Will business leaders stand up and take responsibility for Digital success or failure ?

Recently came across an interesting article on “Why IT projects still fail ?” and the subject caught attention as it is still being discussed. It had references to some spectacular failures where the blame was squarely placed on the implementation partner; another one where business users at the bottom of the pyramid showed spirited resistance to the new way of working. Finally it quoted the most popular reference on IT projects with limited change in results over score of years with IT Business Alignment retaining high marks.

Reasons attributed to the dismal success record included inadequate resources, overly aggressive timelines, underestimated costs, overlooked requirements, unanticipated complications, poor governance and human mistakes such as bad code can all lead to project failure. Surprisingly a quote “the definition of success is evolving with traditional measures of scope, time, and cost no longer sufficient in today’s competitive environment. The ability of projects to deliver what they set out to do — the expected benefits — is just as important.”

Everything pointed the finger at IT; they are understaffed, overpromise, don’t know how to estimate costs or gather requirements and stick to them and finally are bad project managers. Also I am not sure about the world the respondents of this 2017 global report live in if they do not articulate the benefits in business terms. Okay, I take my words back, I do know of a few who still are unable to, but those are exceptions. Interestingly the article goes on to define formula for success without addressing the core.

So I dug a bit on the background of the author and found no evidence of having either run an IT shop or been at the receiving end. The article was an observation based on statistical evidence from various reports and the hypothesis that has lived for long: IT does not communicate, IT does not know the business, IT needs to sell the project to business, IT should prepare a business case and illustrate the benefits, IT should get the budgets sanctioned and then monitor time, cost, resources, success, failure, … really ?

Let’s for a moment shift focus from IT to the business folks; business models have undergone major upheavals and digital has been thrust upon the willing and unwilling alike. Majority of the incumbent leaders and giants have been slow to react – unwilling to accept reality brushing it off as irrelevant – and then finding someone (read IT) to blame for not delivering in (the constrained) time while the new players have eaten market share. They have treated the change like a technology project rather than technology enabled business transformation.

Success stories are all about the handful of enterprises who decided to create cross-functional teams to evaluate and respond to the upcoming opportunity. They did not hire consultants to give them a roadmap, or define waves of implementation, or hire from outside to lead the internal team; they were willing to change, explore, experiment, willing to take risks, and understood the limitations of pure technology over the collaborative success that they had co-created multiple times in the past along with IT.

The leaders do not hand off accountability, they find ways to induct others into their vision; they are always on the lookout for creating differentiation against competition. There are no IT projects, only business projects that use technology. Even mundane decisions like cloud evaluation or change in support vendors seek business impact and changed outcomes. IT responsibilities and KRAs are spelled out in business terms; this is the real world of pervasive IT today which has shed the technology skin of the past.

In such a world then why does “Why IT projects still fail ?” still find a headline and mention ? Such reports and publications continue to berate technology teams. They find it convenient to continue using the old scapegoat without looking elsewhere if the paradigm has shifted. So are these about the laggards and disconnected teams who have failed to stay current and relevant in the new normal with shrinking business and loss of customers ? This does not appear to be the universal truth but sensation sells better than reality.

Can business grow up and take responsibility for success or lack of it rather than live in a world of transferred responsibility especially when things don’t work out the way they were planned ? Can the technology teams stop being subservient and stand up to their professional achievement and pride ? Wherever the chasm still exists, can both start by acknowledging it and work towards building a sustainable bridge that will offer achievement of business objectives ? A necessary step to stay relevant internally and externally.

Finally let’s bury IT projects !

Tossing the CIO around from BAU to Innovation to OT, bring it on …

Evolution never stops, at least for the CIO who has been pushed around with ever changing technology and business paradigms. In the early days the push was to automate internal processes and then the focus shifted to the external world – suppliers, distributors, customers, basically the entire ecosystem. IT did a good job embracing mainframes, client server, browser, mobile, and everything in between. As technology invaded our lives, democratization led to expectations moving to business roles and innovation.

CIOs obliged by taking on additional roles based on their expertise, passion and organizational need to infuse loads of technology into parts of the company for operational efficiency or leadership position in the industry. They helped finance, sales and marketing, supply chain, human resources, legal and compliance, customer engagement, facilities and administration, everyone who asked for technology input, they received a helping hand from IT and the CIO even when the industry kept throwing new disruptions.

If you are not on the internet, you will be dead; if you don’t implement datawarehousing there is no way information will be meaningful; cloud computing is changing the world; social media is necessary for us to invest in – our customers are there; the smartphone revolution is changing the way our end customers engage, we should be on their phone; mobile wallets, digital payments, what about artificial intelligence and chatbots or machine learning; heard that deep learning is the new snake oil which we should invest in…

Connect into the innovation network, drive change, manage expectations, service level agreements moving up with time, outsource what is not critical, manage multi-vendor deliverables, cross-functional projects, and run an efficient department. Every fad raised a bogie which needed to be addressed; every publication and conference also discussed various aspects of how technology will impact the business or change the industry or kill existing businesses with disintermediation. The plate of the CIO overflows and how !

But wait, manufacturing automation took a quiet journey towards implementing PLCs and SCADA; they did not involve the IT folks, they bought their own equipment with automation capabilities, bundled with computing infrastructure, uninterrupted power supply, interface using basic protocols with the machines which evolved slower than the rest of IT. Lagging behind, they survived Y2K and other scares with minimal impact; cheap compute power and algorithms to analyze machine data suddenly catapulted Operational Technology into the forefront.

There are benefits with analysis of machine data, it helps reduce downtime, improve productivity and lower cost of maintenance and operation. Longer life for the machines impacts capital required for renewal of plant and machinery; it made sense to get the IT folks into the room and leverage the humungous data. IT accommodated the new use cases by providing the requisite support to their new customer. Resultant benefits are large enough to raise attention and elevate the need to a strategic level requiring investments.

Many CIOs have taken this in their stride adding to their portfolio of capabilities and services, opening up a new avenue of technological benefit especially since past investments were quite rudimentary and value of data was unknown. Advent of Internet of Things and the ability to create correlations has changed the nature of the beast. Operational Technology is now mainstream and requires skills that IT has had for some time now. CIOs are happily taking on the new thereby adding one more feather to their cap.

It is a matter of time that across other functions like supply chain too, the data gathered through warehouses, vehicular movement, transit points, and traceability with serialization, all will add to the desire and ability. For the CIO this is a great opportunity to spread his/her circle of influence and provide enterprise value. For those who do not or are unable to, they shall probably be marginalized and find themselves struggling to stay relevant. OT combined with IT will drive the business of the future, it is up to the CIO to take advantage.

Gas-baggers in the corporate world, a lot of hot air with no substance

Part 1 of this post appeared last week, click here to view

The world has many of them, few go by the title of “Consultant” and get around dropping big words in their trail that sound impressive; full of themselves and jargon, they love to hear their own voice at the smallest of opportunity. They also exude confidence that is unnerving and at times creates self-doubts in their audience. But consultants are not the focus of this narrative, it is the tribe that exists within an enterprise and has risen to the level of CXO or function head by virtue of their loud voices or that no one called their bluff.

He came with much fanfare talking about his illustrious past of having achieved greatness across companies globally in his field of operations as well as technology; the CFO’s arrival was the subject of much curiosity. Starting off with boastful achievements – none of which were verifiable – he attempted to dominate the IT team with smattering of gobbledygook that left the techies smarting in their effort to suppress their laughter. To the CIO and the team it was clear that they were going to have a tough time with their new Manager.

