Information systems are an integral part of an organization, regardless of its size or industry. These systems typically hold and control the data that the organization needs, such as data about services, products, clients, transactions, suppliers and many more. Most, if not all, employees operate these information systems and spend many hours interacting with them at work.
Over the past few decades, these systems have been constantly upgraded. Newer systems are able to handle transactions quicker and more accurately compared to previous iterations. Graphical user interfaces have become the norm and replaced clunky text terminals that lack data. Thanks to changing design approaches, developing these newer systems is done faster than ever. However, they still carry specific characteristics that haven’t evolved:
- These systems contain a wealth of information about employees, customers, purchases, suppliers and many more. Many systems are able to report this data in a format that humans can understand; however, these systems are unable to adapt or improve how they behave based on this data. They can’t learn from the information or events that have already happened.
- Many information systems are unable to act on their own or on the behalf of their users. They stop operations and wait until a human can instruct them on what their next action should be.
- These systems tend to be difficult to understand for non-technical staff and too rigid to change or improve. Many changes have to be coursed through the IT department, which makes improvement costly and slow.
- Most information systems don’t allow comprehensive access to their daily, regular users. They usually need approval from supervisors and require them to log in and approve requests. When requiring support from outside sources, it’s a common occurrence that the first point of contact is also unable to tell the system what it should do and instead asks the users to refer to a senior employee.
There are notable exceptions that perform better than these traditional information systems. In recent years, many organizations have developed Decision Management Systems to improve upon the listed limitations, creating systems that are more adaptive, analytic and agile.