Tag Archives | The Business Value Exchange

Keep it Simple

By Christian on 16th March 2016 in Big Data, CIO, Cloud, Complexity Management, Customer Experience, IT-Enabled Business Innovation

The age-old adage of ‘keep it simple’ could never be more prevalent in today’s world.

With the sheer mountain of data growing exponentially within organisations every day, and the raft of applications and platforms in use, it’s very easy to make everything more complicated than it needs to be.
Keeping on top of technology used within your company is difficult enough as it is, without contemplating prototyping and trialling other options that your suppliers, network or your own research informs you about.
This leads to complicated matrix-style organisational structures that require skilled resources to support specific applications, and fill you with dread every time you get a holiday request from key staff or worse a resignation letter. Throw digital requirements into the mix, as well as the need to innovate, and your organisation quickly gets a lot more complicated.

That’s why it’s so important to standardise and reduce proprietary systems as much as you can. These more standardised platforms will not only let you markedly reduce the complexity of your organisation, but will also allow a much easier ride when recruiting staff into key areas due to their more plentiful availability in the market.

I know not everyone feels the same, but when you think along the lines of standardising your platforms and/or systems, you start to see the appeal of the cloud. A well interfaced, easily accessible application, which allows you some form of customisation, but not the wholesale changes your business owners normally request, and all wrapped up in a nice business continuity assurance bow.

Another key feature of cloud adoption is the ability to upgrade and take on new features or improvements at a far more rapid rate than you can on your internal and more proprietary systems. This means not only simplifying your architecture, but getting key new features to your business units more frequently, who will be able to do more at a faster rate than before, and which ultimately may well give them the competitive advantage they were looking for.
Obviously, the majority of you will end up with a blend of cloud and internally hosted systems, but in the quest for a simpler and less complex organisation, you should never discount any form or way of best serving your business.

By now you’re thinking this is easier said than done, and that everyone’s nirvana is to have standardised platforms with simple and straightforward support structures, but it’s just not achievable with everything else going on. If you plan, budget and structure your architecture correctly, you can phase your way through towards this ‘nirvana’ at a more rapid rate than you think.

This simple and standardised structure will allow you more scope to better manage and serve your organisations, as well as making it far easier to roll out any new products or solutions and integrate any acquisitions.

Your organisation will thank you for your efforts, so good luck with your journeys and remember to keep it simple.

This post has also been featured on the HP Business Value Exchange here

The Innovation Dilemma

By Christian on 7th December 2015 in C-Level Executives, C-Suite, Innovation, Start-Ups, Strategy, Thought Leadership

In todays commercial arena, innovation is critical to grow and position your company as a leader within its market(s), and position it above its competition but many don’t know where to begin nor how to foster and drive it within their organisation.

At a recent roundtable I ran, we discussed innovation and its use as a driving force for revenue growth. The roundtable attendees were IT leaders from a number of large enterprise organisations and hailed from all over Europe ready for an engaging discussion (no pressure!).
We started the discussion by going around the room asking everyone what the barriers to innovation were in their organisations.
There were a number of recurring points which weren’t surprising, such as who should own innovation across the organisation, and how do they foster and engage innovation within their organisations and prioritise the elements of it accordingly.

What did surprise me however were comments such as “what exactly is innovation?” and “is delivering new products, ideas or services that improve revenue just me doing my job well?”
I hadn’t expected to hear this but it really made sense and drove our discussion on to how do you measure innovation against doing your job well – not an easy task but if you are set an innovation target within your organisation be it revenue or service focused its a crucial one you will need to resolve.

This really highlighted to me that though every organisation is trying their damnedest to deliver innovation, what they are really struggling with is how to foster, engage with and measure it accordingly in relation to it adding tangible value.
How do you truly measure innovation? Is it through your product creation team delivering the right products to the right markets and capturing critical commercial momentum or simply altering an online process to make it easier for clients to register themselves?

