The Virtual Enterprise and Its
Future
by Alexandru Tugui
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Abstract:
This study approaches, from the conceptual viewpoint, the modern enterprise and
information and communication technologies, which make the connection with the virtual
enterprise. As concerns the virtual enterprise, we are interested in the components of
such a enterprise, in the structure of its information system, in the changes that will
occur in the life of the virtual enterprise and in what such virtual enterprise involves
from the bookkeeping point of view. Here are some questions that we would like to give
answers to bellow.
Key words: enterprise, virtuality,
information system, evolutionist spiral.
The modern enterprise and information
technologies
In the context of technological evolutions, the enterprise, the basic link in the
value chain, must perform its activities so that it can achieve its goals and obtain
profit in various forms. Such an enterprise cannot be but modern.
Characteristics of the modern enterprise
There are currently a multitude of factors that determine an agitated behavior of the
enterprise, necessary for its economic survival. Among these factors, here are the most
important: information technologies, political changes, changes in the client mentality,
interests of the various vocational organisms and unions, international terrorism etc.
However, on its way to modernity, the current enterprise
is the scene where the transition operations to the future globally information-based
enterprise take place. The grounds for this statement are pretty simple, in the sense that
information technologies, before being put into practice, go through successive stages of
research and implementation. Nevertheless, research needs, first and foremost, funds
coming mainly from the production sector of the countries involved in this process. There
are also situations when research brings funds after selling the results of the enterprise
research in the production field.
In other words, we detect an evolutionist spiral of
research and application of information technologies, so that it is very difficult to
explain, after going through a series of spirals, which is the determinant side and which
is the determined side.
In all this factorial and information labyrinth, the
enterprise has to become modern, furthermore, on these modern ideas "ready
modernized" companies are created, meaning companies that 20-30 years ago were not
even envisaged as existing. It is the case, for instance, of the Internet providers that
did not exist 20 years ago, but that are now the support of a new network of new, modern
companies: from electronic commerce advertisements, to personal business and outsourcing
services provided to big companies.
If the existing companies have to accept to survive in
this globally information-based environment, it is important to be aware of the
characteristics they have to have, in order to undergo an efficient modernization process.
After analyzing a significant number of companies and corroborating the results with the
trends of the future globally information-based society, we reached the following set of
main characteristics for the future enterprise: flexibility, opening, receptivity to
integration, globalization and intelligism.
According to the above-mentioned facts, we could say
that the enterprise represents a very complex system, with various functional components,
which are in a continuous interdependence, represented in a unitary way as compared to the
economic environment.
Information and communication technologies in
the modern enterprise
We think it is very important for our approach to make a short presentation of the main
information technologies helping companies to become modern and helping the society as a
whole to become global.
The INTERNET. Note from the very beginning that
the main information technology of the future enterprise is represented by the INTERNET.
Defined as a network of all networks, it revolutionized and stimulated all the economic
activities in a enterprise and constituted the grounds for other information technologies.
It basically relies on computer networks scattered all over the world, which communicate
by means of a protocol (Internet Protocols - IP), easily recognizable, regardless of the
type of equipment (computers) and of the operation system used.
Optical Character Recognition. This technology
is used in operations of turning text data into digits. This technology is used on a large
scale in trade, namely in shops, to read the bar codes on various products. Thus, the shop
assistant gets information concerning name, price, department where it is sold, taxes
(VAT, excises etc.), shelf life, producer etc. If, to this information, we add the date of
sale, cash register and shop assistant, as well as the buyer, we get a complete image of
the action of sale-purchase. All this information is transferred to the central server for
bookkeeping, for decision making etc.
Automatic Teller Machine – ATM. They are
the information and communication technology by means of which a bank card is identified
and may be used to withdraw money or make payments to predefined accounts (telephones,
utilities, shops).
Meeting electronic systems. This technology
facilitates the virtual meeting of the members of a community or a team, on various
occasions, among which: conferences, decision making, simple video chats etc. This
technology consists of the digitization of the audio and video sequences, their
compression, encoding, transmission, decoding, decompression and viewing, at high speeds
and using the basic infrastructure – The INTERNET.
Document electronic management and groupware work.
We present the two information and communication technologies in the same group, since the
groupware work requires working with electronic documents (created or digitized through
scanning), using a special soft, which includes absolutely all the components needed for
the office work, and the transmission component to the co-workers (electronic mail,
document manager).
Artificial intelligence and its applications.
This information technology includes a series of applications, which will undergo a
fantastic development in the near future. The category of applications specific to
artificial intelligence includes: intelligent systems, form recognition, speech
recognition and understanding, robotics, general problem solvers, computer-aided teaching
and natural language processing.
Multimedia systems. This technology represents
the minimal information technology, by means of which one may gather, process, store and
transmit multimedia data/information (text, sound, voice, images, video and animations)
presented, most of the times, in an animated form, according to a predefined order
(including superposed) to ensure communication. In a multimedia system, all the data
processed must be digital, although they have been received/displayed in an analogical
form from/in corresponding peripherals. When we talk about a multimedia system, we have in
view two major components: hard digital and analogical components and soft
components.
Other information technologies. We include here
all the modern, computer-aided design technologies, the digital signature that has been
regulated by different laws in Romania as well, the so-called calm technologies,
telepresence at the work place, Web computers, micro-systems etc.
The virtual enterprise –
conceptual aspects
Due to the process of continuous information digitization, together with the
development of new communication techniques, virtual companies or web companies are more
and more numerous.
