Assessment Approach of Enterprise Readiness to Digital Transformation

Introduction

Technical means play a big role in our every year life and in the modern business sphere. The information technologies are the basis of global informatization processes. The so called «post-industrial» era is distinguished by such rapid global changes and almost instantaneous copying of products and services that make it meaningless reaching the goal of long-term retention of a certain market position. The strategy ceased to be only a long-term plan and was formed as the concept of a management process which is characterized by a constant adjustment in the on-line regime.

Use of new information technologies is becoming increasingly a widespread phenomenon for the modern Russian market. Each year the rise of complexity and uncertainty of the exterior and interior environment of economic entities is becoming one of the key problems for continuous and sustainable growth of enterprises. Contemporary managers have to make decisions under the conditions when the product life-cycle grows short, the production profitability falls, the technology systems change systematically. At the same time strong competition at the market forces the enterprises to optimize their strategy work by improving synergy collaboration in all business activities. Thus enterprise managers should design a great number of aims to develop each kind of business activity and achieve general efficiency.

In the 80-ies of the 20^th century automation systems for different management processes were rapidly developing on the basis of information technologies. The creators of decision support systems (DSS) for the various areas of management have gone virtually the same way as the theoreticians-managers: from ERP systems that solve the tasks of cost management to the systems of sales automation (SFA, SCM) and customer relationship management (CRM), providing control over the market position of the company, to integrated systems for business efficiency management (BPM, CPM, ECM, EPM, BAM), providing tools for integrated management of external and internal interactions of the company. The latest systems are aimed at providing a full cycle of strategic management: planning activities, monitoring and control over the plans implementation, risk analysis and management, forecasting possible development scenarios, identifying new targets, etc.

Information technology reorganize the management process, providing new opportunities for helping managers in strategy, planning and management. For example, it became possible for managers to obtain information about achieving organizational goals up to the level of certain products from any department at any time. New information intensity enables accurate planning, prediction and control. By distributing information via electronic networks, a new manager can communicate with thousands of employees and even manage large target groups more effectively.

The formation and implementation of information technologies and modern technical management tools in many organizations are still going spontaneously and not always effectively.

Thus the general idea of this chapter is to consider the most significant aspects of information technologies use in organizations from the perspective of their readiness for change. Therefore the main objectives of this part are:

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  To substantiate the importance of introduction of information technologies and resources in the work of modern companies;

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  To analyze existing approaches to the formation of information environment in organizations;

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  Determine the role of information systems in the decision-making process;

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  To study the factors that influence the success of projects on the introduction of information technologies in business processes, as well as the prerequisites and principles of effective work of organizations in this field;

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  To analyze the specific features of the integration of information technologies with various business processes in Russian companies, and;

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  To present the own methodology for a complex evaluation of companies' readiness for change.