The truth is that in any organisation where free thinking and entrepreneurial activity is encouraged, not stifled and is coupled with hard-working smart employees, you are going to get innovation.
You are also going to create a great working environment which will attract more smart, hard-working people who can create better products and services which create additional revenue and clear competitive advantage – what’s not to like!
Many of you will be thinking this is a brave commercial stance but you cannot argue with the results of those that do change their business strategy and working models like this. It may be hard work and anathema to some but the changing of the guard with relation to that of the traditional executive way of thinking is underway as millennial ideologies and commercial practices seep further into enterprise organisations as they rise up the executive ladder.

There are many ways in which larger organisations are trying to increase their rate of innovation such as creating innovation labs and associated teams to partner with start-up incubators like MassChallenge who do a fantastic job in this space and are non-profit.
JLAB at John Lewis is an excellent example of one such innovation hub where they are encouraging start-ups to come to them and compete to win unique access to John Lewis who will help them refine their products and their business models with the final prize being the opportunity of securing a contract with them.
Others such as UBS who are looking at new technologies which will disrupt their industry such as Blockchain and have set up labs and an open competition for entrepreneurs and technology startups around the world to compete for funding. These are fabulous opportunities for new and established start-ups to work with established corporates and really fosters the growth of innovation and entrepreneurship in our society and I am very much in favour of these efforts.

In today’s world where technology enables us to achieve so much of what we only dreamed possible a few years ago and most people now so attuned to it there really is no argument for not enabling and fostering innovation within your organisation. You now have to concentrate on changing your culture to incorporate, foster and grow innovation within your organisation. It will be hard work, but boy will it pay you back, and it might just be the best thing you’ve ever done.

This post has also been featured on the HP Business Value Exchange here

Cyber Security – Don’t Be Tomorrows Front Page News

By Christian on 10th November 2015 in C-Suite, CIO, CISO, Security

It’s all too easy to relax your stance on combatting cyber security but in truth every organisation is at risk. Larger attacks are front page news for the media but small and medium-sized businesses are prime targets.

A PWC survey found that companies with revenues under £50m actually cut security spending by 20% in 2014, compared to a 5% increase in security investments by larger companies – making smaller organisations an attractive prospect for hackers. It may just be a case of haggling with suppliers to save the difference in costs or surveying the market for a better and more secure solution at a lower cost but you cannot lower your vigilance.

With the spate of recent high-profile security breaches, it seems all to easy to gain access to the most seemingly secure organisations whom we entrust with our most personal data. Unfortunately, it’s not until an organisation suffers a serious breach do we find out about how lax and un-regimented their security protocols were such as storing our passwords and data in unencrypted files or as clear text.
How many other well-known organisations are still doing this with our data and hoping every day that they are not the next name in the media gaze after having suffered a major breach. With organised crime now clearly targeting cyber crime as a substantial revenue stream, the number and complexity of breaches is and will continue to rapidly escalate.

The cost of a serious breach can be financially severe but more importantly can be catastrophic to your commercial reputation with many organisations failing to ever recover, often with further reputational damage inflicted through poor handling of the aftermath. I’m a great believer in all boards having a technology subcommittee to question and guide on technology issues as all boards have audit, remuneration etc. committees.

To prevent your organisation being susceptible to cyber security you must institutionalise your vigilance and make certain that your policies are well documented and clearly understood by everyone from the mail room to the boardroom (security should already be high up on your boards agenda).
It is imperative that everyone feels a sense of responsibility, is motivated to adhere to your policies and able to accept responsibility on an individual level.
It also means tightly integrating security in to your corporate strategy rather than trying to shoehorn it in at a later stage where it may be compromised or not fully engaged.

Simple things like passwords are still one of the easiest measures to tighten up as they have long been a thorn in the side of any organisation with many using seemingly simple to crack, often generic passwords across multiple services.
Going forward biometrics may resolve a large proportion of password issues and the cost of implementation will fall over time. Biometrics are seen as the next evolutionary stage of managing personal security with sectors like banking currently looking to implement fingerprint technology in to your future debit and credit cards to add an additional layer of purposeful security.

The truth is that many companies may not even know they have been hacked or their security probed until a ‘back door’ is found and exploited well after the attack(s) have taken place. This is a scary scenario and one that shows serious lapses in security practices which are ripe for exploitation by those so inclined.

So to reiterate, make sure your security practices and policies are well documented and clearly understood with everyone motivated and as vigilant as possible to ensure they are adhered to at all times.
After all, you don’t want to be tomorrows front page news!