The virtual enterprise means a group of companies that
decide to form a virtual community, that is platforms enabling the sharing of information
on the group members. There are situations when some companies address their clients via
the Internet, which makes it a virtual enterprise as well. It is the case with electronic
notaries, with certain advertising companies, capital market institutions (for instance
the National Enterprise for Compensation, Deposits and Settlement – SNCDD, Registry
Companies). A concrete example of groups of companies forming virtual communities, is
constituted by the RASDAQ/NASDAQ off-exchange market, where all the movable assets
companies meet to trade stocks.
Such a virtual enterprise is generally formed on the
value chain: suppliers-producers-clients. Figure 1 shows the structure of such a virtual
enterprise.
Figure 1. Organization of several companies in a virtual
enterprise
A virtual enterprise is made up of: the cell
enterprise, namely the enterprise joining the group and which places a part of or its
own entire information system at the disposal of the virtual network, the virtual
network, which is not owned by any cell enterprise, and the network access rights.
Virtual companies may have a private communication
network, as it is the case with RASDAQ, or it may have a special rights network, as it is
the case with the Digital Signature Certification Authority. Figure 2 shows the
architecture of such a cell enterprise in a Virtual enterprise.
Figure 2. Information architecture of a cell enterprise
Here are the main particular aspects of such a virtual
enterprise:
1. a significant contribution of the information technologies to the performance of
various activities;
2. work in common at very big distances;
3. network-like organization for the project, by avoiding horizontal structures;
4. much trust from the participating companies;
5. efficient information sharing and usage;
6. absence of physical borders in the value chain;
7. high quality services;
8. cost reduction;
9. removal of middlemen between producers and consumers, thus obtaining the prosumer.
10. each network participant keeps its independence;
11. in most cases, such companies have highly valuable intangible assets, as compared to
their tangible assets, which may be insignificant;
12. their degree of liquidity must be high;
13. the clients of a virtual enterprise may never meet its employees;
14. the circulation speed of the traded goods is very big.
The data flows and their processing require
precise information, and their outer understanding requires the understanding of the way
the network was formed, of the rules the participants agreed to comply with and the
particular aspects of the production processes (whenever the case).
To the data and information flows correspond money
flows, which usually correspond to bank operations that are mostly electronic. Hence,
the necessity of a settlement enterprise in the value chain, which would deal with
the settlement of the sums of money at their net value.
People’s work in a virtual enterprise is the
main production factor. The degree of satisfaction of unknown, very demanding clients
ultimately depends on the quality of the work done by the people of the virtual
enterprise.
Information system of a virtual enterprise
Nowadays, the net-economy [Georgescu, M., 2002] we are all headed to emphasizes the
virtual enterprise and the organization of the actors in the so-called prosumer networks,
where there are no middlemen, there are no time and space barriers and where the only
problem is value and material flow fluidity (unless their "teletransportation"
will generalize).
The information system of the virtual enterprise shall
include a series of information systems of the cell companies, as part of the virtual
enterprise. The information system of the cell enterprise shall expand with a user
interface and a global service system, as shown under figure 3.
Both components shall be included either in a
communication information system, separated from the existing information systems, or in
the information system of the enterprise.
Thus, the information sub-systems of the cell enterprise
(logistic-operational, financial-accounting, human resources and marketing) in the virtual
enterprise, shall be connected to the two new components. For all the information
sub-systems, the problems that will occur will be those of data, application and network
access, of ownership and compatibility of the soft used among the cell companies.
One of the problems due to globalization will consist of
the occurrence of those chains of virtual companies.
We reckon that in all these discussions, an important
role will be played by ownership issues, since at this moment we all know that a first
attempt at forming a virtual enterprise could be considered the groups of companies with
integrated information systems and a an Extranet-like private communication network. As
long as they issue invoices to one another for services and products, this means they make
up a enterprise network.
Changes of the modern enterprise in the
future knowledge society
As concerns the future of the virtual companies, we believe their number will
increase with the increase in the volume of transactions. Moreover, in our opinion, in a
first stage several virtual companies will be formed, made up of a single enterprise, and
afterwards the number of virtual companies made up of more companies will increase as
well.
Massive investments in information technologies will
lead to the expansion of computer or micro-system use in all fields of activity, at very
small prices. The globally information-based society will have a high degree of
digitization for most of the human activities. We will reach a point where the analogical
information devices will be more expensive than the digital ones, since the former will no
longer be used.
People have already begun to talk about the knowledge
and intelligence of the modern enterprise, but we could think of the changes that the
modern enterprise will have to undergo in order to reach the future knowledge society,
after the globally information-based society.
First, all the activities performed by the
enterprise must be recorded as digital information. This digitized recording is
only one aspect of the globally information-based enterprise. From this digitization of
flows occurring in a enterprise, we must take the step, whenever necessary, towards the
knowledge related to these flows. This may be achieved by using intelligent systems on a
large scale.
Second, the employees of the modern enterprise
will be the so-called synthetic workers, namely robots with human faces. Therefore,
the modern enterprise will have to redesign its processes to avoid possible conflicts of
interests among its workers. In other words, the redesign of the enterprise processes will
never end.
Third, the modern enterprise of the knowledge
society will have to implement other procedures for the assessment of its results. The
concept of profit will be much more comprehensive than the current concept, since it will
also include other elements difficult to define at present. An example may be the increase
in the knowledge of the workers during a financial year. On the same line, we predict an
extension of the permanent assets of the modern enterprise by registering the human
capital of the enterprise in question.
The three changes we mentioned above do not intend to
cover entirely the debated subject, we only pointed out some of these changes undergone by
the modern enterprise in the future knowledge society. For this reason, this subjected
will long be open for discussion.
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