What are new trends in designing business information systems?

Dear doctor

I chose the following paragraphs from a worthy study conducted by Gomez et al. (2010) and do hope of getting interest.

"ERP (Enterprise Resources Planning) have been  generally oriented towards  big  companies, however, recently ERP designers are looking for extending the market. Therefore they  are taking into consideration the PYMES sector and they  are using successful strategies to  catch  that  market, as  for example  the  developing of systems  with some of the following  characteristics:

· Lower license cost

· Lower implementation cost

· Compatibility between systems

· Less  consulting requirements in the  implementation phase

· Software with open code

· Vertical growing 

Next  the foreseeable trends  of the  information  systems  for the  management  of companies  and  what  the advisor forecasts  to launch to the market. What is the direction in the evolution of the ERP systems, what  new functionalities  will  contemplate, what  challenges  must surpass  to  achieve a correct  evolution of the  companies in  the recently changing environments. These trends  can be classified in two types, the functional  tendencies and the technical trends.

Some of the functionalities that the new ERP can  absorbed or that at least can integrate with others  information systems are:

· SCM: Supply Chain Management

· CRM: Customer Relationship Management

· PLM: Product Lifecycle Management

· DW: Data Warehouse

· SRM: Supplier Relationship Management

· BSC: Balance scorecard

· KMS: Knowledge Management System

· BI Business Intelligence

· POS: Point of Sales

Technical Trends:

Related with the actual technical trends, it  is  possible to highlight the followings:

· Open software

· Hosting of Applications Service Providers

· m­Commerce

Recently there is  a trend to the use of free software, in other words, open and gratuitous  code in different scopes. This trend is starting to  take part in the information systems for company  management . These days it is possible to find  in Spain a software called Openbravo, which has  these characteristics  and it  is  starting to get  an  important  portion of the market. However, this  trend is still very weak and it seems  not  to be strong enough. Nevertheless, this tendency must be carefully considered. It  is  important  not  to  forget the recent closing of “Encarta”, the digital  encyclopedia of Microsoft, due to the appearance of a free software encyclopedia, “Wikipedia”, which won the battle. The second technical trend, the Hosting of Applications  Service Providers, is  a common  activity  these days, since there are several  companies  that  are dedicated “to lodge” management  systems, which  can  be used  by  companies  through high speed  internet  or some network  connections  [12]. These supplier companies  cover both the software and the hardware maintenance, and the updates, security, etc.  of the applications. All this, allows  companies  to reduce the work load and  some costs  from different  natures, and it  also  allows  them to focus in their Core Business. The m­commerce is  one of the technical  tendencies, that  as  well as  modifying the conception of the information systems, it  can  modify the form to make businesses  as the way  of those are known at  present. The mobile technology is a new communication channel that  allows companies and people to be connected and  access to Internet whenever, regardless the place, date and hour.

CONCLUSIONS: The information systems  and his  application  company management  have evolved constantly, and these have been continuously adapted to the market  requirement  and to the new emerging  technologies. These software applications  have become, from small programs into big one just in  few years. Initially these programs were designed  for running accounting applications  but recently  the ERP are able to  manage all  the  information  that  the  company needs, even  internally as  externally. In  the last years, there have been  incorporated  new advances to these systems. In one had there are the functional advances, which cover new  areas of the company, as for example the balance scorecard, knowledge management, CRM, e­ commerce, etc.  In  the  other hand, there is  also  incorporated new techniques and technologies as  the object  oriented programming, new  architectural systems  and new languages  and  programming structures. Recently, the  information systems  for company  management  are continuing evolving, and the foresee trends  includes  both technical and  functional improvements. In the functional trend  it  will be incorporate new features, and also it  will improve and optimize current features as the SCM, PLM (Product  Lifecycle Management), CRM (Customer Relationship  Management)  , DW (Data Warehouse), BSC (Balance Scorecard), KMS (Knowledge Management  System), BI (Business Intelligence), POS (Point  of Sale), etc. Related with the technical trend it  will be important the emerging of the ASP, open  software and the e­commerce .The m commerce is  one of the  more incipient  trend and these tendencies  could greatly modify some processes  from companies. Through  this  communication  way, the  company management  could be available for users regardless  the  day, hour and  place. But in order to this to be possible, it is necessary  that  information systems will be adapted to the needs  of mobile devices, and for that  it  is  important  to  consider several  factors, as  for example the interaction between these devices  with  people. However, already  solved  this  and  other small existing problems, it is possible to say  that nowadays the current technology has reached  a level, in  which it  is  possible starting this  new  communication channel, making  it finally  possible, and with everything what  it  can  suppose. Therefore, companies  could start  preparing themselves  to operate this  new  tools, and to optimize their resources  and processes  through it."