This post has also been featured on the HP Business Value Exchange here

The As-A-Service Economy is here to stay

By Christian on 5th October 2015 in CEO, CFO, CIO, Cloud, CMO, Customer Experience, IT-Enabled Business Innovation

In modern times we have become very much a consumer culture driven by an abundance of choice spurred on by deregulation, capabilities of new technology, market disruption and innovation.
The As-a-service economy has been fuelled by all of these key factors and allowed multiple organisations to enter these markets, providing both the technology platforms and innovative products for consumers to feast upon it.

The only way for vendors to rise above the melee of available products and services is too constantly innovate and supply services or products which are not available elsewhere with Apple being the undisputed current master here for all to mimic.
Other cloud vendors such as Salesforce are also strong in the As-a-service space for similar reason, by constantly seeking to renew and energise their platform with new innovation, features and tools.
You would not be able to build such innovation, tools and features into in-house platforms and systems at this pace, which lends more strength to the As-a-service argument of whether or not to include at least subtle flavours of it in your enterprise offerings.
The cloud platform may scare many with its ‘perceived’ insecurities and lack of control of data and feature but it enables organisations to set themselves up securely and grow rapidly with little initial capital outlay compared to the complexity of how things used to be.
Cloud services provide easy access, mobility, standardised practices and instant access to well qualified product(s) and subsequent features with often straight forward upgrade paths and clear product roadmaps.
It has also enabled a whole raft of brilliant applications, services and products for organisations of all sizes to augment their system and service portfolio’s with without huge capital outlay and can no longer be ignored.

The rise of consumerisation has driven much of the innovation we see today and this drives a constant lust for innovation and the rapidity of it when utilised in the commercial space.
We all want the flexibility, tools and services we are used to using at home to be available in the workplace and organisations that don’t respond to this will quickly lose staff to those that do.

The other main driver of the As-a-service economy is customer service.
In this more interactive and collaborative mobile focused world, the need for high quality customer service does not diminish but needs to evolve with customers now deserving more dynamic and engaging interaction beyond the traditional call centre or ‘look here’ approach.
If you are not presently positioned as a socially aware organisation that offers high quality, consistent and quick response customer service, your customers may force your hand and go elsewhere or insist you rapidly change your approach. With the advent of the power and pace of social media your poor service can quickly reach epidemic levels if not quickly resolved.

Innovation plays a key part in the way the As-a-service economy evolves with many technologies and platforms to fuel this not yet developed or ready to market with the whole Internet of Things model set to explode it out even further.
As a result, the As-a-service economy is here to stay and will only grow stronger and more prevalent in augmenting the enterprise system and product portfolios that organisations deliver and the services which all of us consume in our daily lives.

This post has also been featured on the HP Business Value Exchange here

Is the Internet always right?

By Christian on 12th December 2013 in Internet

When I was younger (showing my age here), when I wanted to find something out I either asked a parent/teacher or opened up a book. Both young and old people now just search for it on Google – in fact ‘Google it’ is now a part of our everyday language. This got me on to thinking, when somebody does Google something (other search engines are available…) they more or less believe whatever the answer or search results they are presented with tell them.
In these times of instant everything and the whole world having been indexed and digitised, should we believe everything the Internet tells us (crackpots and lunatics aside)?

When was the last time you opened up an encyclopaedia (remember those) and verified an answer to a pressing issue you searched for? Do you even have access to an encyclopaedia?

An encyclopaedia has been through a number of people prior to being published and again in most major revisions but more or less anybody can post something on the Internet and tag or SEO it accordingly.
I’m far from saying that self-publishing or the advent of the Internet opening up the world to new content is a bad thing (indeed, it means I can write and publish myself) but it does make you think.

The response when I challenged a few people about this topic ranged from, ‘the answers I get seem more or less right, so I run with them’ to ‘it must be true, it’s on Google isn’t it?’ I found most of the responses I got to be a little bit frightening when I sat down and thought about them.

We are all busy people leading hectic lives but the rushed culture we live in leads us to also accept rushed answers and the mantra of something sounding more or less right has prevailed.

