In this case moving the weekly status meeting from 4pm on Tuesday to 10am on Thursday allowed Alex to leave on-time every week and not miss large sections of his class. It also allowed others in the team to take part in the  the regular friendly football games that evening, boosting their fitness and energy levels.

Leadership is complex and naturally enough it is primarily focused on achieving corporate or business goals, yet often paying attention to the little things can make the important things run smoothly. These days most people are working extra hours and handling more tasks than ever before, but is this a reason for forgetting that people have personal lives and that time off recharges personal batteries.

Staff in the accounting and administration department for one company were forced to work compulsory overtime every weekend for one whole day in order to sort out the accounting mess that had arisen due to a business acquisition and procedural changes. This compulsory overtime lasted for a period of five months. By the end of the period every member of staff was complaining how drained they felt, some even stated that  working the extra day achieved nothing as their productivity was at an all-time low. Such actions may be necessary to solve a specific problem, the accounting consolidation, but there is no reason why the following year there also has to be a repeat performance, just to close the accounts at the year end.

In this case the right procedures needed to be in place to ensure that all the right steps were taken at the appropriate time. We know that there are more complex compliance and regulatory issues that must be managed for any business, but they need to be managed as a part of the normal everyday activities, whether that is by staff or through automated processes is an operation decision to be made. Key here is that doing the right thing at the right time often alleviates the need to clean up a mess later. Again a matter of training for those involved at the coal-face, but it is a question of leadership for the management team.

The key to achieving goals and visions is in managing them through small, yet achievable steps and celebrating each success along the way, as well as learning whatever lessons we can from both our failures and successes. Individual and personal goals, being achieved will help everyone move forward and that is important for the success of a team.

All goals are achievable provided everyone is motivated. Remembering back to our earlier school days obtaining a gold star was a matter of personal pride, particularly when it was on an achievement chart for everyone to see. We are all aware of the challenges facing our organisation. For those in a leading role it is important to both listen and take action when necessary. It is a series of small steps that can often make the difference, and as Neil Armstrong once said “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” What steps are you taking?

“If driven by IT, the decision is more focused on operational and architectural considerations than business requirements.”

This is a comment that seems to have been doing the rounds recently in one form or another. Lets examine more closely to see who should be responsible for project decision making.

Actually the information technology department must always take into consideration a variety of views when making a decision to purchase any software; including:

◊ Business needs

◊ Business processes

◊ Functionality offered

◊ The technology architecture

◊ Cost

◊ ROI

When a decision is made entirely by the business community then this can lead to inconsistencies in the corporate architecture, which can increase operational costs, particularly in solutions where data integration is required, for example the BI solution.

Having worked on a large number of projects over the years there is one one consistent part of any successful project – the views of the business. The author has much experience delivering projects, on one occasion he worked on two simultaneous projects to deliver the same type of solution run at two different corporations having a similar technology architecture. The results of the selection process led to the selection of two different products, all because of the business focus of the selection process.

Tough times do call for strategic decision making, but that does need to be a balanced decision considering all of the factors involved. Purchasing of solutions is never simple, but too many companies fail to perform a comprehensive business process review – the make a sweeping assumption that they must replace their ailing ERP solution. All too often it is the business process itself that is broken, not the system that supports it. Simply replacing the system without fixing the business process will only give short term gratification, within five years that corporation will be changing systems yet again; more dissatisfied than ever before with the level of service offered by their IT department. Yet the basic problem is not an IT one.

Deployments should always be executed in the best interests of the business. The way to ensure this occurs is having business boards control the spending of project budgets. It is through the partnership of business and technology management that there is the right level of sponsorship and intervention. It is not about inter-departmental turf wars, but synergy and achieving broader business goals.

Inter-systems integration can often one of the greatest challenges faced for any specific deployment. Business intelligence is always a crucial factor to consider. BI solutions must be ongoing within any corporation; every new system brings new data, which is required to continue developing the analytical capabilities. Of course any business analytics capability must grow even if there are no new systems being added.

The net result of all this change should always be a leaner and more focused organisation that is able to make intelligent, fact based decisions across the business.

This article is the third in the series on Financing the BI Solution and follows from “BI Project Decisions: Ready Made Database Options” and “Financing the Business Intelligence Project“.

The decisions we make about the solutions we buy, which must all be made at the start of any new implementation do require analysis of a wide range of factors. In the case of the BI solution these must consider the existing infrastructure and any proposed imminent changes to it. This does complicate the decision making, but it is an essential part of BI project success.

