Common Sense IT

The Solution Cycle – A Breakthrough Concept For Managing your Online Initiatives

Understanding the solution cycle and preparing to manage it proactively is critical to implementing successful online initiatives.  Let’s explore what this concept I’m labeling the “solution cycle” is and you’ll see the common sense to this approach, in how it can work to drive innovation, as well as provide competitive advantage.

As soon as a company implements an online initiative, usually an external website to start, they enter the solution cycle. Each solution is the beginning of the next problem. The website that creates an online presence for your company and expands your audience for your marketing messaging now needs to be integrated to a back-end system. Or perhaps your sales force is complaining because they see the new site but the tools they need aren’t available to them because the site has no permissions structure to allow them access to confidential information. These kinds of problems can either cause your business innovation to grind to a halt, or they can feed the ongoing development of your vision.

Companies manage this solution cycle in one of three ways:

1. Avoid – ignore the growing problems until you can’t anymore, then drop other projects and react, defensively and tactically.
2. Spend –throw money at the latest problem, contributing to the large service revenues that many Internet technology providers reap
3. Anticipate – you know this solution will create problems you can’t now anticipate so you prepare by using flexible solutions that will expand; you proactively seek the next problem, taking the offensive and strategically mining these problems for new solutions, thus driving innovation. You integrate the motion of the solution cycle into your business, using it to pull you forward.

Avoiding the problem in the hopes that it will resolve itself is one of the main choices made by businesses today.  But avoidance has a way of increasing the potential damages that choosing to do nothing can cause.

Throwing money at those pesky problems is another favorite tactic.  Once you’ve figured out that the problem can’t be avoided, then the next step companies overwhelmingly choose is to throw money at it – as if a problem can be bought off.  Don’t fool yourself that money spent to solve only one issue actually solves the problem.  What people forget, is that issues are multi-faceted and will usually rear their ugly heads again, once they’ve worked their way around the quick fix you’ve purchased.  What if the cost involved in expansion could be relegated to an expense item rather than a capital outlay that required retooling your budget?  What if you could address a problem quickly, efficiently and organically within the structure of your current system and move on easily to be ready for the next one.  Because one thing is certain – there is always a next one.

The more quickly and proactively you manage your solution cycle, the higher your competitive advantage. When you’re set up to manage the occurrence of problems and solutions, the next problem occurs as an opportunity and doesn’t slow business. As we’ll see in my next posts, new problems can actually excite your company and pull it forward.

Creating User Demand for Application Functionality

When IT implements a new system, it seems like users ought to be overjoyed at getting some new functionality that IT knows will make their lives easier and their business more streamlined.

Then how come three-quarters of CIO's say they achieve only 20-25% of their optimization goals?

Optimize Magazine's article, entitled "Process Optimization That Measures Up" by Bruce Rogow, points out a few things that are worth taking into account:

• IT people have become obsessed with a perspective that everything in the business can be reduced to a process diagram, can be improved, optimized or outsourced.  While process efficiency is important, it is only one element of any business.
• IT doesn't take into account what is necessary for effective human adoption.  The article points out that a number of IT shops are making new, elegant, enterprise architectures and applications available to their organizations.  But business executives and end users have not been allowed to participate in the process -- and these are the people who matter most to the end result.
• If IT continues to focus on "hard" process efficiencies, that narrow-minded view will get in the way of providing the true differentiation needed in the global competitive environment of today.

So if there's one thing to pay attention to when leveraging systems for business advantage -- and is really common sense when you think about it:  Systems exist inside of a larger whole -- and the whole system (i.e. business) needs to be taken into account.  Many executives think the leverage will happen by shifting to or incorporating an attention to the "softer" processes -- those things that don't follow a linear process -- like innovation, product design/development, marketing (check out the Marketing Interactions blog for awesome insights related to marketing systems), knowledge exploitation, among a longer list of functions.

In my experience, if IT can iterate through the development process, and follow up with end users about what they're using and what they're not -- and if they're not using it -- find out why, rather than try to force them to use something that apparently isn't working, then the ratio of optimization realization will go up remarkably.  In one case, I worked with the users to design the "perfect" implementation, or system for them -- but they weren't really using it.  I was wondering why, and I went to a meeting with the primary user for the system, and she had these Excel spreadsheet printouts.  I saw that was what she worked off of.  I asked her if we could output that format for her from the system, would it make the system more useful.  She was delighted at the idea of receiving an Excel spreadsheet formatted report -- and would never have thought to ask for that functionality -- but it made the whole difference in user adoption of the system.  But it took commitment and follow-through to figure that out.  Approach the conversations with end users from the standpoint that they want this optimization -- they want their life to be easier --- they want to be IT's partner.

