Information technologies have so strongly and professionally penetrated into business management in general and into production processes in particular, that it is impossible to imagine a modern developing company without a decent IT team and infrastructure. Today, completely different breakthrough directions and technologies for informatization of business processes are being discussed, including substantively analyzing “Internet of things”, warning of a new industrial revolution in the form of “robotization of workplaces”, assessing the danger of “uberization” services, offering options for legalizing “freelance” , insist on banning "torrent trackers".

The business community is in anticipation and anticipation of a rapid qualitative transition to a new economy based on powerful information tools and technologies. But is everything clear to the business in this system of global deep informatization of the economic space and is he ready to reconsider his approach to strategy, customers, employees and competitors?
Here are three questions that it would be nice to figure out in order to really consciously carry out the very, in a certain sense, even protracted, transition to the fourth industrial revolution.

First, what is the main competitive advantage in an economy that is based on global information flows?
The second is: why do highly professional specialists become more mobile and increasingly prefer an independent business or free work schedule?
Third: how to organize business processes in the conditions of constant innovation instability, increasing specialization and high level of risk informational events?
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The answers to these three questions show how the very essence of management is changing in the conditions of information-saturated space.

The first factor: a new advantage

In an economy that is permeated with information flows, the vast majority of the competitive advantages of businesses are based on key valuable information. Moreover, this “information” should be understood as a fairly wide range of things that have an informational nature: from theoretically and practically applicable knowledge, statistical data, to formalized experience and expert opinions.
Information becomes a driving factor in increasing competition in conditions when management is in a fairly saturated and turbulent environment. Indeed, many sources and factors influence modern business and top management, among them it should be noted:
- internal data (including accounting and automated systems);
- internal communications and informal communication;
- marketing research and publications (private and general);
- rating and analytical materials;
- data from stock and investment markets;
- technical and technological innovations;
- industrial, market trends and fashion trends;
- news and event market generators;
- government, industry regulators and expert communities.
For a business, there is too much multidirectional information that introduces a certain mismatch in its strategy and tactics. Experiencing in varying degrees, external and internal intense information influence, the behavior of management becomes chaotic, and its decisions have an increased level of uncertainty and excessive risk. The only effective way to overcome the negative impact of destabilizing information is to actively manage it. No matter how paradoxical it may seem, it is the generation of additional structured information (knowledge, data, practices) that helps to streamline management actions in a disturbed environment.
In this regard, one simple example is indexing is introduced for managing data in relational databases; To manage basic information, additional information is created in a special format.
In the many streams of business-driven information, the very competitive advantages that can be identified, developed, formulated and tried to use in the form of new products, consumer preferences, production technologies, etc. are hidden.
Do not forget that the information itself has a number of properties that make it a very unstable source of competitive advantage. With its help it is easy to bypass competitors, but competitors can also easily steal competitive leadership by gaining access to valuable information.
First of all, it is related to privacy and copyright issues. Information is inherently easy to spread and cannot be removed from public circulation. There are examples when the disclosure of proprietary information can not only worsen the position in the market, but also jeopardize the existence of the company. Intangible information does not belong to anyone, which means it cannot be taken from anyone.
Another feature of digitized data in an open global network is almost instantaneous propagation speed.
Here is the first factor that should be taken into account - informatization allows us to systematically solve the issues of increasing the company's competencies and form a stable market position with distinct competitive advantages, but it has additional significant threats and risks.

The second factor: a personal matter

Professional activity, which is conducted in an intensive information environment, is accompanied by the constant creation and practical testing of new knowledge, skills and abilities. A highly qualified specialist in today's innovative economy should be able not only to confirm his set of competencies, but also to expand them through lifelong learning. Many actively developing companies require their employees to put a lot of effort into keeping themselves in a “professional form”, keeping abreast of the latest news and developments that concern their areas of responsibility. Special trainings and conferences, exhibitions and testing, team development programs and informal communications are supported by businesses for rapid professional growth and adaptation of employees.
In place of the simple specialist responsible for his area of ​​work, comes a high-class professional with his own unique, competitive experience.
But what does this mean for business in general and its organizational structure in particular? Being nominally subordinate, the performer has a valuable set of competencies and knowledge (information), which is partly superior to those of management. The employee becomes an “indispensable” expert and acquires an informal opportunity to disagree with the decision of the immediate or superior manager. In the once-established and stable organizational structure, there is a weakening of the vertically-oriented subordination and the “crisis of the authority of the leader”.
The growing professionalism within the framework of the specialization leads to the fact that employees of the “expert” level on a number of issues put serious pressure on the management of the company. They have the right to consider their opinion as more competent, and therefore they have every reason to be critical of the decisions of the higher manager and to offer their own in return, which they see as the most correct. Such situations easily translate into conflict with the loss of not only a professional, but also valuable current information that he has.
Today's experts know and can do more. Many uncontrollable sources of information are available for them: from market data (which tell them about their prospects in the labor market) to gossip about top management (which give a subjective assessment of career prospects in this business). It is more and more difficult to control the work of an expert to his direct supervisor in detail, and it is easier to hide professional mistakes.
Quite often, with the loss of a highly qualified employee, the company significantly lowers the level or completely abandons the competencies that he “closed” in the business functionality.
Business seeks to attract the most competent employees to their side and encourage their intensive professional development, but this development reduces the traditional controllability of vertical subordination within the organizational structure - this is the second important factor noted.

