The Great Divide

IT and business groups within big organizations haven’t had the best cohesion ever.  This is a much debated topic in various books, blogs, discussion forums, seminars, and workshops. The existence of such a divide is well acknowledged and accepted. Why do I want to talk about it again? I believe that many of the discussions around this topic were too theoretical. But it is time we look at the issue through a much simpler pair of lenses. It is important for this blog because, any discussion about enterprise BPM or content management will not be complete without understanding this particular issue.

Why don’t IT and business groups talk to each other in the same language? I would say, in many organizations:

• They don’t take the trouble to understand each other
• They have their own respective priorities and budgets
• There may not be anybody whose job is to ensure that these groups talk to each other
• The thinking is so compartmental that people fail to see beyond their immediate problems and tasks
• Bridging this gap is pretty lower in the priority lists of the executive management

There could be another hundred such reasons that can be enumerated. The simpler fact is, we are talking about people! They like to be in their comfort zones, as long as there are no major incentives to break through them.

Historically, companies created innumerable inefficiencies within their four walls. The hierarchies, process controls, policies and the bureaucracies associated with them hamper the smooth sailing of organizations. They could afford to ignore such issues till recently. But, times are changing. The current economic scenario puts a lot of pressure on organizations to cleanup their acts. With the workforce shrinking and pressure to perform in difficult market conditions increasing, businesses have to look at better and smarter ways of doing things. So, it is paramount that companies try to bridge this divide.

Is there some magic to solve this issue? If there were, somebody would have succeeded by now. I have more questions than answers:

IT is a support group within companies. So, why do they need separate budgets? Should they derive their revenues from their internal customers? Why would a company year on year set aside x amount of money only as a cost budget? If there is a customer-vendor relationship between IT and business groups, will there be improved interactions between them? How many companies out there tried and tested such a model?

Do companies follow a process of discussing about newer IT initiatives to all business groups within the company? Are there initiatives to share learnings from one group’s experience with the rest?

Did anybody try to create a bridge group with leaders from IT and business, thus forming a small team with the sole responsibility of formulating IT solutions for business problems?

Has any organization tried to utilize the skill levels of IT services vendors in bridging this gap?

Tougher Times

It’s been a while since I got the patience to write something down. Last six months were eventful. My new venture started off well and I had been working closely with customers in multiple geographies. What this meant to me is that I once again got back into looking at the finer details of content and process management implementations. This period provided me with a re-exposure to the American market.

During the 3 odd months I spent in the US, it was clear to me that the times are tough. I was consulting for a large banking corporation in the mid-west. The banking industry is badly hit, and it made the remaining players very cautious with anything and everything they do. The 2009 budgeting processes are complete and priorities are simple:

• Keep the lights on
• Invest only on projects that give clear returns within the year

Big infrastructure investment thoughts are clearly out of the window. No one wants to see monolithic projects being executed or even mentioned. So for vendors, selling more licenses of ECM or BPM is an uphill task. I am sure that it is going to hit the ECM BPM software industry in a big way.

The focus of enterprises is to reduce operational costs. What they would want to do in 2009 will be to do as much as possible to improve operational efficiency (Means more FTE reductions). ECM/BPM is definitely a technology that will help organizations to achieve the two aforementioned priorities. If there are innovative ways of utilizing the existing investments in technology infrastructure, and the benefits of such smaller initiatives are to be realized within a short period of time, many of the enterprises will look at such options with glee. Most of the organizations I have known have enough and more software licenses of some ECM/BPM system or the other and adequate hardware infrastructure that run those software. But they are seldom used effectively. Enterprises hardly have bridged the gap between IT and business priorities. I haven’t seen many customers who reap the benefits of a content enabled business process management system to its fullest potential.

The need of the hour (rather the year) is to implement quick and effective solutions to improve business agility. ECM and BPM can very much be at the centre stage for providing businesses with the agility they need to steer through the tougher times. The IT departments and services vendors will need to internalize this reality and come up with cost effective business solutions to help the enterprises. The shift from billability to customer value-add could be hard to realign to for many IT services providers. There could definitely be some smarter vendors who could reinvent themselves to become the next generation IT service companies. It is imperative that a 2.0 revolution happens in the IT services sector as well.

The current economic scenario could very well pave the way for greater coherence between business and IT within enterprises. That would indeed be a welcome change in the right direction.