Ess A Decision Needs example essay topic

... How to Implement an Environmental Scanning System in Your Organization By Likeable Environmental Scanning Systems on the Network (Lesson) Part Why You Need an Environmental Scanning System Introduction: The purpose of this book is to provide a step by step approach to implementing an Environmental Scanning System (ESS). This book will start with a basic definition of an ESS and outline the benefits a company can gain by utilizing an ESS. This book will also provide information that will help justify the financial considerations when implementing an ESS. Finally, the goal of the authors is to provide all of the information necessary so that a reader can design, purchase, and implement and ESS. 1.

What is an ESS An ESS is a tool that scans the environment of a particular industry, collects important information, and then displays that information in the form of management reports that can be used to enhance decision-making. More specifically, an ERA ESS utilizes the convergence of key technologies in order to provide comprehensive information about the internal and external business environment. This objective is accomplished using the Internet / Extranet/Intranet technologies as a base from which links are established to various databases where data are extracted and loaded into a centralized ESS database. This data is retrieved by various users via a user-friendly interface utilizing a GUI and point and click technology.

The primary goal of an ESS is to provide good up to date reliable information that can be used to assist management in decision making and planning with regards to the organization and its goals. An ESS is based on hardware and software, but the key ingredient that makes it possible for an ESS to help an organization to better its decision-making process is people. A corporate network, within an ESS context, will allow your company to integrate concepts such as real-time, one-to-one marketing, interactive learning, dynamic strategy planning, and business simulation among others. An ESS will allow you to be more competitive, more creative, and more prepared for the new global and digital economy. II. Why you need one In order for a company to stay ahead of the competition and at the same time stay up to date with current trends and technologies, an ESS must be implemented.

With the vast amount of competition out there, management must utilize every tool available to them to assist in their endeavors in staying on top. An ESS will help management in the early detection of possible organizational impacts, which can be either threats or opportunities, and allow them to take proactive steps to ensure that these events will impact their company in a positive way. Given the difficulty of making successful decisions that impact the future, an ESS will reduce the risk involved by providing reliable information. As you are aware, success can depend on the speed to the market and the ability to make changes that take advantage of business trends. An ESS will provide this kind of competitive advantage.

Most importantly, companies need an ESS because knowledge is power and knowledge will be gained through the implementation and use of a quality ESS. Some specific reasons why you should have an ESS are: 1. Global Access. An ESS, combined with the Internet and some security measures, would allow anyone with Internet access to ingress to the system and have access to the information needed at any given time. If wanted, wireless technology could be used to allow access from PDAs and cellular phones. 2.

User Friendly. Anyone who knows how to use an Internet browser (Netscape or MS Internet Explorer) would be able to access the system, its information and to interact with the people within the ESS. THIS POINT IS VALID ONLY IF WE AGREE ON SUGGESTING WEB BASED TECHNOLOGY AS THE BASE FOR THE ESS. Very valid point, it is my opinion that web based technology is at the heart of an era ESS 3. Bajo costo. The costs associated with the design and implementation of an ESS are not only low, but also they can be easily amortized over a 10-year period, making an ESS an investment with an excellent cost-benefit ratio.

4. Real-Time information. 5. Interactive and permanent training. 6. Vanishing of islands of information.

7. Costs reduction. 8. On-time distribution of critical business information. 9.

On-time access to reports and problem inquires. 10. Optimum feed-back mechanism 11. To gain accurate understanding of your organizations strengths and limitations 12. To identify the potential opportunities and threats to an organization implied by trends, events, or situations. 13.

