Five strange phenomena of Enterprise Informatization

Author: Feng Qiang 2003.12.05

Preface:
I have been using FoxPro to write programs and applying ERP systems for almost 11 years. In a few days, I have witnessed and heard the strange phenomenon of some domestic enterprises implementing informatization. It is really thought-provoking. Because I am not easy to learn and cannot analyze the nature of the phenomenon, I have to make a simple list here. If I have some inspiration for you, it's not even easy to write the text above.

One of the strange phenomena: OA is not as good as BBS

When it comes to office automation, we will naturally mention the OA system. The OA system is always zero. There are countless Chinese OA companies, such as those developed using ASP, PHP, and JSP. However, most of them are IBM Lotus Notes. Why? Because of IBM, it is certainly good to make enterprise applications. The question is, do developers and maintainers really know about Lotus? The final result is that the interface is rough (this is a problem for the artist and I will not talk about it here). what's even worse is that there will be no solution to the problem in three days. Only restart your ears! I am a layman in Lotus, so I don't want to comment on it. But I think that since IBM Lotus can sell so much, it should be a good thing, how can we make things that are not as stable as personal BBS development by individuals such as LB, vBB, and mobile network? He once talked to a friend on the Internet about this phenomenon. He said, "The level problem! "

The above mentioned is about the level of development Maintainer in enterprise OA applications. However, it is good to maintain the operation because most enterprises are reluctant to spend money on professional training for development and maintenance personnel. The OA software is not a decoration, and it does not mean that the enterprise has already had office automation. The OA system of many enterprises is mainly used to send notifications to their superiors. After you exchange the files, it will be over. Some important notifications and documents are still manually transmitted or faxed, and OA has not played its due role. I have the honor to hear Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo's boss, give a speech. Speaking of the role of the OA system, he said that he wants to cancel all external notifications, reports, and briefings ....... He also mentioned the digital signature technology, saying that travel application, expense reimbursement, and document signing should be implemented in the OA system. There are not a few enterprises that have gone to Oa, but they have gone on a business trip and asked the boss to sign up for approval. Since the boss is absent, they ran for n times, I believe most people have. At this moment, do you want to "Who moved our OA? "

In some enterprises, OA is the OA of management departments and upper-level departments, rather than the OA of production departments and grass-roots departments! What should I do? The higher-level department sends a notification to Oa. You can see it for yourself. This is understandable. However, if the production department or lower-level department issues reports and sends reports to him (higher-level departments) on the OA, he will not be happy. You have to send paper reports. Electronic files, he will say that they will not open, or that the computer is nervous, let him print their own reports, it is even more difficult. I remember not long ago, a production management department named XX published a message on the OA. "To implement paperless office, a notification sent by fax was published on the OA website ". Okay, I finally used Oa! However, at the end of a month, the Department asked for a statistical report, and we told him that a statistical report export program has been developed in the ERP system, and you can apply for the permission from the Information Management Department. He said that ERP will not be used, electronic data will not be printed, and paper forms are required. Finally, more than 20 thousand records are printed into a table using a laser printer. My God! I don't know if this thick table is easier to analyze than electronic data ?!

The OA system also provides functions such as document management and knowledge management, but most enterprise friends say that the knowledge capacity and history document search convenience of the company OA is far inferior to that of a slightly better small BBS forum, compared with professional BBS such as CCF and Yusheng Ror, it is far behind. In terms of corporate culture creation and business communication between employees, OA is far less convenient than an internal BBS. Is the huge investment of enterprises in OA really inferior to a free internal BBs? Is this an OA error? Or ......

Blame phenomenon 2: Depending on "Permissions", such as dirt

It seems that I only heard that "depending on money, such as dirt", is the title wrong. None! The "permission" here refers to the operation permission in the ERP system, not the "power" in real life ". The implementation of the ERP system reduces the circulation of documents, integrates various data from design to production, from physical objects to finance, and configures permissions, all Department staff can find what they want in the ERP system. However, it is strange that some management departments are afraid of using ERP and are not interested in ERP online training. After the launch is successful, they never use the complete data in the system for analysis. At the end of the month and the end of the year, you need to write a report on data. When you make a summary, you want to let the lower-level departments report as required. In fact, most of these paper reports can be found in ERP. If you contact the Information Department, you may obtain them through permission configuration and report customization (development. This not only enables faster and more accurate access to information, but also enables the business department to focus on production and operation rather than making reports. It is the responsibility and business of the management department to make reports, analyze data, and make decisions. But in fact, in many enterprise management departments, the first thing the leaders think is whether the Department has the "right", the right to assess, the right to personnel, the right to plan, the right to audit, and the right to use funds ......, however, some advanced operation permissions in ERP obtained by the management department are boldly granted to lower-level departments to perform some advanced operations and provide reports from the management and monitoring departments.

The bold decentralization of management departments in the ERP system not only caused complaints from lower-level departments due to the increased workload after implementing ERP, it also led to the conclusion that the management of the company was unfamiliar with ERP and "ERP useless. In addition, due to the unreasonable permission settings of the ERP system, the lack of Hierarchical Data Control and Supervision often results in the generation of a large amount of junk data and even the generation of some false data, in the end, the enterprise ERP system will be pushed to death.

Therefore, enterprises must grade and perform their respective duties on ERP data and management from top to bottom. The management department should not underestimate and resist ERP, but should make good use of it, each department is lubricated and promoted in the ERP system.

Third, the failure of the "leaders" Project

An important prerequisite for the success of the implementation of information engineering is whether the "top leaders" fully support the project, which is often said by everyone ". Without the support of "leaders", success in informatization is simply a miracle, but it is not uncommon to have the support of "leaders.