His knowledge knew no bounds; he had an opinion on everything from specialized solutions to highly specialized skills in manufacturing or for that matter on sales effectiveness. His position guaranteed that people listen to him especially if they were lower ranked; he showed off his superficiality using verbiage to subjugate those in front of him. Soon it was evident to everyone (management saw it as proactive behavior!) in the organization that he will poke his nose into every affair wanting to add value with anecdotes unbelievable most of the time.

I had filed a patent for a new way of marketing when working with this global FMCG company; did you know that we turned around the server farm in 24 hours; I had to sit with the technical staff and tell them how to write code; I crafted the new sales effectiveness process which turned the company around; why have you not considered a NAS solution, why are you wasting money on SAN; I could write this code in 3 days that you say will take 3 weeks; why does assembly line changeover take 14 hours, it should happen in 4 !

Surprisingly he never spoke about his own field of deemed expertise and left the Finance team busy asking for inane reports and correlations that had them wondering on the rationale behind the requests. Hiring incompetence around him, he ensured that the sycophants spread the word of his greatness around and showed open adulation in cross-functional meetings. Inaction by the IT team chastised for most of their actions by the Boss, started hurting key projects that defined the future state for the enterprise.

Eventually the (gas) bag had to burst and it did with indecisions and snafus pointing in his general direction; there was enough incriminating evidence that pinned him down to expose the lack of depth and expertise. While he was not unceremoniously booted out, until his last few weeks he continued to live up to his notorious ways spreading hot air, unable to reform or change. The exit created a positive vacuum that sent sighs of relief within the enterprise while the group of scared hypocrites worried about survival.

Collateral damage is a natural fallout of such incidents in an enterprise; the business had suffered production losses, broken supply chain, sales force missed the planned innovation and deployment of industry specific tools, the IT team saw attrition and delayed implementation of transformational projects, the CIO exited in disgust leaving behind a frustrated team, the Financial Controller parted ways and overall the growth slowed down with the string of bad decisions that the gas bagger had enforced with his coterie.

Enterprises have a lot of tolerance and resilience, they bounce back; the resultant dip however leaves them at a disadvantage with respect to what they could have otherwise achieved. Senior management when disconnected with ground realities or not accepting a bad hire, end up having to clean up the mess. Open communication, obligation to dissent, appears in almost every enterprise core values, rarely practiced in the true spirit, resulting in adverse impact, hurting people and performance in the long run.

Politicos next time !

In the corporate world, the unfit also survive and at times thrive

In every enterprise and almost every domain, roles and responsibilities have been evolving, some driven by global expansion, industry dynamics, technology driven changes in business, and customer demands. The biggest change has been the emergence of the CXO roles and their rapid evolution from a departmental or functional manager to an enterprise leader. Youngest among these is the role of the CIO has transformed at a faster clip than most others though some traits have become basic expectations.

Like every other function IT has not had the luxury of time to polish the rough edges and create a persona that grows over generations and gains acceptance with the rest of the organization; the fast-track pace of change in technology led to big shifts in expectations which also led to a clear divide between the CIOs in their ability to execute. The lines separated them into three broad buckets: leaders, followers, and laggards; and then a small group emerged over a period of time, the inept or gas-baggers or politicos, they had different names.

After a lull for long, the company had invested significantly in IT to catch up with the industry; spread over a couple of years the action jumpstarted their journey. IT and business teams worked together enjoying the momentum and associated benefits. Then again they went into slumber as if IT did not matter beyond what had already been implemented. The industry continued to make good progress; observers and vendors wondered what triggered the pause which extended for long. Not getting any clear answers they shifted focus elsewhere.

Time passed by and nothing seemed to matter for a while; strides made by competition and altered expectations from customers began to pinch with slowly declining growth rates and pressure on profitability. Parts of the business began to rue the inaction on part of IT to address their needs; no new ideas were evaluated or contributed since the departure of the earlier CIO. The crescendo of voices soon reached a level that merited and received the attention of the Management who decided to deep dive and find the reasons.

It was an interesting discussion between a Board member with an appreciation of technology, the CIO and the IT leadership team. He sought details about existing systems deployed, their use and effectiveness, the roadmap, new technology landscape impacting the industry, evaluations done, and benchmarking data with the industry. All fair questions, par for course for any reasonable person and CIO to be able to answer with ease, especially if he has been in the role for more than a couple of years.

We have been busy stabilizing the ERP system and managing the change requests from the business; there is no discipline on master data which keeps troubling all of us with multiple requests for change; the connectivity issues have made deployment of new solutions difficult; two key resources left in the last one year which has impacted progress on a few initiatives; business is not willing to deploy the new solution we took for marketing after the new marketing head joined; the stream of excuses flowed gushingly.

Interestingly the discussion side-stepped questions asked by the BM which he pointed out at the end of the meeting to the visibly squirming team. The CIO was granted resources sought to complete the tasks at hand and create the strategy and plan before the next meeting which was mutually agreed to. To the BM the lack of depth and ability was evident but he wanted to give the team time to absolve themselves; he did not want to base his actions only on first impressions and thus extended the rope a bit.

We deployed a new solution which business loves and we are scaling up; the team lead has been chosen to speak at a global conference. I have been busy getting bugs resolved in the core system with the vendor; I have escalated to the headquarters and they are working on this new set of bugs we have discovered. We have changed vendors on one front while we are shutting down the project that business did not want anymore. HR has not been able to provide the resources we want for some of the new projects.

The team joined the chorus which was abruptly stopped by the BM realizing that he shall again be starved of the confidence he sought in the team. The organization will have to take some tough calls. The above is just one manifestation of ineffective leadership demonstrated by an experienced IT professional who gained the role by accident and patronage, not necessarily by merit. Lacking the skills required for the CIO role, he could not maintain the façade for long, the competency levels could not hold up the scrutiny.

Click for Gas-baggers and Politicos 

Running IT like a business is good but are you prepared to lose your customer and money ?

I received a phone call from a CIO friend wanting to talk over a drink, which I agreed to since he was good company to be with. When he arrived I could see he was internally raging; he looked shades of red I did not know he could. Without asking he started: What does he think ? Asking me to justify why I am getting paid what I am getting ! Cut cost, reduce expenses, my business does not want expensive IT and highly paid staff ! This is even when we benchmark against the industry with lowest cost of providing IT.

He had been in a meeting with one of the business unit heads who had given him the run down on the annual IT costs that were charged back to each business unit. Within the diversified group for which he was the CIO, chargebacks were a way of life; for every support function, there were different metrics based on revenue, headcount, transaction volume or profitability. Every year there was a negotiation with the business on support costs; the previous year not having gone well, the discussions now were loaded.

In the early days of evolution of IT and the CIO role; few companies had broken out by carving their IT departments into separate entities; it became a fad with many attempting to replicate success. Entrepreneurial spirit fueled by case studies gave a ray of hope to aspirants. Quickly the trend disappeared with boom and bust giving fertile minds an opportunity to create a new goalpost. Run IT as a business – became the new mantra and it caught the fancy of some CIOs who otherwise struggled to stay afloat.

How do you run IT as a business ? The hypothesis created by some consultants revolved around charging a fair price for all the services, solutions, technology, business as usual, keeping the lights on, running the innovation lab, providing training, fixing the printer, any touch point that required parts of the IT organization in whole or bits to take any action, triggered by an event or otherwise. Charges were calculated based on simple and complex formulae depending on the creativity of the CIO and indulgence from the CFO.

