Information Systems
Essays

This paper is about the role of managerial accounting, in particular what it is and how it has changed over time. The second part of this paper discusses cost drivers, what they are, and how they help managers make better allocation decisions, with particular focus on activity based costing techniques.

Introduction Of the many enterprises that rely on information systems to attain their objectives, healthcare management is the most challenging and costly. The combination of highly complex application, systems and platform trade-offs, along with the need for continual government compliance makes information systems in healthcare one of the most difficult areas to attain best practices in of any IT area (Le Rouge, De Leo, 2010). The intent of this analysis is to evaluate the primary causes of information management (IM) or information technologies (IT) project failures and recommend three best practices that could guide organizations past these failures in the future. Second, determining the best approach to use project metrics and portfolio management to facilities or enable greater levels of IT governance as well. Third, this analysis will conclude with an analysis of the various types of government intervention occurring into healthcare today and debate how this hampers and slows down innovation and market growth. Analysis of Healthcare IT Project Failures And Best Practices Recovery There are a multitude of factors that lead to project failures in healthcare management, from lack of project direction and clarity of goals to lack of consistent system and application plans. The most common factor that leads to a healthcare IT project failure however is a lack of commitment and support for the project from the senior management of an organization (Le Rouge, De Leo, 2010). One of the foundational aspects of effective enterprise-wide IT change is having the senior management of any firm lead through example, showing the entire organization how they need to change in order for IM or IT systems to succeed (Le Rouge, De Leo, 2010). When an organization has this level of support from senior management, they can quickly attain complex, challenging objectives as everyone seeks to emulate the leader's behavior and excel. This ability of a leader of any healthcare management program to guide change effectively through the use of their own transformational leadership skills can even overcome scope complexity and a lack of clarity around secondary metrics of performance (Austin, Boxerman, 2008). Yet when a project lacks this level of support from a senior management team, it quickly degenerates and begins to fall apart over time. A transformational leader however can keep a complex project moving forward and avert its unraveling due to a lack of a consistent, unified focus. The second most cited reason for healthcare management IT projects failing are the lack of clarity surrounding project goals and objectives, and a lack of consistent measure of performance (Gough, 2001). Often project scope will begin to drift over time on projects when there is a lack of clear, well-defined objectives and the constraints of the project are not well-defined (Austin, Boxerman, 2008). Project goals and objectives that don't reflect the realities of time, cost and resource constraints of an enterprise actually increase the speed of a project failing over time as well (Wills, Sarnikar, El-Gayar, Deokar, 2010). Project goals and objectives that lack a clarity and focus are the second leading cause of IT failures in healthcare management, with lack of recognition for time, cost, and resource constraints acting as accelerators of decline (Helfert, 2009). A third major factor that leads to IT project failures in healthcare management is lack of consistent project management practices in how analytics, key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics are used long-term over a projects' lifetime (Helfert, 2009). Too often the analytics, KPIs and metrics used in complex IT projects in healthcare management are misaligned to the long-term objectives of the enterprise (Austin, Boxerman, 2008). With the lack of consistency and coherence of one series of project objectives to the broader requirements of the enterprise, the project tends to become a lower priority and eventually fails (Mahmoud, Rice, 1998).

Analytics and Business Intelligence (BI) have the potential to completely redefine and make more customer-centric any enterprise. The tendency to celebrate technology alone is however short-sighted and lacks awareness of the broader, more strategic issues that surround successful BI and analytics implementations. This is an area of software where the ability to analyze terabytes of data very quickly while also testing hypotheses and evaluating trends can become more of a focus that using these systems for accomplishing strategies and long-term objectives (Todd, 2010). The ability to integrate analytics and Bi into an organization is predicated on having a very clear vision and mission for how a specific BI and analytics application or platform will be used to accelerate an enterprise to its objectives. The foundational elements of change management strategies must be in place as well, as the systems must reflect user needs, preferences and be integral to their roles if the overall system is to achieve its full potential (Todd, 2010). Case studies often provide a useful framework for evaluating how enterprises are getting the greatest value from their BI and analytics investments. Two case studies form the foundation of this analysis, the first detailing Exclusive Resorts, LLC and the second, Marshfield Clinic. Both of these case studies illustrate how critical it is to have a balance of technical and sociotechnical systems design and change management included in the development of any BI and analytics application. The intent of this analysis is to evaluate the lessons learned and potential for improvement in both case studies cited, including the need to continually stay vigilant to the needs of those the system was developed and designed for. One of the most fundamental best practices of effective BI and analytics implementations is the development of change management programs and frameworks well in advance of software being customized and implemented (Ghosh, Scott, 2011). The more effective a given change management strategy and program is, the greater the level of ownership a given enterprise system gains during the initial design and implementation phases of development (Todd, 2010). When this occurs the eventual launch of a new BI or analytics systems can attain an 80% or greater adoption rate globally (Ghosh, Scott, 2011). When systems reach this level of adoption, they have the potential to completely re-define the financial and operational performance of an enterprise. Both Exclusive Resorts, LLC and Marshfield Clinic have been able to attain this level of change management as can be seen in how effective their respective BI and analytics systems are in improving the performance of their businesses. As can be seen from both case studies, both have a very high level of authenticity and transparency associated with them, that leads to a correspondingly higher level of trust and adoption by associates in each company (Todd, 2010). Both Exclusive Resorts, LLC and Marshfield Clinic have been able to attain such remarkable success with their BI and analytics applications by concentrating on authenticity, transparency and trust, all powerful catalyst that drive up system adoption and in turn allow these powerful systems to deliver greater results than would have been possible without the sociotechnical change that occurred. The case studies are, in reality, as much about how to manage rapid and significant change as they about the technologies involved in these applications as wlel. With the reduction in fear regarding their jobs, the employees at Exclusive Resorts, LLC are able to use these technologies to better understand customers and improve satisfaction and loyalty. The intelligence gained from using analytics systems at Marshfield Clinic has the potential to save lives. Both transformations of these businesses started at the associate level, with highly effective use of change management strategies and the ability to manage sociotechnical systems to customer needs effectively.

