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Archiver > SOG-UK > 2000-07 > 0962743551


From: Tim Powys-Lybbe <>
Subject: Re: [SOG] Fw: Computers Committee
Date: Tue, 04 Jul 2000 21:45:51 +0100


In message <012801bfe20d$ae9de9a0$>
"Ian Wegg" <> wrote:

> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Director, SoG" <>
> > Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2000 9:56 PM
> > Subject: Computers Committee
> >
> <SNIP>
> > > It is clear to all that IT is now a key part of research, recording
> > > and running an organisation. No longer are those who appreciate the
> > > importance of computers a small, specialist minority.
>
> This I agree with, but it's been true for years and it applies to ANY
> organisation. A computer without an application is just a doorstop. I have
> been in the computer business for 25 years and in that time I've seen them
> being used for just about everything from statistical modelling to making
> toilet rolls.
>
> But whatever the application, the computers themselves are invariably under
> the control of an IT department. No business of any size expects their
> accountants, designers, shop floor workers etc to also manage the IT
> equipment they use for their jobs.
>
> Disbanding the IT department, sacking all its staff and redistrubuting its
> work amongst the others is not a strategy I've ever seen attempted - but it
> seems to me that the SOG has done the equivalent.
>

I work for a fairly large firm that went down this route of
decentralising the system development activities into each subsidiary.
It sounded a brilliant idea that each operating division should develop
computer systems that dovetailed with their business activities. It
just had to lead into serious profit gains.

The trouble was that each operating division then developed their own
systems. So four operating divisions developed four purchasing systems,
and four forecasting systems, and four internal accounting systems.
Further they were all on different and new computers. Further, in order
to maintain all this exciting new activity, each divisional computing
department went on a recruiting spree.

So we had loads of incompatible systems with far too many staff and then
the operating divisions were reorganised and could not work together
because of the incompatibilites of the computer systems.

The firm is now about 60% through a project to unify everything into one
common system. (The computer people were re-centralised three or four
years back.) The current total cost estimate for this project, over a
three or four year period, is £50m.

Decentralisation is all very well, but not in computer departments.
Director General, please take note.

--
Tim Powys-Lybbe
For a patchwork of bygones: www.southfrm.demon.co.uk

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