1.6Systems strategy

Systems strategy is about designing and using information systems to realize business strategy. This section walks through four perspectives in turn: drawing a company-wide blueprint, reviewing day-to-day operations, incorporating external services effectively, and embedding IT across the whole organization.

1.6.1Information systems strategy (EA, BPR, BPM)

• EA (Enterprise Architecture) organizes and visualizes an organization's current and target state of business and systems across layers such as business, data, application, and technology. It is an approach to drawing a company-wide, optimized blueprint.
• BPR (Business Process Reengineering) fundamentally rethinks existing business processes from scratch, boldly redesigning them. Unlike incremental improvement (PDCA-style accumulation), it aims for discontinuous transformation.
• BPM (Business Process Management) continuously visualizes, analyzes, and improves business processes. Where BPR is a one-time, fundamental redesign, BPM has more the character of a continuous improvement cycle.

1.6.2Business processes (modeling, RPA)

• Modeling a business process visualizes the flow of work using diagrams (such as flowcharts), so stakeholders share a common understanding. It is an important prerequisite for improvement and automation.
• RPA (Robotic Process Automation) is technology in which a software robot automatically performs routine desktop clerical tasks (data entry, transcription, aggregation) in place of a person. It is used to address labor shortages and improve productivity.

1.6.3Solution business (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, cloud)

• Cloud computing uses IT resources as a service over the internet, rather than owning servers or software in-house. It splits into three layers: SaaS (software provided as a service), PaaS (an application execution platform provided as a service), and IaaS (infrastructure such as servers and networking provided as a service).
• The difference among the three layers: SaaS provides the application itself (e.g., email software), PaaS provides a development/execution environment (e.g., the platform an app runs on), and IaaS provides the layer closest to raw infrastructure—servers, storage, and networking. The scope a user must manage grows in the order SaaS to PaaS to IaaS.

1.6.4Promoting system use (DX, data utilization)

• DX (Digital Transformation) uses digital technology to transform products, services, business models, and even organizational culture. Its distinguishing trait is that it goes beyond mere IT adoption (digitization) and extends to transforming the business itself.
• Data utilization analyzes data accumulated through operations to support management decisions and process improvement. What matters is not merely "having" the data, but actually turning it into decisions and action.

Picture a regional bank pushing forward with digitalization, and walk through this section's ideas. Management first recognizes the problem that operations and systems have been built piecemeal across the organization, so it uses EA to organize the current and target state across four layers—business, data, application, and technology infrastructure. This reveals that the mortgage screening process is extremely inefficient, and management decides that incremental improvement won't be enough, so it commits to BPR, rebuilding the screening process from scratch. After the redesign, the new process is monitored continuously using BPM thinking, with small improvements made whenever a bottleneck is found. The manual transcription of account information that staff used to do by hand is automated with RPA, having a software robot perform it, sharply cutting overtime. On the infrastructure side, the bank switches its previously self-hosted internal email to a SaaS-type cloud service, adopts PaaS as the development platform for its new loan-screening application, and uses IaaS for the infrastructure that stores its large volume of transaction data, reducing the burden of server management. The bank frames this whole effort not as mere "IT adoption" but as DX, ultimately aiming to shift to a new business model where a customer can arrange a mortgage entirely from a smartphone, with no branch visit required. In parallel, it advances data utilization, analyzing accumulated transaction data to recommend the best products for each customer.

1.6.5Section summary

• EA is a company-wide, optimized blueprint. BPR is a ground-up fundamental redesign; BPM is a continuous improvement cycle
• RPA automates routine clerical work. SaaS/PaaS/IaaS are the application / execution platform / infrastructure layers
• DX goes beyond IT adoption to transform the business model and organizational culture. Data utilization matters when it connects to decisions and action