To provide a basis for analysis of future investments 14. For detecting important economic, social, technological, environmental trends, situation and events. The following is a list of some common problems associated with collecting and using information in the decision-making process that could be resolved with the use of an ESS: a) Difficulties storing and accessing printed information. b) Proprietary and incompatible file formats. c) Expensive, complex and unfriendly visualization tools (interfaces) d) Expensive information actualization processes. e) High costs of printing high volumes of information, that soon becomes obsolete. f) Delays when accessing critical business information. g) Duplicated information at several departments. h) Failure to incorporate diverse sources of information and diverse viewpoints i) Failure to consider both external and internal perspectives j) Failure to triangulate by using multiple methods k) Failure to triangulate by viewing data through different "lenses" (e. g., social, economic, ethical, etc.) l) Failure to consider micro-environment / macro -environment interactions m) Taking a deficit approach by exploring only needs and constraints without seeing opportunities and assets n) Being too superficial / global or too narrowly focused o) Not involving those who can act on the information p) Promoting unrealistic expectations q) Lack of decision criteria Most organizations are attempting to solve these issues by developing isolated applications to manage documents and group work over their networks. But most of the solutions they are looking for are already developed and available in the market. In fact, in many cases these organizations already have some of these solutions at hand. What needs to be done is to design an effective flow of information, to train users and motivate them to take full advantage of IT, to re-design some business processes to increase productivity at every level within the organization.

In conclusion, if you want to be able to collect the information you need and take the best advantage of it in your decision-making process you must consider implementing an ESS in your organization.. Why you can afford one Businesses to day cannot afford to go without an ESS! Competition is tough and to stay in the game companies will need to implement an ESS to keep their edge or gain the advantage. Swift changes in the environment and the ever-increasing competition require that management be able to make timely and knowledgeable decisions; an ESS will help accomplish this. No company can afford to put off the development of such a system if they expect to succeed.

Business today is about being the first and best at what you do and the only way to be successful is to have knowledge of the external environment available when and where it is needed. An ESS may be an expensive endeavor depending on how much a company wants their system to be able to do, but the cost is low when compared with the benefits that the system will ultimately bring. In this regard, an ESS will have a short pay-back period and, if used effectively, it will provide ongoing savings and revenue opportunities that were previously lost. Part II How to Implement an Environmental Scanning System 1. Preliminary groundwork- Any organization considering implementing an ESS will need to cover some preliminary groundwork first. This includes deciding on the commitment level to the ESS, securing commitment of top-level management, and recruiting people to be part of the ESS design team.

After having completed each of these items then your next step would be to move onto the evaluation phase A. Level of commitment- When deciding to implement an ESS a decision needs to be made as to which level of scanning you will employ: irregular, periodic or continuous. We highly recommend that you develop a continuous scanning system even though it may be more costly than the others because it will provide a continuous stream of current information relevant to your business environment. B. Secure top-level management commitment- This is a must in order for your project to be financed and it also helps gain the support of other employees in the organization. With this level of support and commitment you will be able to quickly develop your project and acquire needed resources. C. Creating an ESS Team - Before beginning with the actual design of the ESS you must first put together an ESS team. This will be the group of people who will be working to help you set up the project initially and then later in all other stages of development and deployment of the project.

One suggestion would be to gather together various people from the different departments and seek volunteers to head up the ESS for that department and later bring in more people to do the scanning and help with the work involved. You would want to familiarize your ESS team with the business as a whole not just their small view of the company so that they have a better understanding of how the company functions because this will aid them in their research or scanning. At this point you will not worry about training, that will come later, now you are concerned with getting the ball rolling so to speak. After you have successfully established your initial ESS design team you will then want to move onto an evaluation phase. Evaluation and Design Phase The evaluation phase is very important to the design of your ESS.

During this phase you will first identify business drivers and requirements, next you will evaluate your current system and resources already in use, and then you will evaluate your current IT structure. After these internal evaluations have been done then you will want to move onto an external evaluation. This is where you will research and see what systems are currently being used and if there is any software out there that may be helpful in the development of your system. I. Step 1: Business Requirements or Business Drivers In the first step of this evaluation for the ESS, the ESS Team must work to identify the business requirements or business drivers. This means defining the industry the business is in and identifying other industries that may have an effect upon it. This can be accomplished through many different means: Get the Team together for a brainstorming session, interview top-level people and find out what is business critical to them in the various departments, send out surveys to the various departments Based on those areas, the Team must then prioritize and evaluate which types of information are appropriate for inclusion in the ESS. The company must not forget to look to the future goals and needs of the organization when discerning the types of information that will be used.

