For the past 60 years or so, com-panies have structured themselves into functional divisions or silos that evolved in part because a large company has too much going on for one person or group to handle. In this traditional organization, IT is a department with a titular head, as are logistics, finance, HR and so on. The model makes sense. It allows workers to become experts in one particular field and provides for a clear career path. In the 1980s and mid-’90s, IT fit nicely into this structure; IT’s job was to implement systems that improved other departments’ efficiency, such as an accounting application for the finance department.
The coup de gr‰ce was ERP, which linked the different departments through a common system. Prior to ERP (or any other enterprise-unifying IT project) there was no easy way to measure the impact of an event across the company, and employees were forced to work in relative isolation, focusing on the more manageable question of how an event impacted their specific area of the company. Now technology can provide a data intensive understanding of how each action affects other areas and the company as a whole.