Chargebacks became a discussion, debate, and topic of angst for many customers of IT (even though internal). Quality of service and Service Level Agreements became the metrics for measurement putting some IT teams in a spot. If I am going to pay (even notional), then I am fair in demanding not realizing that before it became explicit, they were anyway paying in adjustments done by the CFO for all support functions. Negotiations started on why the price is not lower, expecting justification for every line item as experienced by my friend.

Consultants then convinced Management to outsource the entire IT organization to experts offering efficiency of scale, repeatability and predictability to process, tools and technology enabled remote support and fix, again shrinking cost per unit. The big wave of outsourcing promised the moon with numbers that convinced Boards to give it a serious look. IT is not your business or core, so create complexity to manage; give up to the experts, focus on what matters. CIOs struggled through this phase balancing cost and deliverables.

Downturns offered reality check; long-term contracts became sparse, enterprises reflected on the gains which were not as rosy as they had been painted in the beginning. The CEO of IT services or the CIO suddenly had a crisis at hand with ever demanding but dissatisfied customers; changing technology landscape, evolving and opportunistic business models threatened the uneasy balance, with the realization that neither had a choice of providers or customers. It was fragile truce which required maturity rarely observed in corporate world.

The devils choice extinguished the discussion for many enterprises though a few continued to tread down the uneven path. Changing business dynamics have now redefined the platform from running IT as a business to running business with IT. The new paradigm led by the now mature business savvy CIO is raising the bar; they are not interested in running IT or taking a subservient position,  they want to run the business and they are succeeding. I believe that CIOs can safely drop the games and achieve heights they truly deserve.

My CIO friend wiser after the discussion offered services from external large providers as an alternative and benchmark to the CEO, willing to give up his team should there be commercial gain for the business. Accepting the offer the CEO wholeheartedly supported the exercise and participated in the discussions investing time and effort as he learned about the complexity of managing IT. Three months later he signed the paper with the CIO realizing that he had a good deal to begin with. 

Is it even remotely possible to wean off users from spreadsheets ?

The CFO loves it, so does the CEO; CMO is neutral, while HR, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, and Delivery Head/Project Manager in services companies are dependent on it for their functioning. Mid-level managers and junior executives need to be adept in managing it; creators, reviewers, and approvers are happy with it. It’s probably the best and most widely used single technology solution across industries, geographies, level of hierarchy, beginner or expert, the spreadsheet has created a permanent place in our lives.

Business and technology has been enamored by the need to sift through ever increasing volumes of data to find trends to help them understand the past which may create markers for the future. From statistical to complex models and tools, the evolution has been rapid; technology evolution rose to the challenge and offered solutions to manage the volume, complexity, diversity and multiple sources of disparate data. As a result today enterprises can potentially create models that help them scale up and scale out.

Though Business Intelligence had been around for a while, since turn of the millennium BI gained popularity with significant investment by enterprises in a quest to find and sustain competitive edge. Initial euphoria died down with struggles around quality and inadequacy of available data. Enterprise users thus used their expensive tools to create better reports in comparison to transactional systems. BI became Better (Presented) Information for the intelligentsia to present in management meetings.

The intent to leverage external data sources and streams of unstructured data led to technological innovation and models that attempted to make correlations. Consultants and vendors hyped use cases fueling additional spending hoping to catch the invisible wave. Big Data, machine learning, predictive analytics, data visualization, and in-memory kept the confusion alive resulting in users finally gravitating towards the old and comfortable: download the data into spreadsheets and leave the techies alone with their toys.

With the inability of large monolithic enterprise solution providers to provide credible alternatives to mine data, everyone who used any kind of data embraced the spreadsheet as a life saver. Across layers of management, consultants, and even the basic user, rows and columns became the default way to leverage data; addition of graphs, functionality and add-ons ensured that no amount of coaxing and cajoling could separate consumers from their beloved spreadsheets. They were here to stay for good.

Spreadsheets became the poor and rich man’s BI tool as it could connect to all kinds of data sources, it allowed changes, offered flexibility, had a low learning curve, could be adapted to any kind of data. Unable to dislodge the humble tool, vendors big and small provided the ability to extract reports and output into a spreadsheet for final consumption. Ineffective implementations, lack of skills, and failure of IT and vendors to offer simplicity, and resistance to change has unanimously made the spreadsheet the de-facto standard.

Wannabe heroes attempted to change this universal reality only to be politely or brazenly told to back off since alternatives were short on functionality or feature. Idealists who persisted joined the ranks of martyrs or were sent on wild goose chase. Management consultants will point out in their diagnostic reports that enterprises should desist from using spreadsheets since they allow data manipulation and lacks controls; the same consultants shamelessly build models on spreadsheets for critical work functions.

So when a CEO told me he hated spreadsheets, I was taken aback; without waiting for a response, he wistfully hoped that leaders and managers would start using BI tools for consumption of data, trends, analytics, and reviews. His company had invested heavily in a big name much discussed BI/DW technology solution and still continued to get his daily dashboard on a spreadsheet. He sought help to alleviate this situation and become a benchmark like much named global competitor who had case studies from almost every vendor.

He is not alone in this lament, many enterprises have invested and not been able to wean executives off. Is it futile to even attempt this ? What would it take to achieve this presumably utopian goal ? I believe that if people will not get off spreadsheets, BI will have to come to spreadsheets. It has been happening with some of the vendors, others are following; it will remain the primary tool for consuming data, dashboards, and analytics due to its entrenched nature. That is how I consoled the CEO that this is probably a good compromise today.

After all a wise man said “If you can’t beat them, join them”.

Delayed decisions, rushed implementation, the story of our lives

This is continued from the previous week, click here to access the first part.

Predicament at every company: a year from the time the project was conceptualized, the deal was concluded. Year-end pushed start of the project by another month. Everyone’s patience had reached a break point; the originally estimated project plan of 8 months was trashed with a view that it needs to be done faster. The business wanted it done in 5, the CIO was willing to push for 7; the vendor knew it will take 8 months realistically; having lost time no one wanted to accept reality thus putting the project to risk.

And that is how they got started on a project that was beginning to lose relevance after the elapsed time since it was identified as a business need. The project team was cobbled together with an eclectic mix and the vendor provided his best team at that time. The compromise plan of 6 months appeared achievable with the fine-tuned steps which required rigor thus far unseen with the team. The CIO and the function head wanted to stay involved but other priorities and fires competed for their attention.

Customers had embraced the new offering of which competitors enjoyed the benefits, being early in the market. Demand was at its peak and the company wanted to regain some of the lost ground and recover loyal customers; so they pressed on with the effort. Like all projects this one did not get off the ground with ease, the baggage of the delay was too large to discard. The first fortnight saw slippage of a day which was deemed recoverable; but by the end of the month it had stretched to three days.

The second monthly steering committee had an uninvited guest who was pleasantly surprised to learn of the progress made; the CEO thus complemented the team for their commitment promising them a brighter future. With redoubled effort everyone applied themselves to the challenge as if it was the ultimate test of their skills and their existence depended on it. Passion hitherto unknown ran through the team with mini celebrations marking crossing of milestones and camaraderie that had the potential to become corporate folklore.

Moving through the project stage gates and two months remaining, the peak appeared to be within grasp; the team did not relax or let their guard down. Their perseverance and togetherness is what management books profess as the secret sauce to team effectiveness. The team was surprised by the random occurrence of the CIO and the business head for an impromptu review and words of encouragement; little did they know the deliberate design between the two to let the team discover their formula for success while they kept a watchful eye.

