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Amy Anderson 3/31/2011

High Performance Management Module I Managing Internal Processes

An Examination of Information Technology’s Impact on the Value of Information

and Expertise: Implications for Organizational Change

In my view, (Sampler & Short), I agree projects fail due to weak coupling

between reengineering project objectives, and firm’s general business and information

system planning agenda (1994). Sampler, Short and Earl published a journal with

evidence from field studies. One of their case studies was Property and Casualty

Insurance that illustrated the dependency of the business and IS professionals (Earl,

Sampler & Short, 1995). I was the development lead in a reengineering project, which

involved building a new application and installing a vendor supplied application with all

new business process built around the application for producing external communication.

My beliefs were that the project should have started with the business process, and then

determine the software requirements. Senior management dictated the software;

therefore it enforced the negativity of the employees (Belasen, 2000 p. 189).

The article did not address the question that the senior leaders never asked is “do

staff members have the expertise to perform in an increasingly complex technical

environment?” (Ryans, 1995, p. 68). In my experience with reengineering the business,

users needed to be computer savvy; they could not be paper pushers any more. They

needed to have training to look for error in reports, troubleshooting skills, create simple if

statements, create formulas, familiarize them with the tool, and comprehend the entire

new process with understanding the consequences of each step. The new tool put a lot

more responsibility back onto the business, but they were not ready for the object-

oriented software. The users were sent out for all kinds of training including some
Amy Anderson 3/31/2011
High Performance Management Module I Managing Internal Processes
programming and training on the new software. This created frustration with the users

and showed their unwillingness to use the new software in production.

Expertise and Information

Sampler and Short (1994), relates to the success of reengineering in terms of how

long a firms expertise and information is needed to meet the company’s competitive

position (p. 63). They divide all reengineering projects into four quadrants, long

expertise and information, short expertise and information, long expertise and short

information, and short expertise and long information. Long expertise and information is

the back office functions such as accounts payables, accounts receivable and general

ledger. Sampler and Short believe that reengineering projects involving these types of

functions are the popular success stories (Sampler & Short, 1994 p. 65). In my view, this

is true in every finance-reengineering project I have been involved in. I have been

involved in a replacement of our finance application, which included purchasing, and it

was a success. The finance staff is very computer savvy and can handle change easily.

Ford Motor Company’s effectively reengineered their accounts payable system and

reducing their accounts payable staff by 75 percent (Belasen. 2006).

Short expertise and information happens when there is a high degree of autonomy

throughout the firm (Sampler & Short, 1994, p. 68). Sampler and Short do not say what

the success rate of this type of organization is because there is no structure to redefine in

this type of firm. I commend the authors for admitting they did not find any supporting

research for short expertise and information. They did say there would be future research

on this subject (Sampler & Short, 1994, p. 69).


Amy Anderson 3/31/2011
High Performance Management Module I Managing Internal Processes
Long expertise and short information represents time sensitive information

(Sampler & Short, 1994, p. 65). The increase of IT in this quadrant is very important to

reduce the time it takes to process large amounts of data in a short period of time. In this

quadrant the stakeholders have the decision rights; but the effect of IT has the potential to

destroy such positional derived authority (Sampler & Short, 1994, p. 67). I agree with

Sampler and Short (1994), I have experienced a reengineering project that failed due to

IT dictating the tools, software, data flow, server platform and database that should be

used to process the data quickly. The mission statements of the project read the

following “Seamlessly re-engineer the document creation process to dynamically

generate external communications in a simplified and re-usable format.” By nature the

software that was chosen to create the documents was object-oriented, which means it

was re-usable. The software satisfied the re-usability objective, but IT complicated the

data flow process by building all the “what if’s” without really knowing if there would

ever be a need to re-use the data after it was delivered to the customer. The process to

deliver a simple letter to a customer took longer than the original process did; therefore

the sponsors are using the object- oriented software supplied by the vendor but not using

the process to get the data build by their internal IT department. I considered the project

a failure since the sponsors are not using the delivered process. Sampler and Short give

examples of stock trading firms that have invested in IT to improver their ability to

execute faster trades (Sampler & Short,1994, p. 66). In the successful example of

reengineering of Property and Casualty Insurance, IT came to the table as analysis

listening to the business needs and in my example IT came to the table with their own

agenda (Earl, Sampler, & Short, 1995).


Amy Anderson 3/31/2011
High Performance Management Module I Managing Internal Processes
Short expertise and long information is labeled as high risk for reengineering

according to Sampler and Short. (Sampler & Short, 1994, p. 68) The example of

reengineering in this quadrant refers to where employees are used to making decision

based on visual experience of production to now having to look at past results data to

make the same decisions. I believe this is a high risk because of two reasons. One

reason, you are taking the employees making the decision away from the workers who

are doing the actual work. This removes the bonding and trust between employees and

does not give the decision makers any environment feedback, such as worker experience.

The second reason, you are eliminating hands on skill that will be lost (Sampler & Short,

1994, p. 68). I have no experience of this type of reengineering but I have heard my

brother complain about the engineers at his company. The engineers estimate where,

when and what type of drill he should be using to get to the oil. When the project is

behind it is usually do to the fact he has inexperienced drillers and skill level of the boat

company. When he is included on the decision of the type of rig and drill to use he is a

much happier employee. Involving employees is important as illustrated by Audrey, who

did not include employees on the decision of reengineering her finance department (Class

Discussion, Audrey Mitch, Posted 2/3).

In conclusion, I agree with Sampler and Short’s analogy of the four quadrants as

to where the risks of reengineering projects fall. Their article is based on interviews with

and archival data in fourteen firms (Sampler & Short, 1994, p.70), which coincide with

the experiences I have seen in my work environment.


Amy Anderson 3/31/2011
High Performance Management Module I Managing Internal Processes

Earl, Michael J, Sampler, Jeffrey L, Short, James E. (1995). Strategies for business

process reengineering: Evidence from field studies. Journal of Management

Information Systems, 12(1), 31. Retrieved February 1, 2008, from ABI/INFORM

Global database. (Document ID: 7729747).

Ryans, Cynthia C. (1995). Resources. Journal of Small Business Management. 33(4), 66-

70. Retrieved February 2, 2008, from EBSCO Host Business Source Premier

database. (Accession Number: 9512242202).

Sampler, Jeffrey L.; Short, James E.. (1994). An Examination of Information

Technology’s Impact on the Value of Information and Expertise: Implications for

Organizational Change. Journal of Management Information Systems, 11(2), 59-

73, 15p. (AN 9412143504).

Belasen, Alan T. (2000). Leading the Learning Organization, Albany: State University of

New York Press.

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