1. History of enterprise information systems and changing challenges

1.1 Automation

For a long time, the initial emphasis in companies was on automation, i.e. the transfer of costs from people to machines. In the early days, this involved islands of activity in inventory, payroll and accounting functions. As IT costs fell, this automation spread to adjacent islands of activity, and was accompanied by the quest for improvements in cycle times, quality, traceability and also better information for better decisions, for example concerning resource allocation, asset utilization, real-time pricing, etc.

At the end of the 1980s, the emergence of Reengineering as a managerial trend popularized the notion of process, and the need to think ahead before automating activities. Around the word organization, Information Systems Departments...