Information Requirements for the 21st Century

Many organizations fail to optimize performance because they remain focused on
solving yesterday’s problems. For many years, proponents of information technology
have promised great benefits to business, typically far in advance of actual products
being able to deliver them. Yet when many of these benefits finally are realized,
people overlook their significance because they have been hearing about them for so
long. In this first decade of the 21st century, we can see this phenomenon in
business information. Much time, money and effort has been spent over the past 20
years assembling IT systems that in fact have made it easier to collect information in
a coherent, consistent fashion and then use it.
Our research confirms that a majority of companies are not providing all of the right
information to their employees. Companies continue to spend too much time and
effort refining their approach to addressing basic reporting needs that are already
well served (or served well enough) and have not taken steps to provide the next
level of information. We refer to this as meeting 20th century reporting requirements
rather than the 21st century ones. Being able to deliver basic accounting and
operating data efficiently and accurately was a key objective of much of the IT
investment and deployment efforts from the start of business computing. This
benchmark research demonstrates that this mission is largely accomplished, so it is
time to move on to providing more complex reporting capabilities.