Browse Books

Reviewer: Lou Agosta

The audience for this text includes the chief information officer (CIO), the information technology (IT) support staff, and consultants to the CIO, as well as executives and high-level management responsible for the overall deployment of information technology in the service of business objectives. The goal of process innovation is to provide leverage for increased productivity, gain competitive advantage for the innovating firm, and so lift the fortunes (in both the literal and symbolic senses) of the organization. The role of information technology in defining, enabling (a key term of the author's), and even constraining the process design is the recurring theme of this book. The author is convinced—and cites evidence in the literature [1]—that IT has the capacity to change radically the way work is accomplished. The area in which research and methods are lacking—and here the author fills the gap—is the exploration of whether “process innovation” is a useful bridge between strategic IT investments and economic benefits. Does it produce the intended results__?__ The first two chapters provide orientation toward the target of process innovation. The short definition of a “process” is “a structured measured set of activities designed to produce a specified output for a particular customer or market” (p.<__?__Pub Fmt interword-space>5). For example, the use of the document as the primary constituent of information analysis rather than the data element is characteristic of the process (as opposed to the functional) approach (p.<__?__Pub Fmt interword-space>89). In turn, “process innovation” includes performing a work activity in a radically new way that may cut across existing functional boundaries (p.<__?__Pub Fmt interword-space>10). This is the new tradition of rethinking the business from the ground up (see Hammer [2]). Chapters 3 through 8 provide a framework for process innovation. This contains the heart of the author's argument. The history of IT contains the disappointing result that IT does not always lead to productivity improvements. The problem is that research indicates that no necessary connection exists between “expenses for computers” and “business profitability” (p.<__?__Pub Fmt interword-space>42). For example, the motivational advantages of self-managing teams can be facilitated by “work flow software, which can route documents” in “environments where imaging has replaced paper as the primary means of transferring work among team members” (pp.<__?__Pub Fmt interword-space>103–104). Yet without new designs of the administrative or service process being performed, deviation from the “path blazed by paper” will have been “enabled” without having been implemented. The term “enabled” is one of those protean words—significantly different from “driver” in this case—which has come to mean “change lever” or “ or “condition of possibility.” Chapters 9 and 10 constitute Part 2, which engages implementation issues associated with business process re-engineering. “Process innovation and the organizational change it occasions are the equivalent to radical surgery” (p.<__?__Pub Fmt interword-space>171). Both managerial and technical skills are essential to implementation success. Toward the top of the list are negotiating, committing to, and performing to accomplish “stretch objectives” (p.<__?__Pub Fmt interword-space>193). Also on the list are technology tools that deploy object-oriented technology and workflow analysis. Part 3, consisting of chapters 11 through 14, has as its focus the redesign of particular industry-specific kinds of processes. These include IT-enabled processes in make and sell businesses that deploy research, design, engineering, manufacturing, and logistics. Once again, the emphasis is on technology as an enabler, not a result in itself. The “Customer Facing Processes” in chapter 13's title include marketing, sales, and service. Here the list of new technologies for supporting and delivering the business process might be taken from the front pages of the technology trade journals. These include parallel processing databases, electronic data interchange, imaging, expert systems, and networks. here information systems have the capability not just to reduce costs, but to change the cost structure of the business. Much of the material in this text is “leading edge” in that it contains hard lessons learned by organizations that endured downsizing, quality circles, and business process reengineering in the mid a<__?__Pub Caret>nd late 1980s. Although under various interpretations information technologies have arguably been oversold (client/server, open systems, and object-oriented come to mind here), process innovation has not joined them on the list. Process innovation is difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. The author is to be commended for telling it like it is, and at the same time making a powerful case for making the effort. With Thomas Davenport's well-written and thoughtfully crafted study, executives and the information consultants serving them have many useful and practical distinctions to guide them in designing new business processes through information technology.