Information management tools: time, money, plan
The manager responsible for the effective functioning and development of the business management system (organizational structure) should be able to provide their work and the work of their subordinates with the necessary productive tools.
First of all, his attention is focused on information management tools - working sets of methods, programs and practices used to influence (change or measure) the management and related information in order to achieve a beneficial effect. Obviously, the ultimate goal of a manager is to achieve a beneficial effect in business management, but not in management of the information itself. In this case, information is only a resource for management, and a tool is the ability to process information for making the right decisions, coordinating work, planning projects, financial and economic control, and implementing other management functions.
Information management tool (tool) - the thing is not simple. First of all, because it is rather difficult to check and evaluate its effectiveness and efficiency on the fly. There are a number of tools for work with which highly qualified specialists are needed, whose training can take more than one month. In this case, the total cost of ownership of the tool rises significantly if it requires a special professional approach.
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Information for work with which information management tools are used is not a sustainable factor and can introduce its characteristic features into their use: complicate the processing process, require additional checks, force regular recalculation and update data in the repository. Today, the specialist uses the tool perfectly and conveniently, and tomorrow - the structure of information and its relevance have changed and the use of the tool has become impossible. Unfortunately, not all transformations in the external and internal business environment can be envisaged in order to create extremely flexible (adaptive) tools.
Such a simple question can easily be stumped: how much time is needed for a manager to study, practice and make an objective decision about the useful application of a new information management tool. And the point is not that the correct answer is in principle unknown or difficult to calculate. The fact is that the correct answer to this important question is a little confusing.
Not less than a year - approximately so much is necessary for business in order to adequately and objectively study and gain experience in the information management tool. It has nothing to do with IT infrastructure, algorithm refinement, or user training. This is due solely to the seasonal economic and management cycle characteristic of any business in which the tool is used. But in this case, if a business can evaluate the effect of introducing a tool only after a year, or even more, then the problem of its quality selection becomes many times more complicated.
Error in the selection can be understood only after a year. It is prohibitively long for a developing business to lose a whole year on the fact that at the stage of selecting and putting into practice the necessary tool, one of the responsible managers will allow direct or indirect incompetence. And in order not to lose a whole year, is it not worth losing two, three or four weeks for an active, meaningful choice of a suitable information management tool involving a wide range of interested specialists.
But why year? What is difficult to install software and train specialists working with him? Does this need a whole year? Such actions really do not require so much time. It is completely different. An assessment of the parametric efficiency and benefits of the management tool as a whole is an assessment of the beneficial effect to the business. If a tool is used that does not give the business management system significant benefits, then this is an absolutely inappropriate tool. In addition, following the economic principle of "opportunity costs": a tool that does not benefit - does harm because it diverts resources, time, specialists, attention and creates an erroneous view of the functions for which it is applied.
You can evaluate the useful effect of a tool for a business only when it passes the following events in the annual cycle:
- periods of seasonal rise and fall in business, as well as the “points” of their shift - give an understanding of how much the tool helps in passing seasonal periods, whether it has additional benefits or opportunities, whether it allows to control and adjust key seasonal parameters;
- annual results (analytics) and their comparison with the previous year - provide an insight into the contribution of the tool to the overall business results for the whole reporting period;
- closing of the year by different levels of business processes - gives an understanding of how the tool is built into the general pool of management tools (and not only) and how it relates to the accompanying or competitive business objectives of the business;
- special events, events, projects, actions and other activities - give an understanding of how it is possible and with what effect to use the tool for individual project work initiated by business, within the framework of isolated formed "mobile" project teams;
- rotation of customers, products, marketing events - gives an understanding of the effective participation of the tool in managing customer interaction and what it gives in terms of improving their quality, besides, it is important to understand its interaction with client-oriented systems such as quality management (TQM), management return and claim work, customer relationship management (CRM);
- payment of the main taxes and financial performance - give an understanding of the importance and effectiveness of the tool in relation to the mandatory regulatory procedures that have a direct financial impact on the business and allow you to evaluate the contribution of the tool to the controllability of the financial functional unit as a whole;
- assessment of the cumulative result of management functions by year (decision of business owners) - gives an assessment of the role of the tool and its value in the strategic and tactical-operational plan, whether the business needs it as a whole or is useful only to a specific subject specialist;
- vacation period - provides an understanding of whether it is possible to use the tool in different user modes and different users (in the absence of a competent manager, lead specialist or expert on the tool);
- acceptance and liquidation of extraordinary events and unforeseen circumstances - gives an understanding of the “behavior” of the tool and its user in particularly difficult for business periods, when risk or adverse events occur or when adverse factors have a strong excess effect.