I say -- hooray for the common sense approach of this article -- it's a step in a good direction! And a way of challenging yourself to think about how systems/applications and business processes interact and how the business and IT can work together to achieve the common objective.

The benefit of technology is in the implementation

Computer systems power businesses.  A common question and issue faced by many businesses is how best to invest in their computer applications.  Of course, you want to invest as little as possible for the biggest bang possible.

While the most flexible solution is to write and own your own system – so it works exactly how you want it to – that approach may not be the most effective use of technology for your enterprise.  Owning the code means that you pay for all the bugs and all the fixes and all the upgrades to that software.   The same could be said for where your applications are hosted – on premise or at a hosting provider.  Do you need to own your server hardware and Internet bandwidth?  There are pros/cons and tradeoffs of any approach.

Packaged applications (either on-demand or on-premise) today, are being made available in a more modular fashion on all available operating systems and platforms.  And with the advent of  Web Services, the platform question doesn’t need to be a driver of your selection (for example, you don't have to have everything written in .NET or in the same language).  It’s possible to more easily integrate disparate systems and put together  a “composite application” that will provide business benefit more easily than at any time in the past.

The issue is that we (technologists) hype different technologies, like Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and get enamored with the technology, and forget that without effective implementations, that technology will never produce anything of value.  Hence the recent post “SOA enters the trough of disillusionment” – you bet – because it’s not about the technology.

We forget that the technology itself will never provide the “silver bullet” that companies have been hoping will arrive, for as long as I can remember.  The true silver bullet is the work that is done to intelligently leverage available technologies into the applications that benefit the business, and deliver the intended results.  It's all in how you use the technology.

What’s still needed is the strategy and the overall blueprint of an organization and how it can utilize technology from the available options – how much custom code is necessary?  Where should an organization invest to get the best leverage for their business?  And this sort of strategy requires thought – but doesn’t need to take forever, which is another concern of most business people – analysis paralysis.

The bottom line is that effective applications are delivered when the IT projects and processes are managed thoughtfully – when business users are getting what they need, and being more efficient and effective in accomplishing their strategies.

Why the success of the on-demand vendors like Sales Force dot com?  Because they deliver what is of value to the business in recording and utilizing the information they need – quickly and effortlessly.  They have implemented technology effectively, delivering results to the business units using their “software as a service” model.

I’ll leave you with the post from Mitch Betts blog post at Computerworld: 
- to me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

Using Technology to Integrate Marketing with Sales

With the advent of the Internet as a viable application platform, taking your business, or aspects of your business online is now an imperative.  New methods of servicing customers, new methods of servicing and empowering your partners, or interacting with your vendors – it’s no longer a question of do we need to change, it’s a question of how do we start?  How do we tackle it – how do we create an Internet-based presence for our organization that will deliver what we need?  AND can we afford it?

Business people don’t have a lot of trust in their Information Technology counterparts to deliver what is needed, within the budget, and timeframe necessary.  And given the past, and present demands on limited IT resources, it’s no wonder this state of affairs exists.

You're probably using CRM, have a website, have some sort of ability to allow employees access to internal resources through an intranet -- but how do you integrate those applications to provide the functionality that people need without having to access multiple systems separately?  And, oh yeah, do it well, and not break the bank?

While large organizations can afford to try and fail many times, if you’re a small to mid-size business, you can’t afford to take that sort of gamble.  You’ve got to create not only a successful presence, you’ve got to create a ‘capacity’ that allows you to be flexible and nimble with your online presence. And  you don't have forever to figure it out.

There are a number of technologies and frameworks that can be deployed that will deliver an online presence, or fulfill on specific sets of functionality – but have you expanded your ‘capacity’ to create, modify, expand, and experiment in that online space?   Can you create new initiatives easily and quickly?  Are you nimble when it comes to providing online servicing of customers, partners, and prospects?

