CHAPTER

Infrrrrrration Slstenrs anrl Organizational

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Peter Weill and Marianne Broadbent, Leveroging the New lnfrostructure (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Haruard Business School Publishing Corp. All rights leserved-

Figure 6.',|o Management obiectivs for Marshall's lnformation systems

them, ho'uvever. Basically, offering ATMs became a necessary part of customer service for all banks. Implementing AIMs became a competitiv necessity for organizations wishing to compete in this industry. There are at least three more impofiant points about this classification scheme. First, the pyramid shape is intentional, since there is an "enabling" effect; that is, by having a solid infrastructure in place, it is much easier to implement very good transactional systems, and so on. Second, the classification scheme refers to management's objectives, although those could change over time for the same application (for example, Sabre and Apollo started as transactional systems for assisting internal employees, and developed into strategic systems;AIMs r,l'ere initially strategic, then became transactional). Third, a specific information systems project may have multiple objectives (e.g., transactional and informational). To illustrate the application of this classification scheme, we can use it to describe some of the information systems that Marshall Industries has implemented (see Figure 6.10). The question marks beside some of the arrows indicate that there isnt sufficient information provided to determine whether or not these information systems could be considered strategic. For example, the data mining systems help Marshall to differentiate their service to their customers and to their suppliers, supporting their organizational strategy. In that sense, we would anticipate that these could represent strategic systems, as well as being informational. If competitors of Marshall offer similar services to their customers, however:, then having such a system becomes a competitive necessiry and it would be classified as informational only.