Business computing

L business computing is the field of the Informatique concentrating on the programming of software turned towards the Gestion: accountancy, finances, human resources, inventory control, logistics, production control,…

It is the “traditional” field more of data processing.

(Web, multi-media, Databases, etc).

History

The business computing constitutes, with the military uses, industrial and scientific, one of the essential fields of application which allowed the fast development of the Informatique. One can even say that the business computing is mainly at the origin of the modern methods of design and realization.

First steps

Before data processing itself does not appear, its ancestor the Mécanographie treated tasks of management. Thus, the first punched-card application allowed the treatment automated of the American census of 1890. In the Years 1930, data processing was employed at ends of census, but also at ends of industrial management.

Years 1950 to 1970

From the Years 1950 in the United States, then in the Years 1960 in Europe, the companies and the administrations carried out the extraordinary advantages which they could draw from data processing: treatment of the results of a Census or an election, with the Accounts Department and the Inventory control, capacity of the computers to record, treat and restore great quantities of data, as well as the relative simplicity of the treatments necessary at the same time allowed:

to reduce the times of treatment considerably;
to realize very significant savings compared to a manual treatment.

Thus starting from the Years 1970, of the firms such as for example IBM, Honeywell and Bull, designed machines and also programs initially intended for large organizations (tax administrative services and, Social security, Banque S, insurance companies, mutual insurance companies, etc). Thanks to their success growing, these manufacturers diversified offers to them at the same time as constituted themselves of the concurrent companies. The COBOL quickly became the main thing Computer programming language for the applications of Gestion and made it possible to constitute thousands of programs to measure, while extending the use of data processing to all the fields of management:

the Accounts Department: General ledger, Cost accounting (today one will speak rather about the Contrôle of management),…
invoicing of the customers and the payment of the suppliers,
the follow-up of the bank accounts, casch management and the financial forecast,
the pay and social treatment of the employees,
planning and the follow-up of the production of the company,
the organization and the measure of the commercial efficiency,
…

Realizing how much data processing could save to them in competitiveness, the large companies and the Local government agencies were thus equipped and organized gradually them data processing department interns, in which trades appeared of growing number:

Analyst S,
Programmer S,
Console operator S,
operators of seizure,
etc

Thus, by successive additions, public services and companies constituted each one a applicatif inheritance increasingly wide (one often speaks about million lines of code), which it was necessary well to maintain during time, to adapt it:

functionally with the permanent evolution of the needs, competition and the regulatory constraints;
technically with the fast progress of the computers, the Operating systems and the communication networks.

Nevertheless, the development and the maintenance of these programs of increasing complexity comprised a major disadvantage: the data-processing times and costs increased so quickly that it became increasingly difficult to satisfy the increasingly varied needs expressed by the other services users for the company.

Years 1980 - 1990

In the years 1980-1990, the business computing thus gradually evolved/moved:

by later on planning the technical choices and organisational (Information system strategic plans);
by the development of methods (MERISE) and of tools (CASE, Automats of exploitation) allowing to industrialize and rationalize the realization, the execution and the maintenance of the programs;
by the diversification of the computer programming languages (nevertheless the COBOL will remain a long time more used);
while drawing left considerable progresses from the miniaturization and the vertiginous increase storage capacities and the performances the Computer S and the networks;
by the use growing of the public networks to transmit Given S with other companies or administrations (banking systems of exchanges, EDI…) ;
by the multiplication and the increasing specialization of the activities of data processing (council, expression of needs, structure, documentation, tests, formation, assistance, breakdown service, etc);
by re-using existing solutions as much as possible, in particular by getting software initially conceived for other companies and by adapting them to the lower costs with specificities of the company.

This last point influenced the evolutions of data processing much in general:

standardization of the material and the operating systems to avoid levellings and tests ceaseless;
enrichment of the technical vocabulary by innumerable concepts and acronyms (see Computerese)
modeling and systems design (for example architecture Customer-server, Orientation object, model ISO, ASN.1, XML);
standardization of the protocols of exchanges: SQL so that various programs can feed and selectively extract the data of a DBMS, X.500 or LDAP for mutualiser a directory and manage the access security, POP and smtp or X.400 to exchange messages, NFS, FTAM or ftp to transfer from the files, RPC to question another program, etc;
appearance of Software package S and service companies whose increased specialization made it possible to reduce the costs of realization, exploitation and maintenance while increasing the functionalities of the information systems.