II. Step 2: Evaluating the current systems environment In evaluating the companies current systems environment, you should first gather together various people from the different departments and areas in the company and seek ideas; see what these people are already using, reading or watching to keep themselves up to date in their fields and ones that they are interested in. From this, move onto the periodicals, journals, or anything else that the company or departments subscribe to; most can be made available on-line. Then after taking inventory of the companies current assets of information a decision needs to be made as to which information sources are aligned with the companies external environment. After that decision is made, the company or really the people in charge of organizing the ESS must decide how to organize the data in the ESS. Some helpful avenues of information that will help you in your evaluation process are as follows: A. Accessing networks - This would include agencies and organizations, personal contacts (yours and others).

The main purpose of accessing networks is to clarify the niche of extensions and identify collaborative opportunities. It can be an activity of a work group, staff or advisory groups resulting in a network of contacts. B. Gathering documentation - This would include collecting reports, plans, program descriptions, etc. C. Focus groups - These are organized small group discussions. The purpose is to develop a broad and deep understanding rather than a quantitative summary of the different aspects of the company. It emphasizes on insights, responses and opinions rather than just specific facts. D. Media monitoring - This area involves the commitment of people to monitor their normal local electronic and print media (TV, radio, newspapers, books, journals, etc.) to capture items with potential implications for extension. E. Public and community meetings - This is a town meeting approach to scanning.

It focuses on obtaining input from county or area residents concerning future needs and directions. It has its own benefits and limitations. F. Delphi Survey according to definition, it's a technique developed to generate reliable consensus among people with exceptional knowledge about a particular subject. The purpose would be - to obtain input from expert individuals concerning problems, needs or future directions. G. Visualization processes - Within this area you would incorporate the use of flow charts, trend diagrams, time lines, etc. to help your ESS team visualize the current and ongoing activities related to the ESS.. Step 3: Evaluating the components necessary to implement an ESSa. review of an organization's current direction, opportunities b. analysis of economic, political, technological data pertaining to a particular sector. c. information gathering from external private and public organization. information from existing and potential stakeholders IV. Step 4: Designing an ESS for your environment Step 4: Designing an ESS for your environment Although every company has to design its ESS based on its specific needs, every successful ESS design has in common an excellent definition and understanding of the following items: 1. Project objectives 2.

Specific goals 3. Realistic expectations 4. Clear methodology 5. Disciplined feed-back from users at all levels 6.

Constant monitoring mechanisms This section will help you clarify these items and identify more clearly your company's needs. Therefore, you will be capable of designing an ESS that best adapts to your company's reality. If you have questions regarding these issues you should (actually must) contact the users involved with each one. a) A decision as to who the primary audience for the scans is and what kinds of information this audience needs to strengthen its planning and decision-making capability. At a specific level, as an ESS designer you need to define: To whom is your ESS directed? The potential users of your ESS could be all of your employees but the potential users could involve some external agents such as business partners, suppliers and even customers.

The main issue here is identify your ESS's potential users and their profiles. That way you will be able to know what they expect from the ESS. How do you expect your potential users use the ESS? The interaction between the users and an ESS varies constantly, depending upon each one's functions. Once you define the groups of users that will be using the ESS, you will need to identify their specific needs and the benefits they can obtain by using the ESS. That way you will be able to take into consideration the needs from each and every potential user of your ESS.

What do your potential users need in order to take advantage of the ESS? Once you know who will be the potential users of your ESS and what their needs are, you need to know what they will need in order to fulfill those needs. Some people will need to upgrade their hardware, software or connectivity while other might need training. b) Resources to scan (journals, magazines, on-line data bases, newspapers key informants, trade publications, conferences, etc. ).

To understand and visualize how your company exchanges information help you identify the obstacles that an ESS will help you overcome. For that, you need to answer the following questions: Which ones are your company's internal and external main sources of information? It is very important for you to list every possible source of information you have used, planned on using or consider that should be used as a new source. Do not limit your self to external or internal sources, and keep in mind that sometime the best information comes from unusual places. How is information usually distributed among your company? List whatever means are used such as printed memorandums, regular and cellular telephone, fax machines, meetings, email, pager, etc.