The ways in which we consume and use information both analogue and digitally fascinates me, as does the possibilities of how we will do so in the future but from now on I will just linger a bit longer on my search results before finally accepting what they tell me.

This piece has also been posted on:
The Business Value Exchange in my position as CIO ‘Thought Leader’ and Featured Contributor

Water Will Always Find a Way

By Christian on 9th December 2013 in Big Data, CEO, CFO, CIO, Disruption, Governance, IT Leadership, Risk Management, Security

Just like water will always find a way through or around any obstacle, so will people find a way around any security measures you seek to implement.
You may think you have thought of the most foolproof method of managing your data, but as soon as you implement it and ride out the first wave of direct (and often blunt) feedback, people will start beavering away on ways to get around your processes.

Anybody who thinks otherwise is only fooling themselves and will be rudely awakened when a security or other serious data breach occurs.

The best way to remedy this and eliminate it as best you can is to create and reinforce an educative program that informs people of the reasons as to why you are having to implement these policies and not just labouring on the pitfalls of not adhering to your security policies.
As time consuming and labour intensive as it sounds, a period of open discussion and feedback sessions will alleviate some of the staff objections prior to drawing up your policies and generate an enormous amount of goodwill.

Everybody appreciates there needs to be some level of security, especially in heavily regulated or security conscious industries but nobody appreciates dictatorship levels of oppression when they are not completely necessary.
Simply saying it’s a disciplinary offence to not adhere to these policies without explaining them thoroughly first or taking an objectionable point of view on board will alienate you from the very people you are trying to protect.

We’ve all been asked by staff across the organisation if they can use third party file sharing services like Dropbox to share data etc. and had to refuse them on security grounds.
We all know they use these services (and you probably do as well) and trying to implement an internal, secure enterprise version of a similar technology is very time consuming to manage and expensive not to mention extremely difficult to secure.

Smaller companies with less advanced infrastructure will often use third party file sharing services as a low cost and logical extension to their infrastructure.
The security risk to their IPR is no less great than larger corporates but they thrive on the nimble and agile gain that using these services gives their businesses.
When new individuals join your organisation from these smaller and more agile business through acquisition or organic growth, they will quickly challenge any seemingly draconian procedures you have in place. They will challenge you that their agility and productivity is being stifled by these procedures with the very valid reason they are often brought in to disrupt your existing business working in precisely the way they need to.

We need to take on board these new types of people and the roles they perform, adapting the necessary rules and procedures to allow them to go about their business rather than stifling them with regulation.
This is challenging and a bit scary but as long as your security is not diluted too far, adapting to incorporate these new roles and working practices will show your willingness to change and adapt and will not go unnoticed across the organisation.
In the new arena of change and disruption, those who adapt will thrive and those that don’t…. Well, you know how that story ends.

This piece has also been posted on:
The Business Value Exchange in my position as CIO ‘Thought Leader’ and Featured Contributor
The Intel IT Peer Network in my position as IT Industry ‘Thought Leader’ and Featured Blogger
Outsource Magazine in my position as IT Industry ‘Thought Leader’ and Featured Columnist

Is outsourcing the question or the answer?

By Christian on 8th November 2013 in CEO, CFO, CIO, Communication, Contract Negotiation, IT Director, IT Leadership, Leadership, Outsourcing, Planning, Project Management, Risk, ROI, Strategy, Vendor Management

Once upon a time, the answer to the question of what are the main benefits of outsourcing was cost savings based on labour arbitrage, but today that response would be superficial and incomplete.

I believe the main benefits of outsourcing are access to scarce skills, expertise and the latest technology, cost reduction, turning capital expenditure into operating expenditure, and the opportunity to concentrate resources on core business objectives.
If you think about outsourcing in this manner, you will not only start to realise areas within your IT organisation that would benefit from adopting it but also ways as a strategic leader you can add further value to your entire organisation by doing so.