The boss of a company has returned from the field and is determined to fully implement informatization. He has recruited some software personnel, bought a lot of PCs, switches and servers, and set up an informatization team, the goal is to manage various manual documents, reports, inventory, personnel, and finance on a microcomputer. It is reasonable to say that such a goal is not too high, but a year has passed and has not achieved the expected results. The network was built to facilitate Internet access, shared folders and printers, and the software was upgraded to several versions. However, it was always unable to be launched due to nonstandard basic data and inaccurate inventory. If the boss does not have enough support, it is wrong. A friend I know jumped out of this company. According to him, the boss handed over both production and operation to the vice president, who personally grasped information technology. However, the boss seems to be biased in understanding informatization. It is recommended that the software be written into the game interface for ease of use and increase the enthusiasm of everyone. Fortunately, after some explanation by the Project Manager, their boss did not insist. Due to the lack of information awareness of the enterprise's "top leaders", in addition to regular interference with normal software development programs, the so-called BPR blind support for some project teams that lack research, finally, the system implementation failure has been buried. The implementation of information projects is not as simple as requirement research, feasibility analysis, modeling, code writing, and launch. It requires the full participation of the backbone of all departments familiar with business processes. In addition to IT technology, members of the Information Project Team should participate in the actual business. A group of program heroes cannot solve a set of software that can solve the real needs of enterprises.

Therefore, without the support of "top leaders", enterprise informatization will certainly not succeed. However, if "top leaders" do not have certain informatization theories and practical experience, the success of enterprise informatization is also unattainable.

Strange phenomenon 4: FTP server changed to "huge file push system "?

A company's communications department developed a "huge file push system (large file push system)", which is said to be a project declaration within the company. I'm curious about this "system" and have always wanted to know what new technology it is, because I searched Google and didn't find any entries. It seems that this is really an original new technology.

When I saw the company's business staff, I really realized what it was called "stunned ". The so-called "huge file push system", but it is an Apache FTP server, for different departments or users in httpd. different directories are set in the conf script. Authorized Internet file sharing can be achieved through FTP tools such as IE, CuteFTP, and flashfxp. The reason for this is to make up for the company's mail system's limit on the size of email attachments. In fact, I have no opinion on using this method to achieve file sharing, but this "exaggerated" Phenomenon in the informatization process is not mandatory. Some non-IT enterprise or company leaders do not necessarily attach no importance to informatization, but generally do not know much about it. The leaders of CIOs or information departments are obligated to do more work in the popularization and sublimation of information technology, rather than fooling their superiors by taking some minor changes and some beautiful names. Small changes and small changes in information technology are really needed, but they should not be mysterious, but should be simplified. Whether informatization can help enterprises in terms of what has been done, how much has been achieved, and whether it depends on the binding of business and informatization. Informatization always serves business needs. The "network bubble" has been shattered, and the "bubble" of enterprise informatization is not what we need. Informatization requires seeking truth from facts.

Blame 5: platform competition

As a person who occasionally writes code, csdn's Chinese programmer network is a place I often go to. on different pages, I often see people asking, "Is there a future for a language? "," Is a language outdated? As for non-technical versions, attacks against other languages are also common. I often wonder whether the development language is important or the final result is important. Of course, if you are a professional software company, you may often choose a development language instead of yourself, because customers will always like new things, such as Java and C. What I want to talk about now is whether the platform is so important for an enterprise's information development?
　　
For the informatization of many manufacturing enterprises, in addition to choosing ready-made ERP software, it is also an effective way to develop some software that can solve the problems of various departments. Many enterprises I have seen mostly use VFP, VB, Delphi and other platforms, because these development software has good database performance and more control support. However, there are also some information departments of enterprises that are constantly pursuing the latest technologies due to technical arrogance. They are concerned with the security and scalability of the development platform, I am not familiar with the actual business needs, nor do I care about it. I am not investigating the informatization basics of enterprises. They are a group of Yang chunbai in Enterprise Informatization. The development may be really good technically, but unfortunately they lack practical value. On the contrary, some departments develop their own software, which may not be so reasonable in architecture or cross-platform. However, it can solve some efficiency problems in the business and become an indispensable tool for daily business.

For an enterprise, independent development is always needed, so the choice of development platform is always unavoidable. A unified development platform not only facilitates the cultivation of talents, but also facilitates the continuous improvement of information engineering. However, when selecting a platform, the Information Authority should never be competent with technical indicators, but should fully understand the informatization basis of enterprises, select a platform that can be accepted by most departments and information-related business personnel. In fact, the most important thing for enterprise informatization is to solve the problem. Using VC to develop a MIS system may not be as efficient as using VFP for development. Many people think that VB is a development language that will be eliminated by Microsoft, but in fact many of India's outsourcing software is developed using VB. From this point of view, to ensure that the development platform has good technical support, selecting a development platform "everyone can accept" is the right choice.

Some of the phenomena listed above are just a few small drops of water in the informatization ocean of enterprises. Although they are not so beautiful, they still reflect some problems in informatization. There are still many such examples, with time and opportunities to share with you. (End)

Postscript: I used to use the title "the strange phenomenon of Enterprise Informatization". Now, this title is changed by Mr. Gao shouge of Skynet (now in Silicon Valley. In fact, the content in this article is not a "five major" strange phenomenon. It's just a few cases. I have been in this industry for a long time and have seen many strange things. I have the opportunity to continue.

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Feng Qiang, it maintainer and free commentator. The above remarks only represent the author's personal position!
At present, he works for Changhong multimedia Industry Co., Ltd. and is in charge of the Information Management Department of the Technical Service Center.
15 years of IT information management experience, focusing on Business Process Reconstruction and project risk assessment.