At the same time very largely spread the Mini S then the Micro-ordinateur S which allowed the increasingly small medium-sized companies then, like with the local government agencies and associations to be equipped with very standardized and easy to use programs: accountancy, pay, commercial management, allowances or social security benefits, etc the large firms also could undertake decentralization partial of their computing systems, either to equip branches or subsidiary companies, or to profit from the economies made possible by the use of systems in greater number but less complex (Downsizing).

In particular, the Années 1990 saw the fast adoption of a particular category of management software, the integrated business packages or PGI (in English ERP) whose richness and the relative universality illustrate this tendency of the companies well to give up programs overmeasure, to decentralize and standardize their management on a all company scale. In the same way much of large companies and public administrations have from now on recourse to the Externalisation (in English Facility Management ) of a part or totality of their data processing department, in order to concentrate their efforts on the activities where they feel more effective.

During the same period, the movement known as of Orientation customer gave rise to solutions of Gestion of the client relationship (in English CRM), which associate generally data-processing and telephony, even Internet, to guarantee the immediate taking into account and without fault of the orders and the complaints of the customers, like their information on the deliveries, the after-sales service, innovations, etc

Always at the same time, the industrial companies could implement Management systems of technical data which harmonize the documentary production, the nomenclature of the parts and subsets, the manufactoring processes, the stock and production control.

The installation of such solutions is often the consequence of the intervention of consulting, whose certain cabinets became very influential. They call in question the organization of the company and the work methods and recommend new solutions (Business Process Engineering).

It however appeared that the integrated business packages, whose deployment was largely drawn by the constraints from the data-processing Passage to the year 2000, always did not make it possible to treat specificities of the trade S of the company.

Years 2000

More recently, one notes a strong expansion of the solutions of electronic Gestion of the documents, in particular related on the technological advance and the fall in the prices of the solutions of digitalization (Scanners), of storage (hard drives, CD-RW, DVD, and engravers associated) and of restitution of images (printing laser color).

Lastly, the strong data-processing rate of equipment of the companies, which is often regarded as a competitive asset, very largely contributed to the fall in the prices of the materials and the networks, like with their greater ergonomics, without which the fulgurating development of home computing and of Internet would probably not have taken place.

From now on to federate multiple systems and thus to be able to consolidate the information of several services and companies partners (undertaken in network) one uses more or less standardized communication systems which facilitate the exchange of information and even collaboration (one speaks about interworking) between programs of various origins. Thus thanks to the Middleware a program can draw information in several Databases without knowing specificities of them. The warehouses of data (Dated Warehouse) and the tools of decision-making aid (Data Mining) facilitate the bringing together and thus the data analysis coming from several Information systems.

Of course, the world development of Internet network influenced the technical choices of the companies: the use of the protocols TCP/IP spread, much of control programs are carried out like those of the Web, so much so that one distinguishes today:

Intranet reserved with the company itself;
the Extranet opened with its partners (customers, suppliers or joint contractors).

In the same way, under the impulse of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), technology XML and all its derivatives (WSDL, XML-RPC), which describes the Structuration of the data and the interfaces of exchanges, are in process of adoption by a great number of the software publishers and data processing departments, and little by little will allow programs of sources varied to exploit their possibilities mutually.

The data-processing Interopérabilité has to be based on total Framework S such as RDF, and on the massive use of Métadonnée S.

Formations

Currently, to meet the market need of work, the schools adapted their course and some of them propose dies of formation answering specifically this request of the business computing.

In France, the majority of the universities and universities of management and scientists teach data processing. There exists relatively little however universities specialized in the business computing.

In Switzerland, in fact the High specialized schools (HES-SO) propose a formation of Bachelor level, whose course is very directed towards the practice, which propose these trainings in 3 years:

the HES-SO Was worth (www.hevs.ch/ig)
the High school of management of Geneva (www.hesge.ch/heg)
the High school of management Arc (www.he-arc.ch/economie)

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