IT or AT

Information Technology or Act Technology.

Here's a snippet from the vision statement of a shall-remain-unnamed system integrator (not unlike the other big ones' so you're in good company):

"As business systems integrators, we align our clients’ business processes and information systems to enable them to access the right information at the right time, empowering them to achieve their desired business results and create enterprise value."

This plainly says IT is for information access and delivery while action is left to the organisational hierarchy - the current murky delivery-structure of action / workflows / processes.

Why not use the technology to deliver and structure the activities as well?

Why restrict the technology?

Is it not upon time to use the technology for what it can do, not solely for what it did?

Information is good, action is better.

[Disclaimer: Thingamy is of course AT... ;)]

[Update: Chris suggested in the comments that "Action Technology" rolls better off your tongue, think I agree to that. Ah, and yes, see his result of a search on the phrase quoted above - at least three companies with exact same vision phrase, scary eh?]

[Update 2: Chris did some search and found, hey how cheeky, that quite a few do use the phrase even have their firms named accordingly! Note-note-addendum: Not that they do the same as thingamy though, still application based BPM there...]

Comments

[John Dodds]

I had to laugh at reading "This plainly says" imediately after receiving the following

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/search-keywords.html

Thingamy is all about simplification and you are all about translating jargon (information) into action

[sig]

Hehe, "plainly" as in Dilbert Vision Generator such things are... my trusted companion when doing side-by-side vision comparisons. Had situations where employees could not see what was their vision and which one was Dilbert generated :D

Ehem, been there, done that... http://thingamy.typepad.com/sigs_blog/2005/01/vision_mission_.html

[wolske]

I know that sounds pretty generic, possibly output from the DVG, but I did a search on that exact phrase, and it turns out that at least three companies use it:

http://www.bearingpoint.com/
http://www.visionsoftllc.com/index.htm
http://objectsourceinc.com/

That's just sad. (I'm hoping BearingPoint didn't 'borrow' the phrase... :P )

Sig -- I really like the idea of Act Technology, but "Action Technology" seems to be easier to say... thoughts?

thingamy: Action Technology

[sig]

Chris, hehe, amazing... Wonder where the part of any strategy (..and how to be different) went? :D

Agree, "Action Technology" is better!

[John Dodds]

Adaptive Technology
Achievement Technology

[Gil Friend]

"Action Technology" was the name of Fernando Flores' company which developed "The Coordinator" software, which was brilliantly designed to coordinate requests/offers and promises/commitments in organizations.

Art Gould has recently deployed a web-based version (whose name escapes at the moment).