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Chapter 2 • Systems Integration 43

Users

Functional Departments

Support Inventory Payables Sales

Quality Contacts
Assets
Billing
Orders
Forecasting
Service
Sales
Field Purchasing
Service
Planning
Help General Benefits Projects
Desk Ledger
Credit Travel Assets Inventory
Expenses Payroll

FIGURE 2-4 Functional Silos in Organization Source: Adapted from Oracle Inc. www.oracle.com
win–win for UPS and its customers, partners, and suppliers. UPS spent less on answering customer
queries, and customers got their answers whenever they wanted to know. In an integrated system
environment, all parties have access to the same data sources from a network in real time.
The evolution of IS, when observed from its hardware and software architectures to the
various system generations, suggests that its role has generally been to support the organizations
evolving information needs.
Information systems as we know them today have been used in business since the 1960s.
The introduction of computers into business organizations by such vendors as IBM™ and
UNISYS™ started to change how computer systems were used. The IS evolution is often viewed
as a sociotechnical change process in which technologies, human factors, organizational
relationships, and tasks change continuously. This sociotechnical process, often known as the
systems life cycle for analyzing information system requirements, helps to analyze complex
sociotechnical dynamics between information systems and organizations. By conceiving system
evolution as a sequence of critical events and states within the sociotechnical system and its
elements, process researchers can narrate explanations of processes and their outcomes.