Do some research to find out which means are most often used and ask your employees what means they think should be used. Keep in mind new technologies, even if you think they are too complicated and expensive, by the way they usually are not. c) People to scan and identify relevant resource articles and prepare written abstracts or scans. Define who will scan the information and who will write abstracts of printed pieces for you ESS and how will they interact with their sources will facilitate the process of adapting their capabilities to your company's needs. Your scanning team has to know about the subjects they will be doing research on, specially the one who will be writing abstracts. Who will be in charge of scanning the information? There are many ways for you to scan information for your ESS.

This could be done by you and your employees, you could have an outside independent group of people (even students) do this work, or you could use a consulting firm. Since the scanning process is not a one-time task, but a constant goal and need, we suggest for you to organize and train groups of people from within your company to get involved in this process. There might be some tasks such as typing printed information that your employees will not have the time to do. In that case outsiders could be of great help. Also, it will be necessary for you to have a teams doing research and surveys. Outsiders could help you, with guidance from you, to do this work.

It is very important to consider that some of your ESS information comes from within your company. Most of this information is probably generated and stored in one or more computers. Your scanning process must include finding these internal sources and ways of accessing this information from your ESS. How does your scanning team coordinate their work?

Since there will be many people involved in the scanning process it is very important for you to help them coordinate their work. By doing this you will make sure they do not waste time scanning the same sources and that they have a standard way of capturing and storing the information. A good approach would be to divide the work in internal and external, and each of these groups in specific items. For example, the external group could be split into social, political, economic, legal, technological and competitive. Furthermore, you could then divide the external competitive group into specific competitors. How do you receive and process the scanned information?

Now, you will need to consider how the information is to be stored and processed. We suggest that you schedule your scanning groups' time in such a way that they store the information every day. The information should be stored so that each peace has all the fields that will eventually be used as search criteria. You must define a list of fields based on your needs, but a good starting point will be the following list: oSourceoAuthor (s) oDateoSubject (s) o Department (s) oKeywordsoFormatKeep in mind that all the information within your ESS will be of use only if it can be found when needed. So your searching fields play a significant role at achieving your objectives. d) People to draw implications from the trends and issues that emerge from the scans, and people to analyze and prioritize these. Once you have started the scanning process you will need to analyze your data.

First, you will need to find the trends that come from your information. This job would be best done by people with statistical experience who can find trends from the data. Second, there will be needed for you and other people who knows your business to analyse those trends to find out what implication they have in your company's business. Then, you will need to prioritize these implications depending on the level of impact they could have for your company. To get prepared for this tasks, you should answer the following questions: What do we expect from the collected information?

This answer will help you align your ESS objectives and goals with the data you will collect. At this point you should create an initial list of your company's priorities so that you can focus your ESS on those critical business issues. Who will analyze the collected data? When answering this question consider your ESS design within a general context that involves your business strategy.

The analysis of your data will be the starting point of your decision-making process. If the analysis are wrong your decision will be most likely be wrong. Therefore, your analyzing team must be capable of thinking "out of the box". They will need to focus on needs an opportunities arising from external factors, especially social and how technology could help create opportunities given the social situation. e) People to take action on items of importance. An ESS is based on hardware and software, but what makes it possible for an ESS to help an organization to better its decision-making process is its people. A corporate network, within an ESS context, will allow your company to integrate concepts such as real-time, one-to-one marketing, interactive learning, dynamic strategy planning, business simulation, among others, to allow you to be more competitive, creative, and to be prepared for the new global and digital economy.

When designing an ESS, both, general and specific goals must be very clear en realistic. No matter what your goals are you need to define them clearly. Specifically, you should consider: How and by whom are decision usually made in your company? You need to be very honest when approaching this question. Are decision within your company usually made by hierarchy? By common agreement?

