The age of the computer has changed business in many ways, allowing the manager unprecedented span of knowledge and control over all processes relating to his business. This has allowed for the use of data and information on an unprecedented scale. The drawback is that the available data for any business can be unwieldy and it is very possible to drown the manager in information. This is the time to leverage the power of processing to control the computer via systems management software.

 

Business has long had a need for more information. Management has always sought the answer to such questions as what will sell, when it should be sold, how can we get the product to the consumer quicker, and what inefficiencies are we experiencing. With the advent of the microprocessor, the old adage of be careful what you wish for may be an important consideration. We can now measure so many things and compile so much data that the manufacturing process becomes hard to recognize.

 

Not only is the business of manufacturing a goldmine of data, but even how we find, hire, manage and motivate our workforce is the subject of mountains of information. The process of garnering this information, however, has become an enormous task outside the normal skill set of management. Increasingly we find businesses outsourcing portions of, if not the entire process.

 

There is no question that the greater the quantity of valuable accurate data a business has to feed into the decision making process, the more likely a correct decision will be arrived at to the benefit of the company. The problem is knowing how much data is enough, and which data is useful. A manager needs to know what data was collected and under what conditions to understand the information from it. Trying to keep track of all the individual input through his area of operational control necessarily requires precious time sacrificed from running the business.

 

Like all tools, the computer has the potential for enhancing decisions with data that engenders confidence and produces results. It becomes problematic when the tool becomes the driving force in the business. If management is spending more time using the tool than created and delivering the goods and services at the heart of the company, there is a problem. While the information and uses for it grow exponentially, management possesses an ability to use it which remains fairly stagnant, which means there is inefficiency in the process as a whole.

 

There is a means of restoring sanity to the balance of business using computers; the use of the computer to control the information gathering and analyzing automatically. This is, in essence, using a computer to run the computer, and it pays immediate and far reaching dividends. This gives management the ability to make the decision on what data it needs and in what format it wants the information presented. That accomplished, managers can spend their time doing what they were hired to do; run the company and make a profit.

 

Everyone who has been in business knows that it is unnecessary and counterproductive for the CEO of a major company to have to deal with every detail of daily operations. Likewise, managers need to be able to ask operational information of their management system and get the answers they need without having to personally collate the individual pieces of information necessary for their development. This is why it is essential the information be loaded into the system by all employees in a coordinated master software plan.

 

So while it is important that someone is aware of the collection and interpretation of all the detailed information a company has, there has to be a way to develop that raw data into useful knowledge for each level of management. This is the crux of systems management software, manipulating data collected by software systems to develop actionable information for leadership to run the business efficiently and profitably.