The above list of events is not exhaustive, but based on it, it is clear that it is possible to fully and responsibly assess the effect of the information management tool when the business management system passes all cyclical annual key economic, marketing and management events. What is especially important for the application of complex and complex tools that are associated with different objective tasks.
An information management tool is always a cost. Even self-development leads to certain costs, what can I say about buying from a third-party developer.
The price of the issue will consist of the following elements:
Correctly calculating the total cost of acquiring and using the tool is one of the key points in making the final decision on his choice. It should be remembered about the "traditional" marketing techniques of some suppliers: a low price is voiced for any one of the articles of the total cost of ownership of the tool, which is subsequently transformed into a very solid overall estimate.
We do not consider the analysis of opportunity costs, although it is also important and much more complicated than the assessment of direct costs.
We focus on the approximate plan of choice, introduction into business practice and active initial use of the information management tool. It may consist of approximately the following sequence of steps:
Something like this is not an easy iterative scheme, the details of which will depend on the specific business and specific tool. It is important for the competent manager, who organizes the process of providing business with management tools on a systematic and regular basis, not to miss the main elements in such a control loop. In addition, it can include various procedures that reduce the economic and security risks, control, evaluation, coordinating and coordinating procedures.
... that automation somehow reduced its intensity and the PR of large IT corporations shifted in the other direction: big data, wireless networks, robotization, the Internet of things and other promising new directions.
Maybe business automation is developing and evolutionarily divided into several specialized areas. And maybe, in part, automation as such at the level of medium and small businesses suffered a certain defeat.
Undoubtedly, the corporate segment, which can allow itself short-term unproductive expenses for maintaining a staff of competent specialists, costs for interrupting regular and reengineering of leading business processes, expenses for high-risk reorganization and IT infrastructure upgrades and other costs associated with intensive and not always generating success with iterative (total or patchwork) corporate automation of the management system. In this “rich” segment it is possible to make various decisions, including redundant and trial ones.
But medium and small business? This is the segment that the staff of analysts cannot afford to allow constant manipulation and modeling with subsequent re-modeling of the business. And the market offers too few convenient, theoretically protected and practically suitable solutions in this area. Medium and small business is happy to adopt the tools that implement the functionality of accounting. And what else does the market offer him in terms of the implementation of other business management functions? And by the way, are these solutions compatible?
There is a concept developed in practice - a theory (or a scientific approach to practical activity) - that is, first we think what and how to do, and then we do it.
Do not ignore the scientific approach in the creation and use of information management tools. To build an effective tool, this is generally not easy. Any tool is based on the understanding of certain subject-oriented, but object-dependent business processes. By the way, in contrast to the automated control system, when we talk about information management tools, we shift the focus towards flexible and configurable use of individual fragments of the overall system. At the same time, our focus is not on a software package developed on the basis of a designed business process model, but on a competent specialist with a set of highly efficient combinable information tools that can not only execute specified business processes, but also adapt to their intensive changes. But in this case, the understanding of the analyst or a team of analysts who carry out the study and modeling of the business, the various aspects of its management from a qualitative and quantitative side, becomes even more important.
