The struggle with introducing information systems

Change is something that most people struggle with, so when change is introduced on an organisational level, there needs to be a solid plan in place and a great team involved. If this change affects a key system that is integral to the main tasks of employees then it is crucial that it is done right.

Before ever introducing a new information system, a firm needs to consider is it necessary or is there an easier or cheaper alternative, they also need to consider what system they want and is it compatible with the other systems they currently use. From there, there's the consideration of how will it be implemented, all at once? or on a slow rollout. Will employees need new hardware to handle the demands of this new system? If all goes to plan and the system is deployed, you then have the maintenance costs, is there a support team in place for employees or if the system crashes?

These are just some of the considerations that need to be made when a firm is considering implementing a new information system and in reality is a lot of resistance, it is stressful, expensive and needs to be meticulously planned and administered.

For this reason, there are plenty of examples of firms grand plans to introduce a new information system and it failing. A perhaps surprising firm that suffered this fate is Apple, the global tech brand hailed for being innovative and streamlined. It seems they weren't always so open to change, as Apple once tried to introduce SAP as their ERP system of choice. This partnership didn't bode well as when a company adopted SAP's software, they conformed to SAP's processes, this didn't sit well with some Apple employees as they felt their creativity was being limited. Due to this, senior executives didn't want to encourage the integration as they felt they would be on the wrong side of a now politicised decision, this started to then feed down to the day-to-day employees who became cold-shouldered to the integration and resisted the change. As a result, senior management decided to shelve the now failed multi-million dollar project.

As we can see, not even the biggest firms in the world always correctly introduce new information systems and that when it goes wrong it can be extremely costly but also end up effecting a firms culture.