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Understanding Global Information Systems

A global information system (GIS) is an information system that works across national borders. They facilitate communication between headquarters and subsidiaries in other countries, and incorporates all the technologies and applications found in a typical information system to gather, store, manipulate, and transmit data across cultural and geographic boundaries. In other words, a GIS is an information system for managing global operations, supporting an international company’s decision-making processes, and dealing with complex variables in global operations and decision making. With a GIS in place, an international company can increase its control over its subsidiaries and better coordinate their activities, thereby gaining access to new global markets. Strategic planning is also a core function of a GIS. By being able to efficiently share information among subsidiaries, international companies can track performance, production schedules, shipping alternatives, and accounting items. A GIS can be defined along two dimensions: control and coordination. Control consists of using managerial power to ensure adherence to the organization’s goals. Coordination is the process of managing the interaction among activities in different, specialized parts of an organization. Control requires a centralized architecture for data, standardized definitions used across the organization, standard formats for reports, defined behaviors for different processes (such as how to respond when a customer has a complaint), and performance-tracking systems. Coordination requires a decentralized architecture for data. It also requires standardization within departments, the ability to communicate these standards to other departments, collaboration systems, and technologies that support informal communication and socialization. The trade-off between the amount of control needed and the amount of coordination needed defines the organization’s globalization strategy. Global organizations may use a combination of high control and high coordination, high control and low coordination, low control and high coordination, or low control and low coordination. Designing and implementing a global database is a technical challenge, mainly because of the different character sets required for the names of people and places and the different formats required for phone numbers and postal codes. Currency conversion is also a challenge in database development, although some software is available for this task. International companies can use a variety of technologies for an integrated GIS. Small companies might outsource to take advantage of expertise that is not available inside the company. On the other hand, large companies with the resources and technical expertise might develop custom applications to be shared across borders.