Research Support Partnership

Information Systems

While some standard applications for certain business activities are now available more or less 'off the shelf', there is still enormous scope for improving and simplifying business processes by the introduction of new information systems. There are also plenty of opportunities for doing it wrong.

The kinds of considerations that must be weighed against eachother are:

• Do you change business processes to fit a system, or change the system to fit your processes.
• Do you want to be a leader in your area and attempt something that has never been done before, or do you want to implement a safe system where the risks are well understood.
• Do you want to adopt an existing solution, or improve on existing solutions.

These types of issues are often tangled up in political considerations where a executive wants to make his or her mark by starting something for which they will be remembered rather than doing what is good for the business. There is also the creative tension between the stategist who tries to push outside the boundaries and the engineer who wants to stay within them While most large projects cost more than bugeted and take longer than expected, they also can bring a leap of quality or efficiency or speed to the underlying business processes.

Whatever your proposed system, we can guarantee that it will be analysed objectively. It will be designed to work effectively within your current infrastructure. It will be built by developers following the appropriate quality processes. And it will be supportable within your current computing environment.

© Research Support Partnership, 2003