Information Systems Departments within Organizations - Essay Example

? Technology change Lecturer: Information systems departments within organizations experience great difficulties coping with rapid changes and high complexity of today’s business and technological landscapes. Therefore, flexibility is essential in coping with dynamic, complex, and uncertain environments and the need is recognised by IS executives. Increasing information system flexibility with flexible information technology infrastructure and adaptable application system is a crucial issue for IS managers since IS have to be flexible in order to meet user requirements in the changing environments. Naturally, business environments are dynamic and volatile; however, information systems have to deal with the volatile nature of business requirements thus Information systems in an organization can easily be outdated. IS environment is changing at an increasing rate since technology which is apparently up-to-date becomes outdated at a high speed. IS flexibility is the ability of an information system to respond to changing technology and business environments. For instance top enterprise technology companies like Microsoft, Citrix, Dell, IBM, HP, and Cisco embrace NVIDIA GRID thus offering organizations flexibility of the GRID enabled solutions and servers. Use NVIDIA GRID technology is crucial in helping companies grasp the gains of virtualization like flexibility, manageability and security, while at the same time offering a complete PC experience to users. IT departments grapple with the challenge of employees increasingly bringing their gadgets to work expecting great mobility and experience offered by virtualization through secure and consistent access to company resources; however, this is often done at the expense of performance and features nevertheless, GRID eliminates the compromise. Enterprises are taking advantage of the globalization trend and mobility through virtualization of desktops together their applications to offer users the ability to work anytime, anywhere on any gadget while ensuring security of company IP address (NVIDIA, 2013). To operationalise information system flexibility, there are three categories of application and they include personnel, integration of data and functionality and the module of system components. With the multidimensional nature of information system flexibility, recognizing and assessing the necessary levels of flexibility required to respond to change is changeling for organizations. Nevertheless, contingency theory emphasizes the fact that managers make decision in accordance with the prevailing conditions and act on aspects that are vital to the situation. For instance managing IS flexibility in an organization various aspects are considered like IS requirements, IT staff and the end-users. Management has to consider the degree of fit between ideal IS and its capability; even though, the environment is conceptualised with uncertain forces like complex competition, global challenges and market shifts as well as the rapid technological developments like e-commerce. Due to the changes in environmental forces, there is need to address the turbulent changes in order to effectively deal with opportunities brought by the changes. Since there is increasing pressure on businesses to respond and deal with the environmental changes efficiently, it is essential that organizations be flexible and adaptable. A flexible information system is a crucial element of organizational flexibility; thus, IS has to quickly and inexpensively adapt to new situations in the business. Information system changes involve changes in both internal and external business requirements and changes in IT in the implementation of information systems. The system theory states that a system consists of objects, attributes, internal relationship with its objects and it exists in an environment; thus, a system is a set of entities that affect one another in an environment to form a large pattern different from any of its parts. In an open system, information is received which is then used to interact dynamically with the environment; thus, openness increases the chances of surviving and prospering. Environmental dynamism in Information System is made up of rate of change and randomness of change, which moderates the relation between plasticity and performance. In IS flexibility, matching It infrastructure with the ideal requirements of the IS is essential, since it involves matching of information systems with the organizational needs. The concept of matching is congruent to the capability identified by the various components in an Information system and the requirements information in an organization. Therefore, organizational matching of IS relies on contextual factors like environment, technology and IS characteristics like database, reports and applications. If there is a gap between ideal requirements and the ability of an IS, then user satisfaction and in the long run business performance can be hampered. Total IS flexibility is the ability to respond to unanticipated changes; thus, it is resource for enabling businesses to compete efficiently through integration of various information systems. Technological change provide opportunities for improving customer service since it moves an organization and its products closer to customers, which increases the capability of organizational change. Besides development of IT capabilities improves flexibility of organizations and boosts the change capability in response of customer needs (Goutam et al, 2010). Top management aim at increasing the ability to build or adapt information systems in response to organizational changes. Building flexibility in information systems is not only a