Better, Faster, and Cheaper Determining management's information needs is historically one of the most time consuming and error-prone activities in designing and building information systems. The proliferating capabilities and plummeting cost of computers should signal relief for weary executives. Unfortunately, most information systems take too long to design and build, and then they fail to meet executive needs.
Most systems are very expensive to develop and even more expensive to revise.
As the pace of business accelerates, decisions that need to be made over a period of weeks must now be made in days, hours, or even minutes. Failure to provide executives with the needed information in a timely manner can result in lost opportunities or in a problem not being solved expeditiously. Increasingly, executives have little reaction time to make decisions on pricing, product introduction, resource allocation, media inquiries, response to competition, and mergers. They need access to information quickly. They can not wait several weeks or months for completion of a computer project.