IT as a companion to business process flow...

Typical an organization will have many business processes one for each purpose. Some of the main process are sourcing, customer relation management, finance, human resource management etc. Most of the ERPs provide these functionalities as a part of them. Not all vendors are good in all the processes. Some are leaders in some process. For example Oracle is good in CRM, Hyperion is good in Finance Planning etc. Apart from these processes, there are processes in most of the Organizations, that can be automated. It is for this reason we see many custom Java based applications that cater to each of these processes. All business processes follow a certain order. At every point there should be an application that caters to that business process. This application can be a ERP module or custom Java application. Such a seam less solution will allow the company to capture information at each point and leverage the data.

Once we have data in applications, it can be transferred from it to a data warehouse using standard ETL tools. A reporting layer on top of the Data Warehouse can allow users to see trends. For example a report on customer-related-data from a CRM, will show the customer trend. Reports can be a set of standard corporate reports available for all users or adhoc reports of each user. Value of information will reduce with time. To have more valuable information, Data Warehouse needs to be refreshed more frequently.

Man is the best imitator:

The reason for Man being the best imitator could be biological. This imitation determines the way world goes. When we're born, our mind is like a blank hard disk. As we grow we see, listen and experience many things. These form impressions in our mind which will influence  our reactions and decisions. Hence our personality is a sum total of all the conditions in which we're brought up.
As we grow, our elders teach us how to do things. Their elders taught the same to them. This is how how-to-do-procedure is passed on from one generation to another generation. If somebody tries to do things in a way different from the traditionally accepted way, they are criticized and their ideas are met with skepticism. And some doomsayers predict the end of the world. This is one major reason that prevents innovative thinking.