Previous publications on information management tools:
First of all, his attention is focused on information management tools - working sets of methods, programs and practices used to influence (change or measure) the management and related information in order to achieve a beneficial effect. Obviously, the ultimate goal of a manager is to achieve a beneficial effect in business management, but not in management of the information itself. In this case, information is only a resource for management, and a tool is the ability to process information for making the right decisions, coordinating work, planning projects, financial and economic control, and implementing other management functions.
Information management tool (tool) - the thing is not simple. First of all, because it is rather difficult to check and evaluate its effectiveness and efficiency on the fly. There are a number of tools for work with which highly qualified specialists are needed, whose training can take more than one month. In this case, the total cost of ownership of the tool rises significantly if it requires a special professional approach.
')
Information for work with which information management tools are used is not a sustainable factor and can introduce its characteristic features into their use: complicate the processing process, require additional checks, force regular recalculation and update data in the repository. Today, the specialist uses the tool perfectly and conveniently, and tomorrow - the structure of information and its relevance have changed and the use of the tool has become impossible. Unfortunately, not all transformations in the external and internal business environment can be envisaged in order to create extremely flexible (adaptive) tools.
Time
Such a simple question can easily be stumped: how much time is needed for a manager to study, practice and make an objective decision about the useful application of a new information management tool. And the point is not that the correct answer is in principle unknown or difficult to calculate. The fact is that the correct answer to this important question is a little confusing.
Not less than a year - approximately so much is necessary for business in order to adequately and objectively study and gain experience in the information management tool. It has nothing to do with IT infrastructure, algorithm refinement, or user training. This is due solely to the seasonal economic and management cycle characteristic of any business in which the tool is used. But in this case, if a business can evaluate the effect of introducing a tool only after a year, or even more, then the problem of its quality selection becomes many times more complicated.
Error in the selection can be understood only after a year. It is prohibitively long for a developing business to lose a whole year on the fact that at the stage of selecting and putting into practice the necessary tool, one of the responsible managers will allow direct or indirect incompetence. And in order not to lose a whole year, is it not worth losing two, three or four weeks for an active, meaningful choice of a suitable information management tool involving a wide range of interested specialists.
But why year? What is difficult to install software and train specialists working with him? Does this need a whole year? Such actions really do not require so much time. It is completely different. An assessment of the parametric efficiency and benefits of the management tool as a whole is an assessment of the beneficial effect to the business. If a tool is used that does not give the business management system significant benefits, then this is an absolutely inappropriate tool. In addition, following the economic principle of "opportunity costs": a tool that does not benefit - does harm because it diverts resources, time, specialists, attention and creates an erroneous view of the functions for which it is applied.
You can evaluate the useful effect of a tool for a business only when it passes the following events in the annual cycle:
- periods of seasonal rise and fall in business, as well as the “points” of their shift - give an understanding of how much the tool helps in passing seasonal periods, whether it has additional benefits or opportunities, whether it allows to control and adjust key seasonal parameters;
- annual results (analytics) and their comparison with the previous year - provide an insight into the contribution of the tool to the overall business results for the whole reporting period;
- closing of the year by different levels of business processes - gives an understanding of how the tool is built into the general pool of management tools (and not only) and how it relates to the accompanying or competitive business objectives of the business;
- special events, events, projects, actions and other activities - give an understanding of how it is possible and with what effect to use the tool for individual project work initiated by business, within the framework of isolated formed "mobile" project teams;
- rotation of customers, products, marketing events - gives an understanding of the effective participation of the tool in managing customer interaction and what it gives in terms of improving their quality, besides, it is important to understand its interaction with client-oriented systems such as quality management (TQM), management return and claim work, customer relationship management (CRM);
- payment of the main taxes and financial performance - give an understanding of the importance and effectiveness of the tool in relation to the mandatory regulatory procedures that have a direct financial impact on the business and allow you to evaluate the contribution of the tool to the controllability of the financial functional unit as a whole;
- assessment of the cumulative result of management functions by year (decision of business owners) - gives an assessment of the role of the tool and its value in the strategic and tactical-operational plan, whether the business needs it as a whole or is useful only to a specific subject specialist;
- vacation period - provides an understanding of whether it is possible to use the tool in different user modes and different users (in the absence of a competent manager, lead specialist or expert on the tool);
- acceptance and liquidation of extraordinary events and unforeseen circumstances - gives an understanding of the “behavior” of the tool and its user in particularly difficult for business periods, when risk or adverse events occur or when adverse factors have a strong excess effect.
