Raising the Corporate IQ

“A firm's IQ is determined by the degree to which its IT infrastructure connects, shares and structures information. Isolated applications and data, no matter how impressive, cannot create a highly functional corporate behavior”. These are the words of Steve H. Haeckel. It’s now evident that the most meaningful way to differentiate your company from competitors and the best way to stand out of the crowd is to do an outstanding job with information. A company needs to carry out and coordinate the business processes in each area, especially across departments. Sales needs to quickly to find out whether the company has the inventory or can get it quickly before promising delivery on a big order. Manufacturing needs to know how well the product is selling so as to shift production priorities. Managers need to know both and more. Its plain and simple, every business has a core process at the heart of its corporate mission, whether it’s design, manufacture or delivery of services. Every business has to manage income and expenses. Every business has to manage a variety of administrative processes from payroll management to personnel management and the list goes on. How fast and efficiently a company can run its core processes depends on how fast information moves around and that also depends on how well it uses Information Technology. In the old-fashioned way, papers did all the work. Stacks of documents will lie on tables and without a personnel signing or vetting, the process will be at a stand still and this creates bottle necks and makes personnel do more of physical labour than intelligent work. Raising the corporate IQ involves creating a seamless workflow within the organization using IT and proper networking.

In raising the corporate IQ using IT, one should first develop an ideal picture of the information you need to run your business and to understand your markets and your competitors. Think hard about the shortcomings of your current system and write out questions you’ll want your information system to provide. Then demand that from your current information systems and if the current system won’t, you need to develop one that will or your competitors will.

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