On the congested data highways of multinational corporations, the problems of getting the right data in the right amount to the right people at the right time are multiplying daily as global markets emerge. "It's a battleground," says Ron Ponder, Senior VP of Information Systems at Federal Express, Memphis. [In 1987] the $3.2 billion company dramatically increased its overseas operations to the point where it services 89 countries and employs nearly 5,000 workers (10% of its work force) outside of the U.S.
The problems are amplified if you are a large multinational with diverse product families, such as I85-year-old E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. The chemical giant generates a third of its $27 billion in revenue overseas, employing 35,000 people abroad in some 150 plants and offices. "When remote corporate clients as far apart as Rio, Tokyo, or Rome get 'gobbledygook' on their PCs, the situation is especially frustrating," says Lee Foote, manager of Du Pont's Electronic Data Interchange Section at Wilmington, Delaware. "There are many misconceptions about what this right stuff-information-actually is."
Whatever the scale, getting the right stuff-the stuff that executive decisions are made from-comes down to one thing: getting your data house in order. The need to do so, moreover, never has been more pressing-particularly for manufacturing companies that purport to be world class.
If Europe's instrument makers, Japan's machine tool producers, America's automakers, and the thousands of other manufacturers and service companies worldwide are to survive in this new era' of globalization-a time when no supplier is too distant, no customer too foreign-they must rid themselves of the informational chaos endemic to international operations. But how? The answers may be the following: enlightened management, effective use of information technology tools and standards, such as electronic data interchange (EDI) and structured query language (SQL), and enterprise wide alliances.
Although many will insist that computers and information are inseparable, data spewed out by legions of mainframes should not be confused with information. "Properly structured data will result in information, but only in the minds of individuals and under certain contexts and time frames," Du Pont's Foote explains. IS [information system] groups that don't understand this distinction and haven't found out what data client organizations really need will simply print everything out. And the result? Data overload.
User managers-division and department heads who bear functional (as opposed to IS) titles-are already attempting to protect themselves from a torrent of useless data (not just from their own systems organizations) by erecting specially designed software screens and filters. These programs take the form of preference profiles, which rank incoming data and voice messages by order of importance. Such programs are the forerunners of future expert systems and currently are being embedded in computer networks so that they function automatically.
SOURCE: Ralph Emmett Carlyle, "Managing IS at Multinationals," Datamation, March 1, 1988, 41-62.
For their part, IS managers are embracing EDI and SQL as the means by which to create information. EDI describes a standardized way of using computers to transmit and receive business documents, such as purchase orders. SQL, on the other hand, is a standard means of accessing database management systems that are shared by different architectures.
Du Pont's customers in the U.S. and elsewhere, for example, can use EDI to conduct more of their business chores with the company electronically. "Any company that's tried EDI has become an apostle of effective data management," Foote says, "but getting the message over has been tough." He says his section had to sell the EDI concept both to top management at Du Pont and to information technology vendors.
"We've pretty much had to educate the vendors, lead them by the nose," echoes George Higgins, a colleague of Foote's and a data resource management (DRM) consultant for Du Pont. Higgins stresses that too many vendors forget that technology is simply a means to an end, not an end in itself. ''You've got to show them what the end state is," Higgins feels, "that, for example, you've got this database in Geneva and another in Wilmington that you want to link together if the right technical means can be found."
The education of vendors has been only part of the problem of moving to new data architectures. "We have to get the data in shape to make use of new technologies,'" says Higgins. "This will take time and a great deal of money. It will also require major changes in the organization." He says that this message wasn't always sympathetically received by top management. "They are coming around by degrees," Higgins says, adding that he no longer feels like a missionary.
Once corporate executives perceive their companies as global entities, they begin to wonder why they don't have worldwide inventory data on their desks. Why, for example, do they have to have U.S. and European data in different forms and for different time periods? By trying to get answers to these questions, decision-makers begin to understand the need for effective data management; perhaps they begin to wonder whether DRM shouldn't be handled by the business side of the house rather than the IS professionals.
Usually, though, changes in volatile world markets force the nation's corporate leaders to focus on DRM issues. "In the steel business, we generally credit the Japanese with dragging us into the twentieth, even the twenty-first, century," says George T. Fugere, VP of Information Services at Bethlehem Steel, Bethlehem, Pa. Major work force reductions have forced Bethlehem Steel and other steel companies to turn to technology to remain productive. These companies have also turned inward, subjecting their organizations to the same intense scrutiny as the steel making process itself, as they search for flaws.
[In 1987] a management SWAT team from Bethlehem Steel and 15 handpicked experts from across the IBM organization went over the $4.3 billion steel maker with a fine-tooth comb. After interviewing 238 workers from the top to the bottom of the company, one compelling fact was inescapable. "There was too much data and too little information," Fugere says.
- 912 reads
