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Tom Davenport Study: Linking decisions and Information for Organizational Performance

 We are entering a new period in the era of business Information systems. For most of this five-decade period (beginning in the mid-1950s), the primary focus has been on automating core business processes. The era began with custom-developed narrow-purpose applications and concluded with broad enterprise system packages provided by external vendors, but the purpose was the same: develop control and efficiency over processes by automating and capturing information from key business transactions.

 Whether a general ledger entry, a customer order captured, or a vacation balance debited, the transaction has been the primary unit around which this world revolved. By now, however, we have largely won the transaction war, and a new front is necessary in the war to manage information. While mop-up and maintenance activity on the transaction and application fronts are still necessary, most large organizations have the basic application functionality.

The study focuses on the relationship between information and decision-making obtained from interviews with a number of organizations.

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