The third factor: procedural difficulty

Full-cycle enterprises are becoming a thing of the past. Increasingly, we hear about partnership, outsourcing, service, resource operators, remote monitoring, mobile office, industry associations. Today, it is impossible to do all things equally well and professionally, because it entails a disproportionate increase in direct and indirect costs.
Business processes of any economic entity develop in a modern economy is difficult and depend on a variety of internal and external factors. In addition to the main contour, when modeling processes and functional blocks, differentiated profile and problem procedures are added, for example: expert evaluation; quality control; security and protection against risk events; production and economic analytics, etc.
Linear business processes are increasingly parallelized and synchronized.
The dependence of the business and the processes it implements on external market actors and regulatory structures is increasing.
The dynamics of changes in the processes in a number of areas of business is quite high. With their constant transformation, it is impossible to build detailed models and maintain them in adequate condition for a long time. Once-built business processes, fixing their gaze at a particular point in time and “freezing” them, forcing actual operations to adapt to a formally designed scheme. This is reflected in the general performance discipline, fueling problems and conflict situations.
Errors in business processes make it necessary to switch to a “manual” management mode to equalize problem situations. At the same time, the role of experts is increasing, while managers who do not possess a sufficient level of competence in a specialized subject area are declining.
Management processes are also formed by an order of magnitude more complex and dynamic. They are actively supported by all the new productive information technologies, creating cumbersome bureaucratic systems that work “on themselves”. The problematics recedes into the background giving way to the “execution of regulations”. Expensive and long-changing IT systems “concrete” business processes already fixed by the design, thereby excluding any chances for intensive development. Under these conditions, a number of companies place too much responsibility on information technologies, forgetting about the role of professionals with unique competencies.
The third important factor is that business processes have become extremely complex and are subject to dynamic changes; they are subject to additional requirements for quality and detail.

Information management

Business management is traditionally based on the right to own property and is implemented through the model of "power management" .
Here are the characteristic features of such a model. Owners have a certain basic set of means of production, fixed assets, finance, intangible assets, land resources or other objects from which it is possible to extract income through the organization of targeted economic activity. The owners independently or by hiring the top management initiate some activity, the resource source of which is their real separate authorized capital. The basis of economic activity is the “right to property”, which gives a derivative right to “manage the organizational structure that uses this property”. Thus, the right to manage property is delegated to top management and further along the hierarchy through the middle level of management to a specific executor. The manager in the hierarchical structure makes decisions and issues orders only on the basis that he received some part of this right (directly or indirectly) from the owner of the business. As a result, the manager has delegated authority based on separate tangible and intangible assets (economic resources).

Until some time, it was a stable and productive model. But in the economic space, three factors are beginning to more actively influence it, which were noted above. It seems that in fact nothing happens, just the information becomes much more, the specialists are more competent and more mobile, and the business processes are more complicated and dependent. However, the information that is at the center of all this development is diverse and powerful in its strength and gradually does its big “ordering” business.

The first important impact of information has on the subjective economic value of tangible and intangible assets and resources transferred by the owner to conduct business. For the existence of a business, the success of its processes and the formation of competitive advantages that will ensure stable development, the presence in its direct ownership of industrial buildings, facilities, material resources or intangible assets is not so important. Especially if the subject has relevant information about where all this can be successfully rented for a reasonable fee. Leased funds (assets and resources) give the business mobility and efficiency (with skillful use). And the launch of a new business (startup) is not so much dependent on the presence of a certain expensive set of assets.
Reducing the value of "ownership" of property for successful business, inevitably and unequivocally reduces the power of the "right to manage" the hired staff to implement its processes. In fact, this means some weakening of vertical hierarchical relations in the structure of any company.
But that's not all…