The above list of events is not exhaustive, but based on it, it is clear that it is possible to fully and responsibly assess the effect of the information management tool when the business management system passes all cyclical annual key economic, marketing and management events. What is especially important for the application of complex and complex tools that are associated with different objective tasks.
Money
An information management tool is always a cost. Even self-development leads to certain costs, what can I say about buying from a third-party developer.
The price of the issue will consist of the following elements:
- The cost of acquiring the instrument, which includes:
- Direct tool costs (program, documentation kit)
- The cost of configuration and refinement (configuration for the tasks of both the tool and the infrastructure within which it should be used)
- Commissioning costs (consulting, training, embedding in business and other organizational expenses)
- The costs of using the tool include:
- Direct costs of using the tool (maintaining normal operation and providing consumables and other resources)
- Indirect costs of using the tool (organizational support for team work with the tool and providing specialists with the necessary related resources that are not directly required to use the tool)
- Expenses for knowledge (information) and external consultants for solving specific subject tasks using a tool or adjusting tool performance
- Tool upgrade costs that include:
- The cost of updating, refining and adjusting the tool in the process of using or moving to the new version
- Costs for re-commissioning (re-training, additional consulting, retrofitting of IT infrastructure and costs for reorganization of work, processes)
- The costs of organizing the process of updating the tool (monitoring the effectiveness of the tool, identifying problem areas, updating proposals, tracking the release of updates, planning updating procedures, monitoring the success of updating, etc.)
Note: by updating the tool here is meant ...
its significant change, which implies the expansion, correction or elimination of redundant functionality, but does not imply a significant replacement of one functional by another
Correctly calculating the total cost of acquiring and using the tool is one of the key points in making the final decision on his choice. It should be remembered about the "traditional" marketing techniques of some suppliers: a low price is voiced for any one of the articles of the total cost of ownership of the tool, which is subsequently transformed into a very solid overall estimate.
We do not consider the analysis of opportunity costs, although it is also important and much more complicated than the assessment of direct costs.
Plan
We focus on the approximate plan of choice, introduction into business practice and active initial use of the information management tool. It may consist of approximately the following sequence of steps:
- Understanding the need (need) to use the tool. It begins, as a rule, with the awareness of the existence of a certain problem of business management related to information flows.
- Setting goals for the choice of tool with the definition of the main tasks that it must solve and its key characteristics.
- A preliminary (marginal) assessment of the price that the manager is ready to give for a suitable tool, which solves actual problems - a budget assessment.
- An assessment of how the actual problem is being solved at present and what tools are used to solve it as usual. Including obtaining expert opinion of experts of the relevant subject area.
- Formalization of goals and objectives that are intended to be solved with the help of a tool in an accessible budget.
- Consideration of the possibility of using an integrated tool to solve several problems in the part of business management. Is it possible to purchase (develop) a single tool for various subject tasks and subject areas and how such a tool can be built into existing business processes.
- Detailing the requirements for the tool including: main goals, solvable objective problems and problems, technical and technological configuration, key characteristics of the application, requirements for user competence, principles of organization of the application, time and cost restrictions, etc. Perhaps detailed in the format of the technical specifications or other document.
- Search for the supplier (developer) of the tool and evaluation of proposals for the tools.
- Select a supplier. Criteria comprehensive assessment of the supplier of the instrument as a long-term or short-term partner.
- Development of documentation and business model. Detailed study and formulation of requirements for the instrument, its methodology and practice of use in the form of final documentation. In addition, documentation should include, if possible, the definition of those business processes that use the tool.
