Digital Nervous
System (DNS) was initiated by Bill Gates in 1997. It is defined as a process
of exchanging data between suppliers, buyers, and sellers electronically.
According to Bill Gates, though a digital nervous system is built on a combination
of hardware and software, it is not a product. To illustrate what DNS is,
one could think of human's nervous system. The nervous system controls the
basic body systems that make life possible, i.e. digestive system, respiratory,
circulatory, etc. Human's nervous system is able to think and plan with creativity
and fast responses.
An effective
digital nervous system performs similar functions within an organization.
It allows a company's internal processes to operate smoothly and quickly,
enables an organization to quickly respond to customer feedback, gives the
ability to react to its competitive environment, and gives an empowerment
to employees with critical knowledge. The key is how effectively an organization
could manage the flow of its digital information. Basically all kinds of information
consisted of numbers, text, audio and video can now be put into a digital
form.
Hardware
and software have also made it possible and necessary for organizations with
different sizes to reshape the way they run their business. The idea is to
employ the technology in a way that would improve how people work. This would
be a big transformation in how organizations operate. In Digital Nervous System,
businesses must create digital processes that manage and deliver important
information to the employees who need it, helping them to respond effectively
to changes and new opportunities, make decisions quickly, and fix problems
as soon as they arise. Just as machinery provides tremendous physical power,
digital processes can enhance organizational intelligence by giving workers
the information necessary to be more effective. Because of differences in
each business, there is no standard digital nervous system. Instead, the digital
nervous system will be tailored to reflect unique needs and structure of each
business.