The second strong impact of business informatization has on the mismatch of the structure of delegation of authority and functionality with the structure of knowledge and competence. The plenipotentiary decision-making now does not correspond to their real effective execution, which leads to orders that are executed with distortion or are ignored.
Specialists who have great competent and practically valuable business knowledge (experience) are in the vertical hierarchy lower than the management, disposing of less valuable management information. In addition, now there is no reason for employees to get access to strategic information, which was an advantage of top management and line managers. A highly qualified specialist becomes a very valuable resource for a company, on the one hand, and a carrier of competitive competence, which is in great demand by the market, on the other. Opportunities for personal growth and for the activity of “bounty hunters” not only in the sphere of top management, but also in the sphere of “masters of their craft” are greatly expanded.
This can not affect the vertical organizational hierarchy. But after all, business now also has a certain freedom in this matter. Freelance - puts before the entrepreneur the question of what is more profitable: to have a resource (asset) at one’s permanent disposal and to bear fixed costs or rent the “exact” time needed resource (asset) and take on, albeit increased costs per unit time, but generally lower and more cost effective.
And that is not all…

The third strong influence of informatization has on the very essence of business organization. It would seem a paradoxical situation: there is more and more information, but it is increasingly lacking for the modeling and implementation of effective and sustainable processes. Accounting systems are detailed, regulations and procedural maps are written out, detailed instructions for execution are given, many integrated and specific indicators are monitored - but the feeling of some “chaos” and insurmountable mistakes does not pass. Then marketing is actively involved in order to understand how competitors have it. Analysts cover all large data domains, and the data they process go into the category of “large”. Logistics calculates optimal shipments, and sales managers now convince customers of the need to purchase and immerse themselves in inventory and order production. Economists are looking for new sources of cost optimization.
Under these conditions, it is extremely difficult to design business processes and fix them in the long-term period in the form of some understandable model. The incoming information constantly influences the formal and informal schemes for building business processes and even insignificant data from the market makes it necessary to make further adjustments to the regulations and orders. Moving to more abstract, and, therefore, more process-protected process models would partially help solve the problem, but it takes time, specialists and tools.

Gradually, the model of “management of power” based on the right of ownership and disposal of property , and hence on the right to use this property to generate income from it, is replaced by a different model of “information management” based on the duty to effectively manage information .

Law, as the basis of activity, is actually excluded from the management due to total informatization, thereby complicating the functionality and competencies of the manager. Information is very badly correlated with legal law, because it is rather difficult to control, restrict for distribution and practically impossible to withdraw from circulation in the long term. This is the nature of digital data, knowledge, information and gossip. The right to information is a very controversial and costly thing that is easily violated. It can afford large and regulatory (state) organizations in the short term. Therefore, with regard to information, one should speak about the need to manage it or about the management's responsibility to do this. In part, a manager is transformed from a manager into a qualified specialist who knows and is able to model and implement business processes based on a special kind of competence in collecting, processing and analyzing various target information.

But why all this arises imperceptibly and gradually in the conditions of active informatization of the economic space? How can intangible things affect the material basis of doing business? It's all about the "human factor". It is the entrepreneurial resource (as an active controlling force) and the labor resource (as a powerful productive force) that are under the influence of information and change as a result of this. The availability, globalization, mobility and irrevocability of any information significantly change the very basis of the economy, which managers sometimes undeservedly forget - the alternativeness of economic behavior. From the alternative, in turn, follows the competitiveness of the existing business. Informatization allows more and more detailed and multifactorial, deliberately and securely, steadily and consistently to prepare and implement the most profitable economic alternatives from the choice of strategy to the specific situational solutions. Strong information flows re-order the activities of economic entities and force them to search for the most effective and efficient ways of conducting purposeful economic activities.

The increasing management of information is characterized to one degree or another:
- intensive consumption of information;
- deep qualitative and quantitative data processing;
- active generation and distribution of information of various types and purposes;
- a special kind of building organizational structures;
- resource mobility;
- the involvement of independent experts and performers;
- sustainable strategy and mobile tactics of its implementation;
- powerful information and technological tools, including the right of ownership and the right of use;
- using special methods of building adaptive business processes;
- the advantage of new knowledge and ideas over fixed assets;
- wide and democratic delegation of functionality.

The influence of informatization on the economic space makes you turn to the elements of information management. And this is inevitable for managers who want to develop successfully and for a long time. There are some things that cannot be stopped. It seems that this is one of them.
Information management penetrates into many areas of the economy and processes. Somewhere it happens quietly and unnoticed, but somewhere with a lot of noise and reflection in the media. It is not always clearly visible at the basis of which things the very information that changes the economy lies. But knowing and considering this business is able to more adequately respond to modern challenges.