Determining Executive Information Requirements : Better , Faster , and Cheaper

Determining management’s information needs is historically one of the most time consuming and errorprone activities in designing and building information systems. Most managers spend half their time obtaining needed information, either informally through meetings, phone conversations, or reading; or formally through organizational computer-based information systems. During this process they have to sift through a great deal of useless information, resulting in “information overload.” The proliferating capabilities and plummeting cost of computers should signal relief for weary executives. Unfortunately, most information systems take too long to design and build, and then fail to meet executive needs. Indeed, most new systems require extensive revision (after they are supposedly completed) to even partially fulfill needs, resulting in a terrible loss. Most systems are very expensive to develop and even more expensive to revise. As the pace of business accelerates, decisions that used to be made over a period of weeks must now be made in days, hours, or even minutes. Failure to provide executives with the needed information in a timely manner can result in lost opportunities or in a problem not being solved expeditiously. Increasingly, executives have little reaction time to make decisions on pricing, product introduction, resource allocation, media inquiries, response to competition, and mergers. They need access to information quickly. They can not wait several weeks or months for completion of a computer project. Executives and systems designers need to work together to anticipate and determine information requirements more accurately. This article addresses four reasons for lengthy information requirements and provides a discussion of the failure to meet these requirements. Four straightforward solutions are offered to executives to solve this problem.1