Shadow System - Cause

Cause

An organization that has a centralized Information Services department usually requires rigorous guidelines for developing a new system or application. Simultaneously, with the rise of powerful desktop applications that give savvy end-users the ability to author sophisticated tools on their own, a business group often finds it more expedient to create the application themselves.

Pressure to analyze information in new ways

Any organization faces a multitude of pressures to change and respond to new government regulations, customer demands and action by competitors. In order to respond to these changes, organizations need to be able to understand all aspects of their business and often ask questions of itself that have never been asked before.

Ongoing pressure for change creates an ongoing pressure to analyze data in new ways and get information quickly into the hands of people who need it. Only through creative and flexible reporting are businesses able to spot new trends and identify new opportunities rapidly enough to take full advantage of them.

The type of data analysis that most frequently necessitates the development or purchase of Shadow Systems usually comes from the needs of the user. Since the centralized information systems department usually reports to the organization’s CFO or COO, the systems that they develop are designed for their needs. The needs of departmental managers are often quite different, requiring more detailed analysis that incorporate variables not contained in the solution designed by the central information systems department.

Increased power of personal computer hardware and software

The greatly increased power of personal computer hardware and software analysis tools has meant that individual users now have all of the computing power they need right in front of them. Large databases containing all of an organization's customer, supplier, or accounting information; the kind that could once only be stored on a central corporate mainframe, can now be contained easily on a single laptop.

Rigorous controls and the breadth of required skills leads to unresponsive Information Technology or IT departments

Quite properly, when a reporting system is put together by IT professionals, they need to consider all aspects of how the system will be used. In addition to just putting the information together they need to consider the following:

• How can it be ensured that the data produced is accurate?
• Who is authorized to see this information? How can security be enforced?
• How is the system to be backed up/replicated in case of failure?
• User documentation must be written so that the system can be given to new users.
• Technical documentation must be produced so that support staff can maintain it.
• The load that any new tool places on existing systems needs to be managed and minimized.

The various skills that are required to achieve all of this means that inevitably a number of different people will all be involved in the task of creating the new report. This increases the amount of time and effort it takes to put a rigorously engineered solution in place. Shadow Systems typically ignore this kind of rigor, making them much faster to implement, but less reliable and more difficult to maintain.