Introduction
Does IT Matter? For most companies the answer is no. But that's all changing.
The vast business information systems of today have a prosaic origin -- the double-entry accounting system and the general ledger. Information Technology grew from the challenge of automating accounting. As nGenera CEO Steve Papermaster puts it: "Corporations today are structured like giant income statements and for decades IT has been about automating old transactional processes."
The general ledger is the basic system of record and all automated information flowed to it. CRM, supply chain management, ERP, and other enterprise systems throughout a company consolidate into accounting statements. As a result, information technology has been backward looking, transactional in nature and locking companies into old business practices and old organizational structures. Companies implemented computer systems when the technologies matured to the point where cost beneficial applications were feasible.
Such systems tended to be planned within the context of the income statement -- discrete systems for production, marketing, financial management and research. Technology was not used to change the nature of work but to automate old ways of working -- in other words, paving the cow path leading to the general ledger. Transaction systems, based on accounting determine the flow of information. As a result, companies remain saddled with legacy systems that are impediments, rather than catalysts, to change.
Transaction-based systems are inadequate for the demands of the global economy. A new age of collaboration is emerging where, thanks to the internet (the Web 2.0 as it's called) companies can now use IT to orchestrate capability, innovate and engage with the rest of the world in powerful new ways.
The transactional DNA of information systems must give way to a new DNA -- one based on interactions, and enabling human collaboration. nGenera has spent millions in research that shows how companies which embrace these new models perform and compete better -- a lot better.
The fundamental unit of information in an interaction-centric enterprise is different from one that is based on transactions. In fact there is a general ledger of collaboration. It is possible to enable collaboration across masses of interactions just the way companies did with transactions. The key is to link information about people and entities such as customers, partners, and other organizations. For the first time it is possible to construct an analogue to the general ledger and in doing so to use the new web to transform the modus operandi of the firm.
Information Technology matters, but not in ways that most firms understand. On demand information about people, relationships and entities is going to become the new system of record and deliver competitive advantage. Rather than systems looking backwards they will enable everyone within an enterprise to better understand where we are headed, real time. And tools for human collaboration become the foundation of networked business models and success.
nGenera is building such a GL of collaboration and in doing so is building the platform required for the "Next Generation Enterprise."