Information flow, departmentalized

In the mid-1990s, the BPR debate drew our attention from isolated business activities to entire value chains. Yet entire process management in most of the cases focused on the information flow within departmental, corporate, or national boundaries. Obstacles within those areas appeared hard enough to cope with. Therefore, interoiganizational communication and cooperation were seldom seriously put on the improvement agenda. Consequently, enterprise models, particularly business process models were also restricted to interoiganizational aspects. 

If procurement and supply tools and techniques do not provide much scope for strategic influence within firms it is still important to imderstand what the functional objectives are for introducing them operationally in the first place. Table 9.6 provides findings about this issue. Survey respondents were asked to explain the primary purpose for which they used tools and techniques based on whether they used them to improve the functional performance of their departments their departmental costs of operations to improve communication and information flow management to provide a more flexible and responsive service to others in the business to improve staff skill sets and, to increase departmental... 

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