In recent years, there has been rapid growth as it relates to computer technology and the software and hardware available to consumers. VMware is one of the technologies that have grown in popularity over the last few…

Risk Minimization and Loss Prevention in Small Business in the Post-9/11 ERA

¶ … Internet has grown exponentially since its first introduction to the public. The precursor to the Internet was the ARPANET. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the Department of Defense (Carlitz and…

The role of Socio-Technical Systems Theory (STS) continues to be a galvanizing factor in the planning, development, implementation and continual fine-tuning of enterprise systems worldwide. Pursuing cost reductions through the use of manufacturing economies of scale and advanced lean process management techniques within organizations is paradoxically leading them into even greater conflicts internally how to attain balance of their STS-based initiatives (Kim, Kaplan, 2006). STS-based initiatives based on transformational leadership within the best-performing companies have shown potential to overcome the over-reliance on technical subsystems that by using technologies to make social systems more accurate, accelerated and trust-based (Amrit, Van Hillegersberg, 2010). The intent of this analysis is to evaluate how enterprise software platforms including Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP) over time dictate the culture of an organization based on the information flows supported or not (Das, Jayaram, 2007). This is why many manufacturing companies fail to stay in step with the needs of their customers, as they continually are struggling to make their own internal systems reflect external reality. For the manufacturers who can manage this transition, they are able to survive in turbulent industries. STS-based frameworks are invaluable in defining why certain companies in general and manufacturers specifically are able to regain agility and stay focused on market dynamics while others wither and eventually exist markets and eventually go out of business. The premise of companies who are able to manage uncertainty and turbulence is that they have used STS-based concepts to balance their social and technical subsystems without overcompensating on either. An ancillary finding from completing this analysis is that the cultural integrity and resiliency of any organization can over time be predicted by the balance of social and technical subsystem balance or equilibrium (Manz, Stewart, 1997). A proposed Socio-Technical Equilibrium Model For Enterprise Systems has been created based on insights from this analysis and is shown in Figure 1. One of the most significant findings is that while data and system integration is often consider essential for enabling greater transaction accuracy, efficiency and process performance it also has a strong cultural effect on social subsystems throughout organizations (Carlsson, Henningsson, Hrastinski, Keller, 2011). The proposed Socio-Technical Equilibrium Model For Enterprise Systems seeks to illustrate graphically how organizations can be more agile and responsive to market requirements by aligning their social and technical subsystems for greater information and knowledge transfer across broad functional and strategic boundaries. The consensus of the research completed for this analysis illustrates how divided and conflicting social and technical subsystems are throughout organizations however (Carlsson, Henningsson, Hrastinski, Keller, 2011). The literature review also highlighted that across all enterprise systems, the ERP platforms had the most divisive effect on corporate cultures, fragmenting them across functional and strategy areas, creating information siloes in the process (Carlsson, Henningsson, Hrastinski, Keller, 2011). Ironically ERP systems have a balkanization effect on companies instead of a unifying one. Using a more equilibrium-based approach to balancing technical and social subsystems throughout an organization by using role-based ERP systems that have systems of record defined by strategy and not by functional areas shows significant potential to avert organizational and cultural clashes that occur when a siloed approach to defining how a given technical subsystem supports socially-based processes. The capability of any organization to overcome the limitations of its IT structure and still attain a congruency across technical and social subsystems is critical for STS-based frameworks to deliver value throughout an enterprise (Appelbaum, 1997).

¶ … protection of proprietary information is essential for the efficient and legal operation of a large hospital. Most existing security measures available for hospitals are inadequate to protect against security…

¶ … Actions to Consolidate Change on an Organization

The statement that intelligence is central to everything that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does is highly accurate and reflects the seven goals of the agency. Based on experiences, insights and intelligence…