Are they made mostly by top management? You have to start preparing your self and your employees to start making decisions based on facts, not using facts to justify decisions. How will decisions be made once your ESS is implemented? Start working on mechanisms for making decisions based on facts! Each decision made should take into consideration the level of knowledge and expertise of your employees.

Decisions can not be made based on hierarchy or by agreement. If an expert in a particular subject is not good at explaining him or her self, it does not mean he or she is not right. You should develop some forms for you and your employees to give their opinions regarding critical decisions. These forms should emphasise that you are not asking for an opinion, but for a recommendation based on facts. f) A designated site with responsibility for coordinating the system. The final step in your ESS design process is to define ways to coordinate an monitor the system. You will need a team, that should include you.

The members of this team require a combination of administrative, planning and technical capabilities. It would be best to have an interdisciplinary team with complementary skills. Since an ESS involves every aspect of your company, during the first stages of your ESS implementation it might be too difficult to cover all the areas. We suggest that you start by focusing on the most important areas, based on the priorities you have defined. This approach will help you start taking real advantage of your ESS, and will show to your employees its benefits in a practical way. Once you have established the use of the ESS in some areas, it will be easier to move along the rest of the company.

Specifically, you should consider: How are you going to monitor the progress of your ESS? ESS tend to evolve with time. For this reason it is very important to design mechanisms that help you determine the progress achieved and to compare it with the original goals and expectations. We suggest that you keep track of each of the decisions made using the ESS. Although it will no be easy to quantify the impact of each and every decision, you should be able to have a record of the critical business decisions and how the impacted your company. How are you going to measure the success of your ESS?

Like in many other cases, the success of your ESS will be measured by the cost-benefit relationship derived from the investment. You should not expect immediate results. To adapt your company to a new way of working and making decisions is not possible all of a sudden. A good way of approaching this issue would be to measure your benefits from the ESS at the end of each quarter and compare it with the costs associated with the amount amortized over that period.

You have to consider that some decision are not reflect on you financial statements before several months, or even years. You will need to measure some qualitative issues when measuring the success of your ESS. Implementation Phase Step 5: Implementation Considerations After you have successfully completed the design of your system you will move to an implementation phase. During this phase you will develop a training agenda and program, you will come up with a process of implementation. A. Training- You will first need to assess your training budget, which will most likely need to be increased.

1. IT personnel will need to be trained first. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, by corporate-university partnerships, in-house technical trainings, etc. After the IT people are trained upper and middle management need trained. The IT professionals can facilitate this training and then management and IT can pair together to train the rest of the employees. 2.

Delivery methods may include different Computer Based Training modules like CD Rom, Intranet, etc. B. Process-Motivate the change by creating readiness and overcoming resistance. 1. Create a Vision by describing the ideology and constructing the imagined future of the technology. 2.

Develop political support by identifying key stakeholders and influencing them. 3. Manage the transition by planning the activities, and managing the structures. 4.

Sustain momentum by providing resources, developing a support system, developing new skills, and reinforcing the new behaviors. C. Implementation team 1. Electronic directory of expertsoConnects together technical experts, intelligence analysts, and users seeking information. o Allows staff to fill out forms detailing their areas of expertise. o Allows users enter keywords and get a list of experts o Spreads the net as widely as possible -- the best information can sometimes be found in unexpected places. o Serves as a broadcast medium for disseminating significant news. Thus, someone who has just picked up information on a topic (such as a competitor) can use the network to send a message to everyone who has previously expressed interest in that competitor. D. AdministrationoMarket database Users can find information on products, companies, industries, and geographic areas, as well as dated product market forecasts prepared by the business units themselves. Data are gathered and input by employees in the various business units.

Updated news from the database may be routed to users based on keywords they have given in their profiles. financial database The financial database reconciles standards and conventions, cleaning up and consolidating the data so that users may retrieve meaningful financial data according to accounts, companies, ratios or yearsoCompetitive digest. Based on published news from the media. Daily reports which include strategic impact statements prepared by internal experts on the news items. e. on-going support and enhancements Competitive analysis group. Coordinates the scanning that is done by the various business units, initiates the distribution of intelligence reports from the business units, and responds to information requests.