Within any Business Intelligence implementation it is necessary to understand the impact of the corporate IT architecture. The complexity of the architecture can be a key factor in identifying any plausible ready-made solution. Many organisations have a veritable spiders-web of systems and inter-relationships some of which will defy logic, yet exist they do. Whilst it is primarily the operational applications that will be providing data to the Data Warehouse that must be considered to support the solution must take a more holistic view. Any system may hold key pieces of information and is thus capable of providing data to the Warehouse.

If we examine any two companies we will become immediately aware of architectural differences between them (and these are based on real solutions provided in the past).

In one organisation there may be an evolutionary mix of systems of varying ages and types; with few systems integrated together; there are many overnight batch jobs that transfer data between systems, but no integrated approach. How the organisation was formed may have an impact on the solution needed: here acquisition has meant there are separate systems in each of 17 different countries, some are packaged solutions, but most are bespoke. For the global corporate headquarters to gather worldwide information it has to contend with a complex mix of old and new systems using different data storage standards; all potentially making this a complex solution.

Conversely a second corporations is more integrated: all applications use pre-built solutions, based on relational databases; bringing an integrated architecture, that is well documented, and has been at the foundation of its IT platforms. It should be clear to the reader that this company’s architecture is unlikely to be very complex.

It is essential as a part of the financial decision making process to grade both the business and technical complexity of the solution.

Integration of existing systems is always an essential step especially assessing the corporate legacy application architecture. Integration of systems is almost always ranked as one of the most important architectural factor when deciding whether a pre-built Data Warehouse can be implemented. Highly integrated systems can be an enabler for a ready-made database. They are not the sole reason to implement a pre-built solution.

It is necessary to add a word of warning before diving headlong into such an implementation. When companies introduce new ERP, or CRM systems there is immense pressure to introduce analytics at the same time. This can also be true for SaaS, or Cloud Computing solutions. Often this is the integrated ‘Business Warehouse’. When the new ERP or CRM is introduced it is unproven (from the business viewpoint) and there is an assumption that results taken from the out-of-the-can Analytical Application are valid and correct. This is not always the case. An assessment of data quality is as essential to the ready-made solution as it is to the custom built Warehouse. Generally a new system cannot have its data quality assessed until it is in production and has had the wrinkles ironed out of it.

Next article in this series “What Makes Our Business Unique?”

1. Whether to use a ready-made solution or have it custom built
2. What degree of external staffing resources are required

This is the first part in a series about financing your BI deployment.

In addition project costs will be impacted by:

◊ The focus of the solution; operational or strategic

◊ The type of architecture selected

◊ The development methodology

These are all issues that the decision maker needs to be aware of whilst working with the business to initiate the project. Financial justification is of-course vital to this process. It is essential that agreement is reached by the project board based upon the holistic needs of the business. How the business interacts with the project and the resulting solution will in the end determine the success of the implementation. This is a corporate-wide decision to make.

Some of the decision may differ in scale when extending an existing Business Intelligence solution, but on the whole the various aspects of this article all have to be considered.

Ready-Made or Custom Built?

This is a decision that impacts the structure of the underlying database, the Data Warehouse. In the past it was a relatively clear-cut decision that few if any solutions provided alongside new operational applications could offer anywhere near the complexity necessary to support strategic decision making. Their only contribution was in respect of operational decision making. The strategic decision making required more data to be aggregated from multiple systems in order to provide the right results.

Each packaged solution requires some customised data and user interfaces to ensure it fits each end-user business. The business is also expected to change its processes in order to work with certain applications. The use of ready-made OLTP solutions has made the task of hiring business community staff and training them easier. E.g. Job advertisements for an Accounts Administrator can specify SAP experience.

So can this experience be applied to the implementation of the Business Intelligence solution? Much depend on the factors making each business unique and the range of applications that will continue to be used within the organisation. Few, if any, of the true BI focused applications feature highly in any business community staff resumes, so training is always essential.

From the systems side a changing IT landscape during the past twenty-odd years where we prefer to buy rather than build encompasses the possible use of packaged solutions for both the Data Warehouse and the BI tool-kit. In order to make such a decision it is necessary to consider the impact of:

◊ The corporate architecture including the complexity of data links

◊ The degree of integration of existing systems

◊ Factors of uniqueness for the business

◊ The suitability of analytical applications

All of which can assist in assessing the suitability of potential ready-made solutions. In all cases it is important to understand the general goals of the business’s market sector, for example in some statutory controls will have a large impact and in others none. It is always necessary to consider what your corporation’s principle competitors are measuring, if only to ensure that you exceed those minimums. It would be great to have a sneak peek at the competitor’s solution, but often industry journals give an expose on what they are doing – these can be analysed to identify the factors being measured.

