Managing Technology

In a study of the predictors of success and failure in implementing technology, the author examines the introduction and use of profiling, an expert system intended to aid the insurance sales process at four insurance companies. Lutheran Brotherhood, National Mutual, Prudential, and Sun Alliance tried to get more than 5,000 field salespeople to implement Profiling. The study results indicate that in implementing a radically new technology, managers need to assemble "constellations" of actions, consider the political ramifications throughout the organization, manage the momentum of the project, and work to achieve economies of scale.

Although large corporations continue to outsource it services, the issues of whether and how to outsource generate strong emotions on the part of managers. Many practitioners and academics now argue for selective or "smart" sourcing. According to this author, this is probably a sensible approach to balance efficiency and effectiveness in providing IT services. However, the author argues that companies should first ask why they should not insource IT services. His perspective is based on an analysis of eleven risks of outsourcing that he identified in discussions with both buyers and vendors in the IT outsourcing marketplace.

Why does the outsourcing of IT frequently fail to produce the expected cost savings or other benefits? Perhaps because managers don't carefully select which IT activities to outsource. The authors examined sixty-two sourcing decisions at forty organizations through interviews with senior business executives, CIOs, consultants, and vendor account managers. From their data, they developed a set of frameworks to clarify sourcing options and aid managers in deciding which IT functions to contract out and which to retain in-house.

The international data highway will transform business education, although not necessarily its traditional supplier, the business school. Will the business school remain insulated from the knowledge revolution? Will it play a leadership role? Will it wither away? Two scenarios, one based on assumptions about education and the other on assumptions about research, are intended to help business schools and their stakeholders recognize the inevitability of change and envision what this new world might look like.

The approaches for improving quality in manufacturing processes don't work especially well for software development. The authors provide a quality improvement paradigm for the software industry that builds on manufacturing models but focuses on reused learning and experience by establishing "experience factories." Their iterative process enables an organization to acquire core competencies to support its strategic capabilities.

How will future traffic on the information superhighway affect each segment of an industry value chain? Will electronic markets provide new areas of opportunity for retailers, producers, and consumers as well? The authors suggest that the NII, or national infrastructure, will give consumers increased access to a vast selection of goods but will cause a restructuring and redistribution of profits among the stakeholders along the chain. There will also be an evolution from single-source sales channels to electronic markets. And electronic markets may lower coordination costs for producers and retailers, lower physical distribution costs, or eliminate retailers and wholesalers entirely, as consumers directly access manufacturers. Consumers' full access to the market will also be an issue that policymakers need to explore.

Companies are increasingly outsourcing information technology for a variety of reasons, such as concern for cost and quality, lagging IT performance, supplier pressure, and other financial factors. The outsourcing solution is acceptable to large and small firms alike because strategic alliances are now more common and the IT environment is changing rapidly. The authors offer their suggestions for determining when to outsource and how to structure and manage the resulting alliance. Most important, they suggest, is to view the outsourcing agreement as a strategic alliance and manage it as such.

A new kind of information system is emerging that will reduce the time to market, help tailor products and services to customers' needs, and make processes more responsive to unexpected events. Expressive systems allow users to adapt quickly and easily to exceptions from standard operating procedure. The authors describe how expressive systems work and suggest ways of modifying the roles and structure of IS departments to implement the new technology.

Managers have learned that, to exploit the advantages of new process technologies, they must adapt those technologies to fit the organization and its strategy. But exactly how and when to make those changes is not well understood. The authors argue that technological improvement is seldom a steady process but instead alternates between short episodes of intensive change activity and longer periods of routine use. Data from European and U.S. firms show that adaptation to new technologies often occurs in a "lumpy" or episodic pattern. Examination of several leading Japanese organizations reveals a similar pattern, with one important difference: managers in these operations actively exploit the episodic pattern of adaptation around a given technology. Drawing on these observations, the authors suggest that managing the uneven pace of adaptation can yield important benefits to firms pursuing both efficiency and change.