The age of the computer has changed business in many ways, allowing the manager unprecedented span of knowledge and control over all processes relating to his business. This has allowed for the use of data and information on an unprecedented scale. The drawback is that the available data for any business can be unwieldy and it is very possible to drown the manager in information. This is the time to leverage the power of processing to control the computer via systems management software.

 

Business has long had a need for more information. Management has always sought the answer to such questions as what will sell, when it should be sold, how can we get the product to the consumer quicker, and what inefficiencies are we experiencing. With the advent of the microprocessor, the old adage of be careful what you wish for may be an important consideration. We can now measure so many things and compile so much data that the manufacturing process becomes hard to recognize.

 

Given the right motivation, we can identify and collect an endless stream of facts concerning our business. There is information about the historical needs and uses of the product, what time of year it is most needed, what additions or complementary products most affect its use and so on. We can even spit details of which employee candidate pool is the most likely to successfully work in our industry and where they can be most easily found, attracted, hired and motivated. Unfortunately, we have not found a way to make the day longer or management more multitask capable than we already have. We can hire others to do parts of the business, but that in itself complicates the process and while we gain flexibility, we lose control.

 

While the data is important and even critical to a competitive organization, the methodology for gleaning information does impact the final data. Once all this data has been collected, the manager must make sense of it and put it to use in a practical way, a difficult endeavor made more complex by not having a good handle on the parameters under which it was collected. This is further complicated by the issue of time, just how much should be spent on the analysis of data?

 

The reason information systems became such an integral part of business is their ability to enhance the decision making process. When the use of the system becomes so cumbersome and time consuming that it cuts into the time a manager has to explore data and make operational decisions, it has stopped enhancing the business. The complexity of our tools is rapidly becoming more problematic than running a business without them. While there is certainly reason to expend energy training management on new tools and software, it should not continue to erode their time on a day to day basis.

 

There is a means of restoring sanity to the balance of business using computers; the use of the computer to control the information gathering and analyzing automatically. This is, in essence, using a computer to run the computer, and it pays immediate and far reaching dividends. This gives management the ability to make the decision on what data it needs and in what format it wants the information presented. That accomplished, managers can spend their time doing what they were hired to do; run the company and make a profit.

 

If a business is in the manufacturing industry, management does not want or need to spend its time gathering and inputting data about the supply chain, constructing statistical process control charts, or gathering data on trends in the demand for their product or the prices of their supply chain. What they need is that data collected for them by an automated system that collects and collates the information and packages it in a readily identifiable format and delivered to their desktop before the day begins.

 

This is the ultimate purpose of and advantage to using systems management software. It keeps the onus of detailed data input and collection distributed across a workforce with the appropriate specialists. Individual employees input the data relevant to their portion of the company process.The software then executes the appropriate queries to collate the correct data to provide managers with the usable information they need in a format they can readily put to operational use.