Finishing touches to the offering is what remained with two weeks to launch, cross checking and verifying results. The tension in the air was palpable, excitement infectious, the team bonding complete in their quest for glory. A couple of members had left traversing the tough terrain unable to take the pressure, few were eased out with their unwillingness to change polluting the team. There was no bitterness for these colleagues, the focus unwavering; other parts of the organization were taking notice of the magic.

Success was declared with one day to spare much to the delight of the team who had forgotten to breathe in their commitment to deliver. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief, congratulatory messages poured in from across the enterprise, the CIO put the team in front to receive the truly deserved accolades. The vendor had never experienced success of this type and was animatedly excited backslapping everyone around. The CEO and the Board commended the commitment and leadership of the two believers.

While decision delays on project initiation are normal, the recovery and delivery on committed time with quality is a rare occurrence. Over the last three decades in corporate life and sports, I have observed consistently winning teams’ exhibit synergistic and symbiotic relationship between team members, accepting diversity and complementary skills. They stay cohesive with invisible leadership thus giving opportunity to each team member to take charge as the situation changes discounting hierarchies and titles.

Have you experienced such magic before ? Share your story …

Companies take inordinately long to take a decision and then set unreasonable timelines for execution

There was a sense of urgency towards getting the system up and running and rightly so considering that competition had already launched; the industry had seen cutthroat tactics to stay ahead of the game as the gap between similar offerings had reduced to barely a few months. It was thus critical for companies to shed their legacy way of working and embrace agility; this was well acknowledged in however some parts of the organization were unable to rise to the occasion thus slowing down the company, putting pressure on IT to deliver to an unreasonable schedule.

Scenarios like this play out across domains and geographies with disruption not just within the incumbent players but also from digital startups who are turning business models upside down. The universality immerses itself until someone breaks out and creates a scurry of activity by others to eliminate the difference and then again uneasy calm prevails with the cycle repeating itself many times over. In a hypercompetitive world that is a way of life, but unpardonable for business as usual decisions.

The CIO was asked to evaluate technologies for a business problem that faced the industry with regulators breathing down their necks. Cost of non-compliance was high and so was the budget for implementing the solution; however it had a clear ROI of less than two years. Since the project was important, rather than handing over responsibility to one of the team members, the CIO decided to work with one of this trusted team members. They got started with vigor and enthusiasm that pleased the business teams.

Global and local vendors reached out to strut their wares, wanting to impress their differentiators and suitability to the proposed opportunity. The specification document was well laid out on intent and requirement leaving little doubt or ambiguity. The evaluation process started with extensive demonstrations, transparency and rigor, with formal and informal customer reference calls. No one could have faulted the process; vendors, business users, most applauded the professional approach to doing business.

Three months later the CIO and his protégé with the business head presented their evaluation to the Management Committee. They were given a timeslot towards the end of the meeting since there were other important matters to discuss (like the next offsite for the senior leadership, the first item on the agenda apart from the usual monthly sales performance). Delay in the proceedings finally gave them 10 minutes which they accepted as the next meeting would mean a delay which they could ill afford.

As they unraveled the solution the CFO caught a number and decided it was too expensive irrespective of the payback period and asked the team to come up with alternatives. The fact that competition had already deployed from among the suggested solutions did not matter. Resigned to the fact that they will have to come back another day, they thanked the audience and left much to the relief of some of the members who wanted to go home; the CFO’s parting shot to the CIO: find open source options.

Time passed quickly, the following month was the offsite and subsequent month was half yearly results meeting. The CIO and business head decided to approach the CEO for assistance and seek approval by meeting individual members of the Committee. The CEO listened and asked them to get approval from the CFO before taking it to others; few weeks later they were in discussion. The CFO reviewed the proposal, understood the rationale and asked them to refine the numbers and put it up in the next meeting.

D-day arrived, the presentation received the usual slot and were welcomed into the Boardroom with tired smiles. They went through the pitch, the proposal given in-principle approval, the financials to be validated by Finance who were also tasked with negotiations. Vendor Account Manager having moved on, the proposal past its due date, the vendor was unwilling to offer the same price leaving the CIO, Business and Finance teams at a roadblock. So they went back to the Committee to plead for additional funds.

Six months later and a year from the time the project was conceptualized, they concluded the deal. Year-end pushed the start of the project by another month. By this time everyone’s patience had stretched to a break point; so the project plan was trashed with a view that it should be done faster than the original estimate of 8 months. The business wanted 5, the CIO was willing to push for 7, the vendor knew it will take 8 months realistically, but no one wanted to accept reality putting the project to risk.

This predicament presents itself in almost every project across companies !

What happened in the end ? Come back next week !

IT project success are Business success too, learning from disasters – Part 3

With the CEO’s ratification the challenged implementation was turned around by the CIO along with the business teams; the project eventually delivered more than the original expectation becoming a first in the industry. The big name consultant wisely stayed mum on the episode and focused on discussing other projects they were involved in; the CIO stayed understated in his success letting the Sales team talk about stories from the field. The CEO raised the question, what has been the learning in the turnaround and success ?

The question appeared to be thrown across the room to no one in particular though the individuals who had to fend the query knew that they were in the spotlight. In adversity most find it difficult to provide the facts as they occur; it requires enormous courage to accept that something did not go as planned. Irrespective of the cause, acknowledging and individually or collectively owning up to an unsatisfactory decision is not normal human behavior. People can write reams on what contributed to success, so the ask required brave confessions.

Ensuing silence appeared to stretch time making seconds appear like hours; everyone was glaring at their shoes and hoped the other would start ! Seeing no movement, the CIO stood up to speak, he was waved to by the Sales Head to sit down. Slowly he rose from his chair, looked around the room and nodded to the CEO that he shall apprise the group of the journey that had created lots of heartburn, frayed tempers, and accusations before eventual success. The aggregation of facts, observations and learning took everyone by surprise.

Failures are orphans who no one wants to adopt; people attempt to make them stick onto others shying away from their direct or indirect contribution by the way of their actions or inaction. The position within the organization hierarchy does not matter, everyone hates to acknowledge their contribution to the outcomes. At times failure to act or raise the flag when we see something that does not appear to be in harmony has a cascading effect on the team which accepts suboptimal solutions with a view that it is not my problem.

Disconnect from reality and inability to see from others frame of reference while imposing our views by virtue of rank, position or loudness of voice, leads to reluctant participation by the team despite the gut feel that wants to protest. We take a frivolous stand or approach to some of the mundane detail when presented, wanting to surf at 30,000 ft. thereby not providing the benefit of experience or holistic view that could improve the end result. Patching bad process or automating it hurtles us towards disaster quicker and we blame the technology !

When the downward spiral begins and there is no hope for nirvana, we find scapegoats, which 

typically end up being the meek or the geeks since both are unable to find a voice. We hasten the judgement and move on from the bad news; we rarely want to get to root cause analysis, institutionalized learning. Introspection and internal team review is a scarce phenomenon in the corporate work which does not take failures lightly. Fail fast sounds good in case studies and management books, we don’t like it when it happens in our teams.

I am thankful to our CEO to have raised the question and provide the opportunity to bring out the learning in our project – what rather than who. We all know how we contributed to what happened. Everything that I said happened in this case of our Sales system. We started with flawed assumptions and bad design, we skipped due diligence, we did not connect consistently with the process on the ground. And when the system failed to deliver, we found a scapegoat in the vendor knowing fully well they cannot retaliate.

