Ever wondered why it takes you so long to find the information you need on your corporate computer system? That’s if you can find it at all. Did you know that the tooth fairy could be partly to blame?

The tooth fairy visited our house just last week. Nothing particularly new in that: it must have been about her twentieth visit. The interesting thing is that the famous fairy is still trading our daughters’ off-cast teeth even though she is no longer believed in. It’s a classic case of suspended disbelief.

You see, our daughters have never confessed that they don’t believe in these small people with big wallets. They’re smart enough to know that if they were to admit any real doubt, the fairy’s financier (i.e. me) would have a reason to cease payments. And with half a dozen teeth to go, well, you can do the maths.

So suspending their disbelief is essentially an economic decision. It wouldn’t be the first time that economic sensibilities have distorted a belief system.

Since the 1960s, vendors of management information systems (MIS) have been promising organizations centralized information and simplified planning. As the years have gone on, these systems have become more expensive while the promises associated with them have become more expansive. 

These days you will be promised detailed tables and charts showing you exactly how well your business or unit is running. Instantly – and all at the click of a button. 

The reality tends to be less magical. In 2007, the truly effective MIS is still about as rare as Tinkerbell and her fang finding friends.

Consider these insights sampled from a recent survey by Accenture of over 1,000 managers in the US and UK:

• Middle managers spend up to two hours a day searching for information;
• More than half of what they find is of no use to them;
• 59% of managers miss seeing valuable internal information because they can’t easily find or retrieve it; and
• 42% accidentally use incorrect information at least once a week.

Statistics like this will come as no surprise to a great many managers.

Yet businesses continue to sink billions of dollars into software implementations and upgrades. At each turn, disbelief is suspended as decision makers convince themselves that this time it will all come together. And just as it was when they were children, this suspended disbelief is driven by economics. 

The promise of newfound profitability motivates these software adoptions in the first place – whether or not they are really needed. And the threat of blowing the budget leads to chronic under-investment in the critical supporting phases of business analysis, user training and documentation.

After over 40 years, statistics like those above are a damning indictment on the MIS industry. A reality check is long overdue. It’s time the industry stopped behaving like the tooth fairy and started behaving like Bob the Builder. (He’s real, isn’t he?)

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