Another impact is the factors of uniqueness, e.g. what your corporation brings to the marketplace – each company has them, make sure you identify them.

The third factor that need to be considered is the existing legacy IT architecture. Many corporations have already purchased some of the technology that is intended to be used for the solution. Many systems come with data integration elements. From a pure cost effectiveness standpoint you should look at re-use instead of purchasing a new ETL solution. Most companies have them – it is a matter of whether they are fit for the new intended use. Another area to consider is pre-existing and spare licenses for existing analytical tools – many corporations complain about the cost of licensing, yet do not effectively utilise the licenses they already have.

The next article in this series: “Types of Ready Made BI Solutions”

This short walk down the corridor often speaks volumes more than the weekly project meeting. To me this signals a time when a one-to-one meeting is required, in order to get to the bottom of the problem.

With remote team members this type of reaction seeking or non-verbal communication is not evident. It is possible to hear fear when a person speaks, yet in a teleconference it is possible to hide – simply by remaining silent. When you are in a teleconference with your remote team members do you ever ask for personal feedback from every person present? Trouble is that it is all too easy to forget the silent ones even in a face-to-face meeting.

Generally speaking in any meeting there are two reasons to be silent. Firstly shyness, and secondly because that individual has something to hide.

Shyness is a symptom of managing comfort zones. We can all be shy when confronted with something new, and perhaps a little intimidated particularly when we understand very little about it. It can normally be managed by coaxing that person out of their existing comfort zone and expanding that comfort zone to include the new working environment.

Having something to hide is a different matter. These team members are the onces who are most likely to bring bad results on a project, irrespective of the circumstances. Projects are always limited by time and resources, whenever there are problems it is always vital to share. Managing projects via Agile methods does allow problem areas to be ring-fenced and focused on more thoroughly at a later stage. I am always more concerned about those who hide away because they have a problem than I am the shy person.

Despite sayings like “a problem shared is a problem halved” having entered the main-flow of society, people tend to be concerned that when a problem is identified then it is their personal challenge to solve it. They hide the problem in the hope that no-one finds out about the problem. Sadly this is the point when it starts to have a negative impact on everything that you do. Project working is not generally the place for heroics. That person who focuses on the problem and tends to lose sight of their deliverables.  Here we are back at the team member who rushes back the other way when when they see you, their manager, in the corridor. Something is wrong here and needs to be solved.

BUT how do you do this when the person is working remotely? Many project managers believe that having remote workers is too risky. Yet it is the things we do not wish to do that we are often forced to do.  There is a certain amount that can be achieved by regular visits to remote sites, yet at all times you remain a stranger at that remote location – so there is a psychology to managing remote visits. Remote project workers are a fact of life, as are constrained project budgets. The latter reduces out ability to complete regular remote-site visits, so it is essential to identify remoteness challenges of virtual teams in other ways.

It is vital all virtual team members are a part of developing and following the team plan – this must be lived and breathed. Knowing each remote worker is important – you probably need to spend a disproportionately high amount of time developing this relationship. You need to stay in touch, daily is best; set and follow an agenda for all meetings – ensure it is business focused. Leverage technology where appropriate – particularly collaboration tools.

The CEO and corporate leadership is interested in  how  IT is kept relevant and cost efficient.

Some approaches that may be considered in respect of managing cost reduction include:

•    Leveraging a positive economic justification
•    Centralisation of services
•    Server virtualization
•    Cut staffing levels or broadening job responsibilities
•    Outsourcing support of development activities
•    Find new vendors
•    Retain old equipment for longer period
•    Minimise maintenance costs
•    Implement Open Source solutions, or Software as a Service (SaaS)

Technology must not be seen as a “necessary evil” in the eyes of the business owner, it is a key enabler and should always add value and it is the CIO’s job to ensure it does. There must be a positive economic justification to go ahead with any project (even more so in a tight economy), yet the average CIO has between 3 and 5 years worth of change pencilled into his calendar already. Today every business is seeking a greater return on their technological investments.
If ever there was a time when Business Intelligence solutions were important it is right now! Knowing how your corporation is performing when compared the overall market position is vital for continued success and is one area where IT can contribute to positive growth. Don’t cancel any ongoing BI projects, they can save your company! Most large corporations already leverage BI to some extent, Now it is important to focus on those measures that add value to the corporation. The executive and board need to be aware of how much value this can add to the bottom line.

