Business driving IT driving Business

Everyone agrees that business priorities define the IT agenda for any enterprise; the starting point is the organization business strategy, in the creation of which the CIO participates and then gets down to formulating the IT strategy that is aligned to the business objectives. It is also well understood that there are no IT projects but only business projects enabled by IT. There is no disagreement to the fact that if there is business ownership and buy-in, initiatives have better success rates when compared to projects owned and led by IT. Companies working in this framework claim higher business IT alignment or BITA.

In the current context with disruptions and changing business paradigms driven by technology, social media, mobility, every day brings new challenges and opportunities for every CXO. All of these link back to IT in some way and the responsibility rests on the CIO to help unravel the quagmire. Referentially there are many instances of wins though they do not provide the same results when replicated by others. So where is the gap ?

A recent survey on the balanced scorecard of the enterprise cascaded to CXOs revealed that in mature organizations it was difficult to differentiate between the CMO, CFO and the CIO scorecard. They appeared to mirror each other with the collective agenda being customer acquisition and retention, growth, and profitability. There was appreciation of core competency but there were no silos. Everyone had to work together to create success.

Then is the hypothesis on alignment above still relevant ? Why some of the innovation does not work with copy and paste ? What makes some organizations successful and some challenged ? In the past some of the scenarios were termed cultural or political and brushed aside; sustained success is a function of how the management team works together to support each other. When any of the functions is perceived to be first amongst equals or of lesser pedigree, then the effort required for success multiplies.

CIOs leading from the front can drive new business opportunities and models. In the case of FMCG industry, the solutions transformed the way orders were logged into the system from the field; the Pharmaceutical industry gained prescriptions using planning, targeting and reporting by the Medical Representatives on the field; retail and airlines improved customer service with queue busting. These are just a few examples of innovation driven by IT. I do not in any way take away the credit from others without their collaboration this would not have worked.

I believe that the era of alignment is passé; many CIOs have already moved beyond focus on alignment to creating new business opportunities. It is not about how IT can solve a problem but about the next leadership step driven by IT and business adapting to the new paradigm. Business no longer drives IT alone; IT has broken free of the age old postulate and is now also leading business direction. BITA and ITBA are two sides of the same coin. It does not matter which side you look at, the value remains the same.

Agile development, elongated deployment

Exchanging notes with some old friends, reminiscences of long drawn ERP or similar projects and some quick wins took us on a rollercoaster ride. Everyone had been through a couple of implementations that stretched patience and planned deployment timelines that now seem unreasonable. In those days 5-year multi-geography deployment was acceptable; after all the first implementation/deployment had to stabilize and learning imbibed before taking the next steps. Baby steps before running you know !

I remember my first ERP implementation almost two decades back that lasted almost a year; that company was the size of today’s small medium enterprise. But in those days business agility was measured in years and not in quarters or months or for that matter weeks. A decade later I was involved in a global deployment of a large back office system; we were at the tail of the global project spread over 5 years. Since the business impact was considered nominal, no one saw any issues with the 5 year cycle.

A debate then ensued attempting to answer the question that in the current uncertain world how long is long indeed and untenable ? In the age of SCRUM and hyper time sensitivity towards every change in business process or new business idea, what is an acceptable implementation plan for a project that spans multi-countries ? How long should it take to replace an ERP system or a financial accounting system across say 50 locations, each with some variances or country specific regulations or statutory reporting ? No easy answers here, I have not come across less than 3 year plans for such deployments.

It is an acknowledged fact of IT implementations that they bring about change; when we look at large scale projects, the change is always disruptive (the level of disruption varies from positive to extreme negative). The subject matter experts from the business end up with pressure of maintaining existing operations while dividing their time to project led improvements. Setting expectations and constant communication that is the hallmark of large projects rarely finds its way into the smaller innovation projects. But can this be sustained over 3-5 years ?

What about systems that are created with urgency portrayed by the business but languish in their use ? Many times IT organizations work under undue pressure to create solutions deemed critical towards continued success or to react to competition, but they end up as shelfware. Unanimous in their reality this thread triggered reactions on or lack of sign-offs. Can the CIO in such cases cite past instances and refuse to toe the line ? Probably not, the backlash of such behaviour would be extremely negative to IT.

When cloud based solutions deploy new releases, some offer customers options to use earlier versions for a short while. Not so in the case of consumer apps; when a change occurs, everyone is impacted and learns to live with the new. Why is it that we are willing to accept the change in our personal space but abhor it in the corporate environment ? Is it because that the stakes are higher or the risk averse nature of the corporate world ?

I believe the answer is in our ability to switch off and move to another in the personal space, which is not even a dream in the enterprise. If the production planning or financial accounting were to face issues post an implementation or change/upgrade, our ability is limited to rollback and not to explore new options at that time. But I am hoping there will be a day when what applies to our personal needs will also be good for the enterprise. Then the CIO will have to work harder to stay in the same place.