Only 14% of companies consider information systems when formulating global business strategies. According to a new report researched by Butler Cox on behalf of the Amdahl Executive Institute, most companies are now dispersing their activities over a wider area, but attempts to coordinate them are having enormous consequences for IS departments. Over 100 multinational companies participated in the research project which examines the role of information systems in global business strategies, and Butler Cox says that there are four predominant strategies. It describes these as the exporter; the national adaptor; the central coordinator; and the global coordinator. In terms of configuring systems to fit global strategies, in exporting businesses, centralised information systems are commonplace; in national adaptors, autonomous systems are more prevalent; with central coordinators, replicated systems are the norm; and in global coordinating businesses, the goal is integrated systems. What differentiates them is the degree to which key value-added activities are coordinated across the business. The trend among global businesses is to increased coordination of activities, and the report states that in general, there is a slow movement towards the global strategy. However, IS managers are having to restructure their departments to correspond with global business strategies, and also, they having to develop systems that coordinate international activities. Resolving conflicting user requirements is a major obstacle to implementing systems, and one of several different techniques to overcome these problems is something called business process analysis. Operations in different companies define their basic workflows and that allows identification of common patterns and requirements. The report concludes that 66% of the companies surveyed expect to operate in more countries within three years than they do today, yet fewer than one in seven companies take information systems into account when they formulate global business strategies. Although some global businesses are successful exporters and have become global coordinators, most are still in a state of transition between national adaptors and centralised coordinators. Technical problems are seen to be less significant than general management problems, but still important. The main obstacle is internetworking, both between new and existing systems, and between a company’s own systems and those of third parties. A common technical architecture is key, but rationalising may be slow and expensive. Also, while there are new technologies designed to improve coordination, in many ways, the emergence of these is compounding the problem of establishing a technical architecture. Copies of Globalisation: The IT Challenge are available free of charge from the Amdahl Executive Institute at Hartley Wintney, Hampshire. Siemens-Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG wasn’t confident about making a profit this year when it last commented last month, but things look a good deal worse now: it says that it now sees a loss of more than $200m for the year to September 30.