With every project is important to identify a return on investment, and many corporations seek a positive return during the first full year of operation, which is often un-realistic. In tough time it is necessary to stretch projects out, for example making a commitment to deliver only one major project this year may be the best way to leverage the budget. Work on other projects continues, but the staff compliment has been trimmed, and external contractors are no longer involved.

Software applications should empower the business to make effective improvements in service or efficiency. Budget holders need to have a clear picture of spending and expected benefits. ROI is a term that has to some extent gone out of vogue and needs to be re-learnt by the CIO. When any system is implemented there must a clear benefit to be made ROI has to take the complete current state into consideration. Before the project commences this must be based on the status quo. As the project proceeds this should build on the activity of earlier project work. Organisations can realise an ROI through a number of avenues, including:

•    Efficiency savings due to the automation of data and processes.
•    Identifiable business savings, e.g. the ability to scale-down facilities.
•    The value of new customers
•    The value of market share
•    Reduction in the cost of raw materials
•    The value of efficiency or business savings identified
•    Reduction in software or hardware maintenance fees

The current period demands a faster return to a positive ROI. The ability to measure a positive impact of any spending is one of the benefits good Business Intelligence brings.

In my experience few big-budget solutions pass the test even in good times, but many development projects have forgotten how to deliver business value. Few CIO’s are prepared to push back against vendor cost estimates. Most projects can have their costs trimmed by as much as 40% by smart management of the software implementation. It is rare that all features are required at once. Additionally there are savings to be made in respect of the hardware implementation.

Certainly there is a fresh opportunity to implement Open Source solutions at a fraction of the cost for normal commercial applications. Open Source applications are now able to compete directly with commercial solutions in terms of capability and are thus becoming viable options, certainly for smaller companies.  Even the more sceptical IT managers realise these solutions are now being widely accepted.

This may come about by implementing a small specialist solution. However it is important to remember that expert assistance is still likely to be required during certain implementations. The risks of implementation must be clearly identified, including the prospect of supplier failure.

Software as a Service vendors will argue that massive cost savings can be made with adoption of their solutions. It is true there is potential for savings here as there is no requirement for in-house servers in order to support such solutions. With a raft of solutions available including CRM, Marketing, eCommerce this seems like an attractive proposition at first glance, especially as the costs are calculated on a per seat per month basis.

However the corporation must consider the legal implications of implementing SaaS as part of their application set. Questions such as “who owns the data?”, “how do we guarantee statutory reporting compliance rules are adhered to?”, “what is the impact of privacy law?” all need to be considered in addition to standard vendor viability questions that must be asked of any software vendor.

The last word on SaaS is that we need to be mindful that such solutions are NOT currently mainstream IT technology. Whilst they may be in-vogue but they still have a rocky-road to travel before the technology is fully accepted into the mainstream. In that process many vendors will crash and burn, including leading ones available today.

Of course there is more to IT than the implementation of software solutions. Others areas will attract demands for cutbacks, including equipment and staffing.

In making departmental cutbacks the simplistic approach is to cut staffing levels across the board, but that raises the question of which roles need to be cut. This is the one option that is always hardest to carry out as there are hundreds of reasons why any staff individual member is valuable to the organisation. It can be argued that by focusing on IT operational excellence, you can drive the highest levels of system performance, availability while lowering the costs of maintenance. However the excellence and value any individual staff member brings to the team hardly matter when faced with the demand to cut 10% of the workforce especially when no individual falls beneath the expected level of excellence.

Centralisation of services can bring efficiencies, the main impact being through the use of centralised services and data centres. In looking for savings it is important to remember that equipment (PC’s, Printers, etc.) still needs to be maintained at each location. Outsourcing or off-shoring of support can also bring additional savings, but future cost rises must be limited by contract. Further staffing efficiencies may be facilitated by broadening job responsibilities across the team, for example the CRM specialist may need to take on responsibility for Supply Chain solutions. Certainly some savings can be found here but there is a risk that key knowledge is lost.

Server virtualization can provide a cost reduction through a better utilisation of the IT infrastructure, which will also bring reductions within the maintenance and support budgets. However I am convinced that unless the organization has some virtualization is already active a new enterprise-wide deployment would bring added risk and should be left for another time. Extending an existing virtualized architecture can bring cost benefits in server and storage costs.

Finding new vendors may increase the risk but it may reduce costs. Early in 2009 JP Morgan-Chase went to many outsourced services vendors and asked them to drop rates or find other people. This method may be a bit blunt but it can be an effective way of reducing costs in the short term. I do think that the risks associated with such a move do have to be fully assessed and may result in additional expense in the long term. It is important not to let short term demands cripple your long-term strategy in these areas.

