Information needs for business managers tend to be similar for most businesses when one considers the same level of management. There are usually three levels of managers whose information needs are slightly different from each other.
These include operational managers, middle managers, and executive or senior managers. Computer-based information systems provide the information needed by the aforementioned categories of managers, which assists them in their work. The following are the information needs of the three categories of managers.
Operational managers usually benefit from such systems by getting all the information related to the short-term or daily operations of the organization. For instance, the computer-based information system provides such managers with information related to attendance of employees, shifts of employees, and so forth. Such information helps operational managers make structured business decisions.
On the other hand, middle management benefits from a computer-based system by getting managerial or tactical information. The middle-level managers use this information to make short plans or decisions. Such information includes annual production details or even quarterly sales analysis.
The information also helps them supervise the operational level by giving managers specific activities that they should perform. Lastly, computer-based information systems help senior management make decisions. The systems provide these managers with strategic information, which the managers use to make strategic or unstructured decisions.
Such decisions may include setting the objectives and policies of the enterprise. The information they get also helps them to manage other managers within the organization. Senior management gets information from the system detailing trends in costs incurred by the enterprise or even the revenue trends.
With this kind of information, senior managers can make decisions aimed at increasing revenues and reducing the costs incurred by the enterprise.
An e-business strategy is an elaborate plan that an organization develops detailing how it intends to conduct its business over the internet. Most people wrongfully view the strategy as just internet business. However, the e-business strategy is an elaborate and skillfully developed document defining the long-term and short-term e-business goals of an enterprise.
E-business strategy should ideally form part of an enterprise’s business plan, and it should be contained in the organization’s corporate strategy. The strategy should interconnect with virtually all strategic plans of the organization including the IT strategic plan, the marketing strategic plan and the organizational strategic plan.
The adoption of an e-business strategy is likely to affect the information systems function of a company. This impact takes the form of threats as well as benefits. Adoption of an e-business strategy is likely to enhance the involvement of the information systems functions in supply distribution. It is however important to note that not all middle managers will be eager to accept the adoption of an e-business strategy.
Middle managers are likely to oppose the adoption of an e-business strategy the organization brings other middle managers or IT consultants from outside to implement the e-business strategy. In this case, middle managers in charge of the information systems function are likely to frustrate the adoption of the e-business strategy because they may feel that the new team is taking over their functions.
It is therefore imperative that as an organization adopts an e-business strategy, it ensures that it implements sufficient change management activities to get everybody’s support. Otherwise, an organization can fail miserably in its attempt to adopt an e-business strategy.