ABOUT US:

The Extensible Information Systems (EIS) organization was born out of painful IT implementation experiences and our attempt to resolve them.

Our backgrounds are in the business and NOT Information Technology (IT).  We are businessmen, first and foremost.  We reluctantly became involved with IT service organizations and vendors because of perceived competitive pressures.   What we discovered in the early eighties was that IT created more problems that it solved.  As the decades proceeded, IT Vendors and Solution Providers continued to fragment and disintegrate business processes, data, and organizations only to raise fixed costs.

The business has barely implemented the last IT solution before we were told it was not longer supported and we needed to essentially start over with another “over hyped” technology.  Changes and upgrades were difficult; one new system “broke another”.  We lost track of the customer.  And so it went for years. 

Slowly it occurred to us that we were talking entirely different languages.   We talked about process they heard programming algorithms.   We discussed our information requirements and they heard Relational Data Base Management Systems (RDBMS).   We needed insight into “Customer” they asked which one since we had so duplicate Customers.   We needed valid data and they provided backup and recovery.  Project success to us meant functional systems that meet our needs they heard “guaranteed employment”.  We were at an impasse.

Eventually, we independently began a rigorous process to create “pictures, maps, and tables” that encapsulated what we conceptualized as our business processes that included the required information, how it was processed, where it was, who was involved, all important business events, and finally incorporating our business mission, strategy, goals and metrics.   Thus was born the Business View.

Today, we know sufficient technology exists to adequately support the business.  Thus, the current state of confusion is clearly a “business problem” and not a lack of technology.  We suggest using the Business View as the fundamental communication method to guide IT in the research, analysis, development, and implementation of future systems that integrate and not fragment business processes.

The balance of this site provides, sometimes with more than just a little sarcasm, detail about the Business View, who is responsible for its content, who may do the work, who maintains it, and how it is used to provide “governance” to all IT efforts.

Enjoy and if we can help, please let us know.  Success today will require a paradigm shift in your thinking for both the business and IT.