Our CIO did not flinch during the predicament he faced, he demonstrated maturity that we should learn from, and I thank him for holding it together. I would also like to meet the vendor and thank his team for standing through thick and thin and keeping the faith. Let’s apply the lessons across the company and ensure that we do not falter in any venture, project, collaboration, or cause, by remaining alert to such behavior. I give freedom to every member of the team to challenge constructively to create better outcomes for ourselves.

The management team gave him a standing ovation; he had spoken from the heart which connected with everyone. He had said what everyone wanted to but were hesitant; he personified what they wanted to be.

Links to Part 1 and Part 2

IT project success are Business success too, what about failures ?

It was pronounced a total disaster by the Sales Head in the management meeting; the teams were unable to use the solution that was launched with much fanfare and back slapping just a few months back. Usage reports indicated compliance of less than 20% from across the ranks with multiple reasons fighting for top position. Other CXOs backed the Sales Head in their vociferous chant about IT inability to meet business requirements. Everyone joined hands to blame the development vendor, unanimously agreeing that they should be fired.

The project was the culmination of work done by big name management consulting company along with the sales and marketing teams working in a cross functional team. The new CIO had joined the project mid-way through and followed the process to its conclusion. The project was handed over to an existing partner who had created the earlier version of the solution much against the wishes of the big name consulting partner who wanted to build the solution albeit at a budget 10 times larger than the incumbent software company.

Sales team had been using version 1.0 for some time with basic functionality and low cost device, a good starting point for the company. The IT team and the vendor worked hard to deploy the new system raising usage to 70% with some potholes and an uneven ride. The data captured served the initial purpose and the teams wanted to move up the value chain in customer engagement and market data capture. The Consultants engaged in other work with the Sales team coerced their way into the project to add value to the new process.

As the new specifications emerged the CIO was wary of the unwieldy system that emerged from the stables of management consulting. His views were brushed aside with pompousness that only big consultants know how to pull off, which they did especially when they did not get to build the system. They defined the Project governance and reporting with all the “best practices” that have never been collectively used putting significant overhead on the development team with challenged timelines that they had no choice but to accept.

The vendor CEO took the CIO into confidence wanting to abdicate but was cajoled into staying with a promise to make amends in the future. He knew that the Consultant would find many reasons to plot their downfall and the project had limited chance of success. Reluctantly he accepted putting his best team to work and treat the project as a learning of better coding standards, governance, and project management; he was painfully aware that declining the project would have shut the doors at this customer forever for his small company.

Struggling through the process, burning the team, the vendor delivered to the unreasonable timeline; the pilot was deployed with a small team who rejected the system as cumbersome and unusable. Sales highlighted many impractical processes which had been introduced by the Consultant despite protests. The vendor took the big list in his stride and worked to deliver knowing well that the cause was already lost but not giving up hope. On the other side the IT team attempted to manage perceptions while business winced at the lost opportunity.

The quarterly management meeting is when things came to a boil and blew the lid; fire the vendor appeared to be an appropriate redemption to the cause. The consultant fueled the fire with “If we had done it, the project would have worked” and “I told you so …” remarks. The business teams were not interested in the blame game, they wanted the project to work; they stressed a simpler process which can be easily executed on the field; they were not interested in the far-fetched analytics proposed by the Consultant.

Not accepting the fait accompli, the CIO stood up requesting permission to speak: The project started with flawed process design which was pushed through by the Consulting Company; which Consultant should be fired ? The business head and the business project lead accepted the large forms that found no traction with the field staff; which business lead or head should pay the penalty ? If we can decide on this, I will definitely fire not just the IT vendor, but also people from my team responsible for the fiasco; we all are responsible for where we are !

On hearing the episode, I wanted to nominate the CIO for all the possible leadership awards; may his breed multiply !

PS: Curious what happened in the end ? Wait for the next episode.

Why is IT so different from other industries ? A Customer’s perspective

We are amongst the largest construction houses in business for many decades; we have provided homes to tens of thousands of people, offices and commercial spaces to many companies. We build them to standard specifications with nominal deviations depending on customer requests. We also create custom commercial spaces for customers which we deliver within timelines and budgets; they love us for the quality and with some we have done repeat business too. We strive to stay the benchmark for the industry.

Why cannot the IT industry also follow similar principles when they build software solutions ? Take the case of our homes or standard commercial offering: they are like packaged software, you the base product and customize it with your own décor, furniture, and fixtures, to personalize the way it looks. Standard software products implementations are like this; Vendors offer AMC contracts to maintain and provide continuous support, we do that with our facilities management offerings in larger complexes and commercial offerings.

Our built-to-order or custom campus/buildings for large companies are similar to IT industry offering of bespoke solutions based on defined requirements. Requirements are signed off before construction starts; any changes post sign-off are expensive and follow change management process. IT does the same, right ? The difference comes after that ! Once we have built and handed over the building, we move off giving the customer the source code (drawings); they rarely come back to us after that for anything.

My IT project has been on for years; a large team has been working on it. They have delivered in phases though there have been many changes from where we started. The large team appears to have become a permanent fixture, always tinkering with the software, modifying it, tuning it, making changes at times unknown to us. I think they will be around as long as we use the software ! In my business nothing like this ever happens; can you imagine construction workers and others lingering on after residents have started staying ?

The comparison set me thinking about the differences and similarities not just with the construction industry but also drew parallel with other industries like automobiles, white goods, consumer products and even the service industry. There were many similarities like the above comparison, but none of the industries came anywhere close to the characteristics observed in IT. Why is the IT so industry different when compared with some of the long-standing behaviors that depict the way business is done by other industries ?

Let’s bifurcate the industry into two parts: the first which manufactures physical devices like desktops, laptops, mobiles, printers, networking equipment etc. These come from different manufacturers with their own brand identities and features; nominal change is possible, mostly using add-ons, rarely with change in core. Customers buy based on their preference and brand affinity; the industry competes on features and value added services, no different from the value proposition articulated by the CEO of the Construction Company.

The software industry again divides itself into 2 segments: commercial off the shelf (COTS) or custom solutions. COTS personal use solutions are easy to deploy and need little if any expertise to get started. COTS enterprise solutions on the other hand require armies of skilled resources to build a usable version; however this is changing with modular standardized process based offering on pay-per-use similar to renting ready to move-in office space. Most companies are beginning to see benefit in the new way of deploying such solutions.

Bespoke development is different and does indeed require continuous build and manage capabilities from IT. This is like the custom built office which is expected to adapt and keep changing based on multiple parameters like occupancy and attendance, male or female worker needs, external environment, day or night, seasons of the year, and do so with minimal disruption. This leads to a lag between requirement and delivery while requiring skilled resources to change configurations, test and deploy with herculean agility.

Comparisons thus create interesting scenarios to reflect on reality as others see it; as long as companies believe that their enterprise, processes, industry cannot be served by standard COTS solutions, the IT services industry will continue to thrive and grow to meet the demand. CEOs and CIOs will engage in the inane debate on optimizing IT while business has a free hand to create anarchic and at times necessary process change. The other factor being the survival of high maintenance prehistoric solutions which people have found impossible to dislodge. 

Chief Inaction Officer: I will do nothing until I am explicitly asked to

An audit finding raised the compliance flag which necessitated the CIO to take action; he acknowledged the limitation and was thus tasked to find a solution to be deployed before the next audit. The technical team was summoned and the task assigned between 2 of his deputies who controlled the applications and the infrastructure respectively. With healthy contempt for each other, they thrived in challenging each other, at times with detrimental effect to deliverables. Their professional strengths secured them in their positions.