It's possible to move forward and create this kind of infrastructure without breaking the bank.  We've worked successfully with our customers to create these sorts of "composite applications" -- leveraging our extensive set of ready-to-go functionality, that can be completely customized and integrated with existing applications through a Web Services interface, or through data level integration, depending upon the available technologies nd preferences of our customers. 

Check out Optimize Magazine's articles on "Designing Applications for Constant Change" and "What's Next for Web Services" to get familiar with what's emerging and happening in the realm of leveraging technology for business benefit.

For more general information about Service Oriented Architecture, check out the following white paper, "Service-Oriented Architecture: A Strategy Brief".

In future posts, we'll continue to expand upon what's possible and how it's getting done.  Working with a vendor who can help you think it through and be successful is a key to successful implementations.

Leveraging Technology for Business Bang!

When I think about the opportunities that exist today for businesses to really leverage technology for true business benefit, and then think about IT departments and the experience that the business has dealing with their IT departments, we've made very little progress in having internal IT departments really be an extension of the business, that enables and enhances the businesses ability to fulfill on their mission and objectives.

I just came across a Forrester Research report from April of this year, entitled,"IT and Business Alignment:  Are We There Yet?"  by Craig Symons.

My reaction to that whitepaper was one of irritation.  Craig's solution is measure, measure, measure -- and yes, while Information Technology and systems need to be measured, the suggestions for measurement that include "the number of joint IT/business unit planning meetings or the number of IT steering committee meetings", because "Holding frequent meetings between IT managers and business unit managers will bring more opportunities to the surface and solidify a comfort level", fail to have me understand how there will be better alignment  at all.  It's like saying, "let's form a committee to address this" -- and we all know our reaction to that statement -- and it isn't that things will move forward easily and smoothly, or be more effective.

George Eby Mathew , in his blog called "Guruspeak: Why IT Management Matters", posted a topic in June of this year, Getting Beyond the Futile Debate: Making IT matter, and I've summarized a few key items from that post:

1. “Not long ago, IT systems were viewed as the most difficult element to change when implementing large, strategic projects. IT is sometimes viewed as the most difficult to change rated equally with corporate culture. And from the perspective of the senior management IT gets in the way of getting important things done.”   In my experience, one of the big problems with IT folks is that they love to analyze a problem to death -- and then apply the textbook perfect solution -- except that in reality - it is the source of failed projects!   Don't get me wrong, the antithesis is also true --  where IT  doesn't do the thinking, and slaps a system into place that creates more problems than it solves in the name of being "responsive" and "giving the business what they need."
2. “Technology must enable changes to achieve either business-valued cost reductions or revenue-enhancement results to matter. We know IT does add value because poor IT decisions can detract from equity value while good IT decisions can add to equity value.”  Exactly. 

The issue facing IT and the business it supports is a thorny one.  For as long as I can remember, business people have an adverse reaction when IT is mentioned, like they don't and won't ever understand technology, and the IT department oftentimes has an arrogant attitude about how technology "ought" to be delivered to the business.

What's needed are business people who understand the ways that technology can benefit their business and can challenge IT to provide what they need.

What's needed are CIO's that understand the business as well as technology AND can cultivate people in their IT groups that can actually identify the real "problem" that needs to be addressed -- which many times is different from what the business will say is the problem -- so you've got to be two-headed about it -- serve the business users, and deliver what they need (not necessarily what they say they need) -- and you know you've done this when they are delighted by what they get and it makes their job easier.

Finally, there needs to be some common sense applied to how technology is selected and delivered, so that the business doesn't wait forever for IT to deliver what it needs.

And quite possibly, IT could leverage outside expertise much more effectively, and reduce the backlog that frustrates their business counterparts.  While written from a marketing perspective, a recent post at the Marketing Interactions  blog, entitled Effective Marketing IT Projects with Limited Expertise addresses this from a business user perspective, and introduces what is possible.

What's your experience with leveraging technology effectively -- and working with your IT groups?

Welcome to Common Sense IT

It's time for business executives that have responsibility for using technology to achieve business objectives (i.e. ALL business execs) to have a place to come and have technology and the myriad of buzzwords, options, and developments make sense.

That's what this blog is all about -- providing a venue to explore the different technologies - and how to start with where you are and get where you want to be -- utilizing and deploying technologies that make sense and provide your business with the edge necessary to achieve your goals and objectives.

Post a comment here and say what is confusing for you, or what you would like explored -- and we'll take it on!