task for system provider but also a task for the top management by encouraging it instead of constraining the concept. Flexibility is more valuable in presence of uncertainty in both business and technological requirements; thus, IS department have to constantly respond to business and technological changes, as well as constant changes in business environment. In accordance with the system theory, change in business strategies, processes and organizational structure will result in changes of the requirements IS. Business and technological changes necessitate adequate resources like knowledge, competence and capabilities. System providers maintain knowledge on both business and technical changes; besides knowledge is necessary on the existing abilities of IS to assess the capabilities of an IS. Thus, management builds internal IT talent base to provide internal poll of skilled IT professionals knowledgeable of the various technologies. Moreover, the talent base has to absorb new skills rapidly through retrenching obsolete skills; thus, skills and capabilities of IT personnel directly contribute to IS flexibility in businesses (Stan et al, 2008). In accordance with chaos theory that states a noticeable lack of order within a system; nevertheless, it follows certain rules; business requirement, goals and processes change continuously over time in order to match with the changing needs and remain competitive. Flexibility to information system change is essential in supporting business and technological needs characterised by uncertainty of future requirements. There are various reasons for adapting new technology, which include better technology available in the market, current technology being incapable of meeting user needs and the need to replace current technology by a new version of the technology. Many businesses’ competitive advantages rely on their abilities to create more value as opposed to their rivals, which in turn depend on successful innovation. The gain returns of innovation, many businesses struggle to be leaders in technology in their industry by ensuring that they are the first introduce fresh innovations to the market. This has been the case in Apple which has set itself apart with expertise in software, hardware and services (Martin, 2013). Sources of competitive advantage shift with time; however, certain firms like Wal-Mart and Amazon rely on not only technology and strategic position but also on the way, the workforce is managed. Given the unique characteristics of IT skills, the management of IT skills is at individual, group, firm and societal level and involves understating the fundamental IT skills, the critical IT skills, acquisition and maintenance of IT skills and the strategic management of IT skills. In managing IT skills, business community pursues a goal-driven approach, which ties skills to task performance and in turn ties it to strategic business goals. The goal-driven approach is fundamental to business goals and objectives; moreover, firms plan and manage human resources to influence performance, which affects sustainability of competitive advantage. Nevertheless, some characteristics of IT pose challenges to firms and individual workers with the fast pace of technological innovation bringing complex and diversity in IT skills. As employees aspire to be experts in certain domain of work, it is difficult to have broad perspective of the entire IT cosmos. Management focuses on business goals in order to manage IT skills while ensuring that IT professionals keep up with the current IT innovations (Betz, 2011). To understand firm performance in the innovative ecosystem, it requires a change in the way strategy and innovation has traditionally been linked to firm performance. Technological innovations make it necessary for firms to reconfigure their business portfolios in order to divert their resources to areas of fresh opportunities while divesting from the marginal businesses. Thriving technology leaders, by beating their rivals, enjoy reduced competition when offering offers to customers. Nevertheless, research is necessary in the cost of building flexibility in information systems at different degrees in the environmental dynamism. For example, high uncertainty in environmental dynamism necessitates high capability of built-in-flexibility in information systems. There is the question of flexibility necessary at different levels of environmental dynamism like risky situation and at the same time, a lot of flexibility is expensive. Moreover, managers have to look at ways of optimising the cost of developing a flexible information system. Making technical changes in information systems necessitates development of a methodology for analysing changes necessary over time and the way the changes are accommodated in the information system. References NVIDIA. (2013). Top Enterprise Technology Companies Embrace NVIDIA GRID. Retrieved from http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/Releases/Top-Enterprise-Technology-Companies-Embrace-NVIDIA-GRID-953.aspx Martin, S. (2013). USA Today. Tim Cook: 'bullish on innovation of Apple'. USA TODAY. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2013/02/12/apple-ipad-iphone-goldman-sachs-google-microsoft-surface-tim-cook/1912951/ Goutam, C., et al. (2010). "Characteristics That Enhance Training Effectiveness In Implementing Technological Change In Sales Strategy: A Field-Based Exploratory Study." Journal Of Personal Selling & Sales Management 30.2: 143-156. Betz, F. (2011). Managing Technological Innovation: Competitive Advantage from Change. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Stan, M., et al. (2008). "Technological Paradigms: Past, Present And Future." Industrial & Corporate Change 17.3: 467-484. Read More