The problem was not unsolved in the industry and there were standard offerings that collectively created the solution required. To the CIO thus the issue at hand appeared to be an easily resolvable one, the criticality defined by the compliance requirements within the stipulated time. The team went through the motions and presented the solution and budget to the CIO who was struck by a red herring; was it a decoy or reality ? It appeared to be a new player in the market, the solution quite elegant and better than the sum of parts that made other solutions.

So he probed further inviting the vendor to present their value proposition; his team willingly obliged sensing an opportunity to differentiate from the normal. Multiple meetings and presentations later the CIO requested a Proof of Concept which was diligently completed by the team and results submitted. In a normal scenario, vendors would push for closure post a successful PoC; the vendor did the same and was then updated on the decision making cycle; the CIO then proceeded to present the solution to the Board for approval.

Boards typically want a solution to a business problem or an opportunity; they are largely agnostic to the technology solution. True to form the board left the technology decision on the CIO’s best judgement citing that they were interested in compliance using the best possible technology at the lowest possible cost. Unwilling to take a risk with no clear technology mandate, the CIO did what he was good at; no decision while keeping the vendor at bay with meaningful and irrational questions and finally an unreasonable price.

The CIO sought to validate the solution with the Technology Advisory Committee who deferred the decision back to the CIO; referring to the Regulator, he asked for a guideline on the solution which was not forthcoming. The Regulator declined to specify the technology while impressing upon the Company to expedite the solution deployment within the timeline. The passing time had the CIO under pressure while his team stood divided on between the conventional and the innovative solutions giving no solace to the cornered CIO.

The vendor attempted to provide necessary documentation that was duly submitted to the Committee and the Regulator, both maintaining status quo. The vendor demonstration immense patience stayed engaged with the team through the imbroglio and parallel commercial negotiations as the deal appeared close but open through the elapsed time of over 6 months. The impatient CEO was counseled to provide a direction which he finally did in the interest of progress sensing that the CIO will continue to dither on the decision.

Technology teams under the CIO are expected to be the evaluators, evangelists, proponents and finally the educators of possible technology solutions to the business. Heightened awareness of possibilities from technology with business users does make them influencers and at times critics of technology, the decision finally rests with the technology teams and accountability with the CIO. The unwillingness or inability to take a decision does not reflect positively on the leadership of the CIO and adversely impacts the team’s credibility.

Observations from the industry do indicate a set of CIOs who are extremely risk averse and they rarely take decisions on new technologies satisfied with being followers. They are good operational managers and struggle in their ability to partner with the business to impact business performance indicators. In the changing business environment with technology agility a necessity and essential to stay meaningful with disruptive business models threatening the core and existence, it is imperative for CIOs to embrace the new and leave business as usual to their teams or outsourced partners.

A good decision now is worth a lot more than the best decision after delayed analysis paralysis !

Analyst prediction come true: large enterprise with no CIO

For many years there have been predictions that with changing technology and business landscape, the CIO role will disappear. Triggers were real and imaginary – evolving or disruptive technology, shift in organization dynamics as a result of external environmental and economic factors – everyone loved to bash up the CIO and predicated extinction of the role. The hypothesis became a favorite topic of discussion in every CIO and technology conference; CIOs attempted to defend themselves and then decided to ignore the doomsayers.

The existence of the role can be traced to the turn of the century which demonstrates its recent nature. The first CIOs evolved from engineering and technology foundation which became a perceived disadvantage for many since they lacked the social skills and finesse of other longer tenured CXOs. This did not deter some who with their excellence created business outcomes that the industry recognized; they became the stars which others wanted to emulate; after all who does not want to be successful and showered with adulation ?

Fast forward to current times, yet another buzz and hype has analysts talking about why the CIO should move on to becoming the Chief Digital Officer or become extinct. Micro-specializing the role to a technology or trend seems to be the avenue to create a scare; forgetting the current complexity and nature of the beast being managed to keep the business chugging along, growing the company with stable and mature IT systems acquired over a period of time. CIOs have taken this in their stride by hiring experts from the outside.

Finding greener pastures in lateral moves, some CIOs decided to branch off into Human Resources, Supply Chain, Operations, Corporate Social Responsibility, at times as dual responsibilities. There has also been a handful who made it to the big corner office as the CEO of not just IT companies, but even large enterprises where they had spent time as CIO. The surprise however has been that CIOs from the first batch now crossing over the half way mark – age of 50+ sounds a bit old – beginning to seek an alternative calling in life.

·        I want to be a Coach ! I love interacting with people and helping them be successful; the training that I acquired over the years has prepared me to be a certified Coach & Mentor.

·        I would love to help startups to achieve their growth with better products that someone will buy; most of them have struggled to create a connect with enterprise use cases.

·        My life went by in a whirlwind; I want to catch up with my life and family before it is too late. I want to enjoy my life pursuing my passions for which I had no time in my work life.

·        Having been a CIO for more than 25-30 years, I have been working in automatic mode; the challenges of the role are no longer enough to stimulate me. I want to do something different.

Many of my peers from the industry were getting restless and wanted to get off the treadmill. The lure of fame, power, money, stock options, was not enough to keep them interested in their mundane and at times frustrating roles. Their self-actualization needs were getting starved and for most it was a matter of time or a trigger that made them take the plunge. In almost every case, the first reactions from the industry was: OMG ! What happened ? Did something go wrong ? Why did he leave without any options ?

They had set a good teams in place, working in harmony aligned to optimized processes that ensured minimal disruption with their departure. Everything continued to work as before though in a few company’s new initiatives and discussions around technology led disruption fell silent. The wheels of the enterprise continued to move on their own until the momentum began to slow down in the absence of the energy that the CIO brought to the table. Many companies decided to continue the journey while leaving the position vacant.

What will be the short and long-term impact of this decision ? None of the analysts, academicians, or the opinionated have ever attempted to answer this question. If the CIO has thought it through, s/he would have prepared the next line to scale up to fill the void; that limits the impact to short-term. Enterprises with checkered history of IT use and adoption have attempted to park the role with another CXO with a view that leadership in IT is unimportant. This is where I believe the adverse effects will be felt for a long time. 

Professionally correct or Politically correct decisions and alignment

The company had decided to undertake an IT led transformation journey; the Board and Management including the CIO had agreed that this would help the company move to the next level of performance. Digital upstarts were threatening their existence, creating a business environment with reducing margins. This might sound like unfamiliar situation to many businesses, reality being that all industries are facing such situations from Angel and VC funded business models that surprisingly do not appear to be financially viable.

The new competitors grew in leaps and bounds leaving them struggling to stay relevant in the digital euphoria the market embraced. The company was forced to look outside its old school of thought which had worked well for decades in a customer engaged relationship model. They did not need incremental change, a revolution was imminently required and everyone knew it though it was rarely spoken of in operational review meetings; after all the current foundation had built the business to the level where they were now.

The foundation was set by the founders when they seeded the business; they were technologically on par and business competed on even keel. With pace of innovation increasing, the company started lagging behind though the brand kept them moving ahead. Despite insufficient expertise, the founders continued to interfere in every technology decision thus widening gap. They did use technology, sketchy at best leaving many open unaddressed and manual processes rendering technology led automation ineffective.

What will boss say ! How can we tell him we need better systems ! The world has gone mobile, we are yet to start ! He will not agree to change the existing platform even though it has outlived its usefulness. Laden with perceptions of embarrassing the promoters or rebuke from the boss, people refrained from raising the matter of obsolescence of existing solutions and resultant efficiency deficit. People accepted increasing inefficiency and worked harder to keep going; it was a losing battle which came to notice soon enough.

