hints to enhance organization and processes.(Organizational assessement,
Business Process Management, BPM, Change Management).
• IT strategy verification:
• Aimed to assess the coherence of IT evolution with the company’s strategy. The outcomes are
indications on the adoption of new applications for the company or the evolution of the existing
ones and a model of relations between IT and business (Application Portfolio management(APM)
and IT governance).
• IT-business alignment
• Aimed to assess the quality of support IT gives to business. The outcomes are decisional hints to
enhance the information system or the reasons to undertake the choice of a new MIS (IT-business
alignment, current Information System improvement, or changing the Information system).
Connected to this, an IT service assessement is usually performed: it’s aimed to verify how the IT
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department operates in relation to its internal processes and to external environment.

9. A path of value: directions of intervention (2/2)
The following lines of intervention are worth be activated (cont.) :
• Changing the information system
• In the event of MIS is worth a change, from previous steps, this step is aimed to steer all phases of
introducing a new information system into the firm (Businenss case, software selection, new Information
System activation and oversight, Change Management)
• The viable organization: the value creation
• Starting from the enhanced or new MIS, this step is aimed to build a base of information from data,
suited to “partecipate” to company’s decisions supplying predictive indicactions and allowing
pinpointed monitoring of performances
In relation to the specific company’s reality and needs, the most suited steps are chosen and
methology and tools adapted to the case, together with appropriate actions of change
management.
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10. Status of organization and processes
Goals
Organizational
assessment
analysis,
Process analysis,
redesing and
improvement
Expected benefits
Possible outcomes
Note
Obtain a status of alignment
of company’s operative
structure to company’s
strategy
Depict a macro picture of the
business units organization,
resources, process allocation
and suggest where and how to
enhance and improve
Better awareness of its own
reality and goals to be
achieved
First step: assessment and
improvement of organization
Obtain a better efficiency and
efficacy of business processes;
assessment of their coherence
with company’s strategy
Objectify the company’s
behaviour knowledge, increase
consciousness about the way
of working and indicate the
evolutive path specifying the
interventions to activate to
organization
The building of the company’s
behavioural base
Improvement of way of
operate.
Organization the company on
processes and not on units
Second step: assessment and
improvement of operativity
and company’s efficiency and
rules
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11. IT-business alignment
Goals
Expected benefits
Possible outcomes
Note
ITIT-business alignment
Obtain how IT is supporting
the business
Highlight business areas with
weak support by IT and the
reasons for this
Elicitation of areas needing
improvement of IT support
Third step: appraisal of real
MIS support to business
IT service assessment
Obtain how IT is organizing
itself
Enhancements on IT processes
efficiency and efficacy
Hints on which IT processes
need improvements
Linked to third step
Current information
system improvement
Obtain a list of possible
interventions to enhance the
current MIS in the areas
emerged having poor support
by IT
Awareness of the business and
technical requirements to
make MIS more suitable to
business needs
List of interventions; costs
and timeframe proposal
Fourth step: assessment of the
possibilities to enhance the
MIS
Improvements plan
activation
Activate what has been
discovered in the previous
steps
MIS evolution towards a better
consistency to business needs
MIS improved
Modification of MIS in the
areas singled out during
previous steps
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12. IT strategy verification
Goals
Expected benefits
Possible outcomes
Note
IT governance
Analysis of how decisions on
IT evolution are taken and
how IT projects are measured
and controlled
Specifying the decision rights
allows the member of an
organization a clear
understanding of who can be
expected to make decisions.
Rules of how steer IT
evolution
First step: set the role of IT
Application portfolio
management
Analyze existing and future IT
applications in relation to
value added to business
Understand which applications
are important for business and
which new applications are
worth to activate
Selection of new applications
to achieve
Second step: looking ahead
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13. Changing the information system
Goals
Preliminay activities
Software selection
deployment:
New MIS deployment:
activation guidance
New MIS: Results
oriented monitoring
Expected benefits
Possible outcomes
Note
Verify the company’s
readiness to change
Evaluate the choice and the
likely impact
Project Business case
First step: assessement of
feasibility of change
Selection of new MIS suited to
company requirements
Unsing software selection
methodologies and tools,
minimize the risk of
inadequate choices
Choice of new MIS supplier
and related activation partner
(if different from supplier)
Second step: path for selecting
the most suited MIS
Governing the business
transformation initiative
Activation of MIS more
adherent to business
requirements
Set and verify new MIS
achievement of expected goals
Reduction of the risk of
misalignment between
expected and actual outcomes
Steer and control the project
of activating a new MIS
Elicitation and qualification of
achieved goals
Third step: path for succcesful
MIS activation
Fourth step: ex ante definition
and ex post evaluation of new
MIS project expected targets
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14. The viable organization: the value creation
Goals
Expected benefits
Possible outcomes
Note
Definition of company’s
indicators of value
Elicitation and definition of
the company’s indicators
useful to monitor the business
Unique, shared view of
business
Better process control; better
efficacy of decisions
First step: create a common
and shared set of elements
considered effective for
evaluationg the business and
on which future decisions can
be founded
Company’s Decisonal
base
Building of the company’s
knowledge base suited to
support decisions for steering
the business
Objectivation and unification
of all decision support
elements
Supply of quantitative and
qualitative business
performace indicators
Second step: make
concrete in operative tools
what defined in the
previuos step
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15. Overview of the action path
Application portfolio
management (APM)
Awareness and
readiness level
IT governance
Process analysis, redesign and
improvement
IT service assessment
IT-business alignment
(Enterprise information
architecture)
Current information system improvement:
definition of goals and expected benefits
Improvements plan activation
Ex post verification of acquired goals and
benefits
Viable organization
Current information system improvement
evaluation
New information system: definition of goals and
expected benefits
Project management
Change management
Enterprise acrchitecture
Organizational assessment
IT Strategy
Enterprise strategy
Software selection and new MIS
activation
Ex post verification of acquired goals and
benefits
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16. Organization and Information systems for
the viable enterprise
Perspectives for a path of value:
Joint evolution for effective support to business
Updated October 1, 2013