| Title: | The Role of IT in Supporting Business Development Processes |
| Author: | Philip Boxer |
| Category: | Published |
| Publication Year: | 1993 |
| Where Published: | Proceedings of the Hewlett-Packard Computer Users’ Conference, Birmingham |
| Abstract: |
We are used to using IT to change the efficiency and effectiveness of business processes. But automation, rationalisation and re-engineering only goes so far. What happens when we are asked to go beyond the limits of existing business practices, and create new ways of adding value? IT is becoming a key enabling technology in the creation of competitive advantage as it enables the organisation itself to become something over which we can exercise design control. But when IT becomes more than just a business tool in the engineering of business processes, and becomes a design medium, it has to be considered as integral to the creation of competitive advantage. This creates new challenges for the IT manager in enabling systems and information environments to be defined as part of the strategy process itself. How do we make this connection in practice? Do we need new ways of exercising design control over the business? This paper will consider the implications these challenges have for the logic of the business processes, for the design methodologies we use in support of business development processes, and for the ways in which IT needs to be understood as an integral part of being strategic.