Business results in the face could not be ignored. Hurting from ignominy finally the management decided to wake up from self-imposed slumber. IT got the blame squarely for neglecting the business, the CIO replaced and a ray of hope for everyone with new talent wanting to create quick wins. Multiple discussions with vendors facilitated with external help, it was the beginning of renaissance. After the initial progress things started slowing down rapidly. The new CIO was confused and sought an ally to push forth the new agenda.

Every technology discussion required presence of the head honcho; his opinions were cast in stone which no one dare challenge. His legendary obstinacy had no cure, the CIO was advised to toe the party line or face irrelevance or eventual expulsion. He accepted reality and attempted to work towards making progress to the best of his ability. Technology decisions were taken were reviewed and changed frequently leaving the vendors and the CIO helpless; attempts to educate increased the uncertainty of progress.

Some of the technology choices were overturned unilaterally, the CIOs given the task of conveying the decisions to the vendor community. Internally the old hands were immune to this churn of verdicts having lived in uncertainty, accepting it as destiny. For the CIO, the professional in him had difficulty in accepting suboptimal solutions, he seethed with frustration. He faced a difficult dilemma; he knew that irrespective of the decision he took, someone will be hurt. Unfortunately that someone happened to be himself.

He turned to his mentors seeking salvation; some advised him to take the predicament head-on and not accept a compromise; after all how could he accept this dictating of technology to a technologist ? The pragmatic and realistic suggested that he set aside his pride and make the best of what he had and work towards delivery even if the solutions were conciliatory. Rest sympathized with him and promulgated survival over creating a better world; you are of no use dead to anyone, so stay alive and do what you can within the constraints.

The CIO made his choices and survived the ordeal, the organization continues to make snail like progress losing market share, vendors have ceased following up, and the world continues to evolve ! Business world has many case studies of companies unable to change that have now been relegated to history. Charles Darwin quoted “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change”, while Edward Deming quipped “It is not necessary to change, survival is not mandatory”.

Ahem !

Setting expectations is as necessary as manage them for everyone !

He was technically sound and had a proven track record creating and managing IT infrastructure in his chosen industry across multiple entities; recently he had moved into a position of power and influence in his new assignment and was enjoying flexing his muscles. Reaching out to vendors and others in the industry he announced his intentions engaging them in discussions that had most of them wanting to be part of future plans. After spending more than two decades in the industry he had aspirations of making it to the corner office.

The new company needed the fresh look he brought to the table; his hands-on approach is what was required to move them to the next level of efficiency. The company had consistently approached IT as a necessary evil to spend only when absolutely necessary resulting in decade old servers, geriatric laptops and desktops, and teenage neglected applications. The management took a penny pinching view of IT budgets always wanting to defer, delay or procrastinate on decisions after squeezing the proverbial last drop from vendors.

His demeanor driven by professional knowledge bordered on loud and brash, at times tended towards arrogance. To his credit he built relationships and trust quickly with the management getting their ear and then toeing the party line; with his ability to manage relationships and not being disruptive to the culture, he became part of the inner circle getting a view to the workings of the company though unable to change the decision making inertia. So he decided to enrol external help which he hoped would trigger positive change.

The hired external consultant provided a reality check and direction to take which he reviewed with his internal peers. Collectively they had a limited view which stalled progress; they knew what needed to be done but did not know how to get started with internal buy-in. Sliding timelines favored no one and the report finally elicited a view from the management chastising him for not delivering what was required. The absence of an articulated and documented expectation, it was like hitting a moving target in the dark !

He attempted to calm ruffled feathers on both sides though finally bowing to the management view with his subservient survival instinct prevailing over his professional pride. Capability and self-belief is a function of experience endorsed by past success. Professionals take a stand with conviction driven by confidence that is built on a foundation of deep expertise in a specific area; shallowness of bravado is quite evident when challenged. He backed off and tentatively offered to build a bridge which would save the situation.

Status quo dragged on for a while with silence and no action leaving the organization in suspension and users becoming restless after having seen a ray of hope. The company used to suboptimal process and technology solution continued to labour with obsolete and incomplete solutions while the industry was fast pacing ahead into a new world of digitally enabled customer engagements. For the newbie, it was a struggle for meaningful existence while wanting to change the outcomes he knew were possible with some of the recommendations.

Any strategy or plan with no resources, will, and buy-in to execute, is waste of time, effort, storage space and paper ! Contextually the difficulty was the management’s unwillingness to define what is required while expecting not just the necessary but the best of outcomes. There are many avenues to explore and break the deadlock, advice that coaches and consultants can offer to overcome the situation. Conventional wisdom will preach that the service provider to take a step backward and find a way to resolve the stalemate.

If you were the protagonist, what would you do ? Would you take a stand and risk losing your job ? If you were the management, would you give up your high chair and create a tripartite agreement on expected outcomes ? And if you were the consultant, how would you resolve the impasse with no access to the management and dependence on IT to find a solution ? If we analyse the situation, every stakeholder erred in the beginning by not defining the baseline or setting detailed explicit expectations. It’s a lose-lose scenario now !

Was the ending happy and satisfactory for everyone ? Coming soon …

Big customer of a small vendor, or small customer of a big vendor

The CEO was perplexed that despite his product having all the features and more when compared to the market leader, most enterprise customers were shy of giving him business. His product was priced at a discount to the larger and dominant players thus providing great business cases and ROI; the technology platform was current versus competition. Customers liked the product and agreed that it met specifications and requirements; however it did not result in business. His company was a young startup and had few customers.

The world of startups is exploding and they offer solutions for existing and imaginary problems that you may have never thought about. Consumer applications are finding their way into the enterprise while the choices for enterprise applications have increased manifold. Convergence across the differing use cases creates opportunities for IT to automate and/or create new process efficiencies. These are beginning to offer viable alternatives to the large vendor solutions with complex licensing models and maintenance contracts.

Meeting a few entrepreneurs exhibited the most prominent feature across all the discussions was the belief and the passion in their ideas. Everyone had a dream to challenge the big players, wanted to solve problems of the world, and almost everyone was born a digital native. For these individuals the pursuit of their dream overshadowed the difficulties they faced learning to survive in fiscal deficit. With loads of infectious enthusiasm they happily demonstrate the value of what they have or plan to build to anyone interested.

They have like-minded teams with great technology skills and ability to create solutions with velocity that puts many enterprise IT teams to shame. They are able to react quickly to market and demands of their sparse customers; the struggle is largely around creating a dialogue with business and IT leaders on how their solutions will benefit the enterprise. They are the advocates and the best salespersons for their companies and solutions and in an endeavor to get first few customers, it is highly probable that they are willing to offer bargain prices.

Most enterprise CIOs and business heads find themselves meeting these entrepreneurs more often, now competing with the larger well established local or global solution providers. The gorillas with loads of muscle power, large number of customers, and an ecosystem of system integrators create doubts in the minds of potential buyers on the stability and longevity of the minnows. Thus in the face of perceived risk most customers end up making the expensive choice of going with the well-entrenched players.

Good news is that there is a wave of fresh air wafting through the crevices in the enterprise fortress – the data center and the application landscape; some successful and early adopter CIOs have taken calculated risks and the call to work with startups. The benefits in almost call cases have been beyond compare with quick and unbelievable ROI; for the struggling beginners these saviors were embraced and they stretched to exceed expectations. The CIOs pleased with success built symbiotic relationships by mentoring them.