Retention of old equipment is an easy cost saving to identify. Keeping PC’s for 5 years instead of 3 is the first of these cost savings measures that can be made. For the majority of users older kit is still more than capable of doing the job, it is only the power users that need the most modern machines, which are later recycled into the rest of the business. Here is where the argument for green computing falls flat in the current era, as the company can realise immediate savings, unless a replacement is required. The other area to consider is the number of printers. Do we need one for every 10 desks? Can we make it one for every 15 desks? After all we are all printing less these days than we used to and we should encourage less printing from a cost management perspective.

On the budget front one Silicon Valley CEO recently told me his company is just simply stretching out their resources and waiting on next years budget. Communicating bad news is never easy, but must be done in a clear consistent manner. We still have IT projects to deliver, but we have to do this with less resources. It is important that the CIO sets reasonable expectations and delivers on promises. The excessive multi-year projects are the very ones that will need a full justification, including a rapid return on investment.

Leadership in a recession requires strong prioritisation. The 80-20 rule applies so it is essential to know how to identify the diminishing returns and know when to stop. Practical solutions are needed, not perfection (that can come at a later phase). Results, i.e. the ability to deliver, are all important at this time. The ability of staff to deliver under pressure is also an important factor.

]]> http://cio-perspectives.com/2009/02/deploying-solutions-on-a-shoestring-budget/feed/ 0 http://cio-perspectives.com/2009/02/cio-strategy-development/ http://cio-perspectives.com/2009/02/cio-strategy-development/#comments Wed, 11 Feb 2009 04:18:35 +0000 Peter B. Giblett http://cio-perspectives.com/?p=118 The role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has changed forever.

Today’s CIO’s role is more than simply managing IT staff and ensure that systems and networks are up and running. They need to serve as integral members of the senior management team within the corporation. They need to take part in strategic development, organizational planning, and enable financial planning and decision-making. They have largely become the Chief Change Officer by leading their organization’s strategic business change initiatives.

Maximizing your current technology resources and aggressively plan for the future with the business in mind. In addition to this is the dimension of Business Intelligence that will allow a corporation to make informed business decisions. The role of  the CIO should increasingly be one of leveraging the technical services in order to truly empower the business. Business today is increasingly needing to optimise their IT investments.

It is after the challenges of 2008 that many USA business is coming to a realisation that IT implementations have to be done on a tighter budget and mega-projects must come under scrutiny. Ironically IT developments in Canada, UK, and Europe have already been performed on a shoestring budget. A new learning is necessary. The important message here is that it is still possible to deploy solutions, but cost effectiveness is key.

Further Reading

Information Technology Must be Integrated into the Core of Business! by Peter Giblett

Leadership for Extraordinary Performance by Joseph J. DiStefano

Within an end-user organisation there is increasing pressure to deliver more complex budgets to a tighter time-line. It can be argued that IT must shoulder blame for bad communication – incorrect people at presentations, not asking the right questions, etc. This is one of the reasons why when I go to such a presentation I may take on the role of asking the dumb question (and this may not be out of ignorance, but because a message needs to be conveyed to the business).

We are still facing the same problem of vendors not living up to their promises. In fact this is one of the worst delivery faults in the history of IT. In my past career have been technical liaison for pre-sales and have spoent some time following salespeople around, and beleive me they promise some complete bull to the prospect with the hope of making the sale. My job was to tell the truth about product capability. All too often sales folks are selling next version capability for a product that will not be in beta for at least 6 months and in unlikely to hit the streets for at least a year.

From an IT perspective it is necessary to take a carving knife and get to the real picture of capability based on existing product. This is where the IT manager needs to ask questions regarding capability on reference calls.

Vendors need to be up-front about how their product meets the requirement at the RFI or RFQ stage. Your product will not be discounted because it does not have a 100% capability match. Few products can deliver 100% of the requirements. I have managed projects where none of the vendors acheived 60% of the functional requirements – we still selected a solution and implemented it successfully.

One of the key areas for project deployment today is integration. Data movement between systems is increasingly important and sometimes this is the only was a requirement can be delivered. Software vendors need to show what data they feel their product is the master of and what data should be supplied for a successful implementation. This goes back to vendors taking the time to understand the requirements of the system they are expected to deliver. It is important to understand the data integration resources that the customer has to call on when they are providing a deployment estimate. Many corporations do not have adequate data integration specialists on the team.

The watchword for vendors is don’t over-promise and do understand your customer.