Managing Microcomputers in Large Organizations (1985) / Chapter Skim
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Productivity Through Automation
Productivity Through Automation
Pages 101-114
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From page 101... ...
is senior vice-president of management information systems, MCI Telecommunications Corporation, Washington, D.C.; and former corporate director of administration, Reynolds Metals Company.
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From page 102... ...
1979. The planning cycle begins in the spring when an update and an automation planning manual is issued, telling all division and plant automation managers what they need to do to develop an automation plan for their unit.
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Using the 1980 work force as a base we assumed that the 1,000 individuals then using automation were representative of the total. Extrapolating the systems work clone from 1977 through 1979 to the entire work force yielded!
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This allowed us to organize the market of employees into a handful of segments and to develop delivery vehicles for automation services to reach each segment. When analyzing such a market, it is helpful to consider whether it consists of all employees; various segments of employees like managers, professionals, clerks and secretaries, and other individuals defined as office workers; or all salaries!
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To determine what kinds of automation wouict be needed we began by identifying six delivery vehicles for automated information processing: wore! processing, electronic mail, data inquiry, transaction processing, technical computation, ant!
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From page 106... ...
In addition to database and query-language facilities, the System/38, with its own capabilities, is providing outstanding service and accounts for the largest segment of our recent growth in the area of data inquiry. Further, we are just becoming comfortable with the database tool on the personal computer.
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When we matched job functions with delivery vehicles we found that terminals for about 57 percent of the salaries! employees would be justified by transaction processing.
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Electronic mail has not been as successful, and research is now uncler way to find out why. With its market reasonably defined and delivery vehicles in place, Reynolds adciressed the issue of the rates of growth we could manage while meeting our encI-of-the-decade obj ective.
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From page 109... ...
PRODUCTIVITY THROUGH AUTOMATION JUSTI Fl ED USE ACTUA L US E / >W 57% Transaction Processi ng 28% Transaction Processing / 10% Technical Computation 8% Business Analysis 10% Word Processing ,~3% Electronic Mail //\_ 9% Data Inquiry // ~ _ 6% Business Analysis ~ 15% Technical / Computation X / 20% Data Inquiry 20% Word A/ Processing -14% E lectron ic Mail 109 FIGURE 2 Justified versus actual use of automation delivery vehicles by Reynolds Metals salaried employees.
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From page 110... ...
The IBM Displaywriter and personal computers provide indiviclual automation capability. All of these machines are connected through a network.
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This allows indivicluals to accept responsibility for their own information requirements. A comparison of the cultural implications of automation with those of human resources clarifies the management issue.
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First, we need a data dictionary that spans the full range of automation devices from personal computers to departmental machines to corporate mainframes. The second issue is access.
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A second management issue we are now facing in the course of increasing security for corporate data is the question of who owns what data. ReynoIcis has bought a sophisticated computer program that requires identifying who owns each piece of data, who can access it, who can change it, and who can clelete it.
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From page 114... ...
Second, the decreasing cost of automation technology and the increasing cost of people will not only permit but will mandate that every salaried employee's productivity be improved through the use of automated technology cluring the course of this decade. Thirst, redesigning jobs to take advantage of the productivity potential provided by automation is going to present major challenges to management in this decade.
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