For the safety net seekers following conventionally long implementation cycles, the larger players provided rich functionality though with restrictive practices offering ROI over 2-3 years. They became victims of their choices when they could have taken an alternative approach and experimented with the newer generation solutions and enjoyed associated benefits. The loss of agility came with its own set of challenges considering the fact that rarely a solution change is undertaken after long cycle of implementation.

Startups nurture their customers who imposed faith in them; large enterprise customers bring them credibility. They contributed significantly to their revenues which in turn helps them raise money from interested sources. For the large players another customer is just another customer even if you are a dominant force in the industry; exception being companies who are larger than these large vendors and they are just a handful. Relatively size does makes a difference to the treatment the vendors give to a customer.

All things being equal the question is where do you want to be ? A big customer to a small vendor or a small customer of a big vendor ? Your choices will determine not just your success but also your ability to influence the product direction, shape industry solutions, and finally give you a financial advantage. Having been in all the three camps, I would say that being a big customer of a startup outweighs the perceived risks; the sluggishness imposed by big vendors can be a big challenge; finally as a part of startups now I love big customers !

How not to implement an ERP in today's world

I recently met one of the senior team members of an enterprise who had decided to move away from bespoke custom developed solutions to implement a market leading ERP solution. For the company it was a big step forward after much discussion, debate and hesitation on the changeover and expected resultant business impact. They had thought about it many times, engaged with different consultants to assess the business case and every time decided to retain status quo fearing business disruption and no change readiness.

The ERP wave that started in the mid and late nineties ebbed almost a decade back with almost everyone taking one or other solution. The resultant automation, integration of business processes, and transparency brought about a quantum jump in efficiency for most. Some enterprises resisted the change to process and practices embedded in the solutions, ending up with highly customized implementations. They delivered superior results over the earlier tailored solutions though with overhead of maintaining the custom code.

In the ensuing years with the changing industry and economic dynamics, maturity and evolution of the solutions with new features and technology, and new business models, the ERP implementations began to appear as monolithic and unwieldy. The high level of customization became a roadblock towards leveraging newer technology and innovation. Soon it was evident that new strategies will be required to overcome the agility challenge; to gain benefit from the new age solutions, it became imperative to review the IT landscape.

Business CIOs took up the challenge and recommended trimming bolt-on and fringe solutions with every version and technology upgrade. The brave ones endorsed and took up reimplementation of their ERPs which eliminated changes to the core solutions and depended on parameterization over custom code to the extent possible. Advent of the Digital world and on-demand service models gave them an opportunity to stay current and relevant. Few who had implemented out-of-the-box solutions stood validated and happy.

In conversation with my friend I was curious to learn about his journey on the project which had high visibility in the industry due to the large size and complexity as well as the reputation of his company being risk averse. They had gone live after multiple misses to the timeline stretching the project to a level where the fainthearted would have got palpitations. He was not too happy with the end outcome; the project which to begin with had been planned well down to the last level of detail had not gone the anticipated way for many.

The going in mandate was to stay with out-of-the-box best practice processes and functionality with help of one of the best global implementation partners. Everyone had aligned to this direction which was deemed to be the best approach for a large enterprise. Functionality was cast in alignment to available features, changing process to ensure that business requirements are met. Progress suddenly faced potholes and bottlenecks with some new constituents challenging every decision that steered away from changing the system.

Archaic views prevailed over commonsense and best practices were overruled as being irrelevant to the company’s context. The direction was changed to the well-trodden path of an era gone by as the new players had only been on that track which lay mothballed and abandoned by the newer generation of IT leaders and followers. Thus began the regressive journey of change that brought in a battalion of programmers to fit all processes with customizations even if it meant breaking the core to batter the system into a familiar face.

When the secret chambers are opened and fundamental innards tinkered with, something has to break; and it did colossally spinning a spiral from which it became difficult to surface. Despite the writing on the wall the team plodded through with fear of retribution should they even raise a whimper. Deadlines came and went. The chaos and delays started hurting the business who finally found their voice and asked uncomfortable questions. The inept leadership reduced project scope, blamed everyone but themselves, and finally declared go-live with a badly bandaged system.

With an embargo on communications, the real state of affairs will probably never be known, though murmurs are heard off the records of the adverse business impact and the loss of credibility of the team with the business. Published numbers do indicate everything is not hunky dory; I guess that this episode will remain under the carpet for some time to come. Custom applications and customizing commercial off the shelf systems are getting buried. Unfortunately the challenged in positions of power continue to hurtle enterprises down the ravines of ignominy.

You have become a Business CIO, but where is your team ?

The IT team was pleased with the effort and congratulated each other for the delivery. The team had worked hard with the development partner to meet aggressive timelines and delivered for UAT a few days early. But that is when the problem started; the team working on the UAT came up with many exceptions that poked holes in the solution; a process not captured well, some processes missing and absent data elements. It was like IT was from Mars and the business was from Venus and they blamed each other.

The CIO was peeved off by the disconnect; the vendor with high pedigree and domain expertise had been carefully and jointly chosen; the business had offered domain experts with good standing, and the IT team understood the technology well enough. So the CIO did some quick checks on the delivery versus expectations and discovered that the IT team knew the business though the understanding was not as deep as it appeared to be. There were translation losses with implicit assumptions by the business and IT.

I think the drums started beating almost a decade back on the need for the CIO to become business savvy. It was about understanding business operations so that the written and articulated processes are translated it into a solution that meets business expectations. The origin of this was the nemesis of what everyone called scope creep and resultant change requests that escalated cost and created time overruns such that the end solution at times became irrelevant to the business; bridging the gap was necessary and critical.

The CIO also had aspirations to get a seat on the Management Committee or the Operating Board or equivalent leadership team. Discussions in these meetings largely did and continue to focus on topline, operating efficiency, bottom line; essentially discuss monthly performance and numbers. Some teams had graduated to reviewing competitive activities and customer engagement while the more evolved ones discussed strategies and more openly. For the CIO to get there it was imperative that s/he understand, participate and contribute.

It took some effort and humility to make the grade, while some for whatever reason did/could not; the fruits of the effort were worth the struggle and more. As a business partner the CIO enjoyed the perks of being in the team and on the table working lockstep with other CXOs. Having a bird’s eye view of the business and a pulse of operations, the CIO stitched together the missing pieces of the jigsaw that made up the business. The transition to a business leader brought new aspirations which resulted in lateral or upward movement for a few.

The IT team reveled in the success and leadership position taken by the CIO; the adulation apart some of them attempted to follow the CIO’s footsteps that led to the transformation. The CIO was happy in his/her new found position and willingly coached anyone who wanted to follow the path. Key lessons revolved around the not so obvious soft skills which help in building relationships; s/he also stressed the need to know the chosen function or domain as well to be seen as a subject matter expert internally as well as externally.

Attempting to get to the bottom of the imbroglio, the CIO realized that the IT team involved in the project had not fully imbibed the learning citing paucity of time and work pressures. They had sidestepped some meetings and relied on their knowledge and focused on technology. The vendor to his credit had attempted to engage with the business and had suggested field trips which were deemed unnecessary by the IT team. Thus the partial understanding created a solution that evidently did not meet expectations and resulted in frustration on both sides.

It is the CIOs responsibility to push his/her team to leave their comfort zones and make the cut; business in most cases is willing to help the learning. A planned approach to engage from both sides works best; the CIO must measure the engagement levels and continuously create opportunities on both sides to appreciate each other’s expertise. Project success is an important milestone but to move to a trusted partner and advisor takes a lot more. In this case walking the talk is a difficult journey which the IT team had failed to do.

Prepare your teams the way you plan your learning, after all your success depends on them.