- Coordination (subject optimization) and approval of documentation with different stakeholders: from the specialists who will have to use the tool, to the financial and economic service, which forms and controls the expenditure part.
- Acquisition (development) of the tool.
- Configuring the tool and preparing it for use. A good tool necessarily involves configuration (setup, initial data, separate access). Both the tool supplier and its users should be involved in this process. In fact, after this stage, the tool must be fully ready for use technically.
- User training and regulation of business with a new tool.
- Testing and user counseling. Especially important in the first stage of introduction to the use of the tool. A certain support of specialists, when they switch to a new tool, is important not only in practical terms, but also in a purely psychological one. Therefore, the team must have an “authorized” employee who will help the user online.
- Transition to use the tool. The official start of using the tool is important not so much for reporting and “closing” the order, as for intensive field testing and obtaining a test point from which the analysis of the effectiveness of the information management tool begins.
- Monitoring the use of the tool and monitoring the quality of the tasks solved with its help. This is important for an objective assessment of the choice of instrument and the beneficial effect it gives to the business.
- Formulation of proposals for the finalization of the tool or its reconfiguration. Undoubtedly, after a certain period of use of the tool, its refinement or additional adjustment will be required. This should be weighed. Therefore, we first formalize the problems and requirements.
- Making adjustments to the tool or making adjustments to business processes. Understanding that the tool does not work well, you need to understand the causes of problem situations. It is possible that the tool requires refinement or updating. But it is possible that changes require business processes to manage which it is applied. The choice remains for the head.
- General assessment of the success of the instrument for the control period (annual cycle) according to certain established criteria, including through a subjective survey of users.
Something like this is not an easy iterative scheme, the details of which will depend on the specific business and specific tool. It is important for the competent manager, who organizes the process of providing business with management tools on a systematic and regular basis, not to miss the main elements in such a control loop. In addition, it can include various procedures that reduce the economic and security risks, control, evaluation, coordinating and coordinating procedures.
Do not you think ...
... that automation somehow reduced its intensity and the PR of large IT corporations shifted in the other direction: big data, wireless networks, robotization, the Internet of things and other promising new directions.
Maybe business automation is developing and evolutionarily divided into several specialized areas. And maybe, in part, automation as such at the level of medium and small businesses suffered a certain defeat.
Undoubtedly, the corporate segment, which can allow itself short-term unproductive expenses for maintaining a staff of competent specialists, costs for interrupting regular and reengineering of leading business processes, expenses for high-risk reorganization and IT infrastructure upgrades and other costs associated with intensive and not always generating success with iterative (total or patchwork) corporate automation of the management system. In this “rich” segment it is possible to make various decisions, including redundant and trial ones.
But medium and small business? This is the segment that the staff of analysts cannot afford to allow constant manipulation and modeling with subsequent re-modeling of the business. And the market offers too few convenient, theoretically protected and practically suitable solutions in this area. Medium and small business is happy to adopt the tools that implement the functionality of accounting. And what else does the market offer him in terms of the implementation of other business management functions? And by the way, are these solutions compatible?
And what is the conclusion?
There is a concept developed in practice - a theory (or a scientific approach to practical activity) - that is, first we think what and how to do, and then we do it.
Do not ignore the scientific approach in the creation and use of information management tools. To build an effective tool, this is generally not easy. Any tool is based on the understanding of certain subject-oriented, but object-dependent business processes. By the way, in contrast to the automated control system, when we talk about information management tools, we shift the focus towards flexible and configurable use of individual fragments of the overall system. At the same time, our focus is not on a software package developed on the basis of a designed business process model, but on a competent specialist with a set of highly efficient combinable information tools that can not only execute specified business processes, but also adapt to their intensive changes. But in this case, the understanding of the analyst or a team of analysts who carry out the study and modeling of the business, the various aspects of its management from a qualitative and quantitative side, becomes even more important.
Previous publications on information management tools:
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/299514/
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