The first big error people make when considering outsourcing is looking to resolve a problem without first looking to do so in-house – a problem remains a problem no matter where it sits.
Sensible outsourcing providers will often sniff this out during the RFP or other stages of the bidding process but others may look to take it on, hoping they can fix the issue(s) as a calculated risk whilst trying to win the business (the fact a vendor accepts this huge risk should really start ringing alarm bells for you as you both know there’s an elephant in the room).
Those that don’t take the business (and hopefully this is the majority) will likely make you consider going back and fixing the problem before re-tendering. Those who take it on will only delay the inevitable, leaving you not only with a larger problem downstream but also with the added bonus of a whole heap of complex contractual issues to sort out (which I imagine you will now discover were also not properly agreed or worded up front).
Many take this approach and get their fingers burnt with outsourcing, vowing never to return.
It’s a real shame, as outsourcing done in the right way is an extremely beneficial way to add to the value you provide to your organisation.

The second biggest error people make when considering outsourcing is to engage with and select a vendor by having only had a few live sales meetings/conference calls with a cursory glance over provided case studies. Coupled without ever having visited their operating/service centres to see them in action in a live environment or meet their staff that will be working with your team in person.
You wouldn’t do this if you were hiring permanent staff or running the project in-house, so why do this when exploring outsourcing? It makes no sense.
This often occurs when a company decides to outsource a small project or a portion of it to see if outsourcing works for them in an operational sense.
The vendor is often chosen just on labour arbitrage and due to this the work is often performed in Asia or Eastern Europe.
The ‘project’ is often then left with the vendor with scant and seemingly erratic communication and only poured over in detail once the deliverable is returned with obvious errors.
The end result is the project often has to be redone in-house, blowing the project budget, causing delays and delivering red faces all round.
Outsourcing is again blamed as the enemy with the lack of communication and poor vendor selection/interaction issues being swept conveniently under the carpet.

So, in reflection it may be outsourcing is not for you but you owe it to yourself and your organisation to try everything that can add value to what you deliver.
Outsourcing executed properly can provide real value when opportunities are identified, structured, communicated and managed correctly, so what are you waiting for?

This piece has also been posted on:
The Intel IT Peer Network in my position as IT Industry ‘Thought Leader’ and Featured Blogger
The Business Value Exchange in my position as CIO ‘Thought Leader’ and Featured Contributor
Outsource Magazine in my position as IT Industry ‘Thought Leader’ and Featured Columnist

Roles and responsibilities of key stakeholders

By Christian on 18th September 2013 in Agile, CEO, CFO, Change Management, CIO, Governance, Project Management, Risk, Stakeholder Management, Stakeholders, Transition

Key stakeholders for any project typically come from inside your organisation and are normally those who have endorsed or identified the need for project activity. However they could also be external clients or suppliers, as they might be directly affected by the resulting changes of the project.

They need to be identified prior to the project proposal being discussed and be the driving force and sponsor for the project through all stages from development to training, implementation and support.

The key stakeholder is a pivotal role in the success of any project and they have a number of core responsibilities that they must adhere to.

Understanding the business drivers and ensuring that the project fits with the strategy for their area of the business: a fundamental responsibility – the stakeholder must be able to clearly explain the necessity for their project to be taken on before others and prove its strategic merit.

Providing detailed requirements and a financial plan: every project must have these and is doomed to fail if they’re not completed up front.

Committing the necessary resources: Its key to have individuals from the affected areas involved on any project. They can provide you with instant answers and feedback as to how things do or should work. They are the daily operational link to the eventual user base of the project deliverables and I cannot stress enough the importance and usefulness of having them involved. Agile PM methodologies allow you to have quicker bursts of development and a higher pace of deliverable but if you are using traditional project management techniques and don’t have target resources available, you could be wasting a whole heap of time and reputation if your deliverables don’t match what the client wants.

Taking ownership of appropriate deliverables: the stakeholder needs to take ownership of the appropriate deliverables and make sure that they work against a number of key elements such as mirroring the requirements, process compatibility, usability and performance. They must sign off and take ownership of each deliverable, thus allowing the project to proceed on the right track.

Keeping abreast of project progress and cascading information to others who need to know: the stakeholder must not skip project meetings and rely upon others to keep them up to speed. Similarly, they must also keep affected others or teams up to date with frequent progress reports. This is probably the most often reported symptom of failed projects where key stakeholders become disassociated with a project and it starts to drift, stray from the requirements and fall apart. Stakeholders must stay focused and attend all key project meetings.

Establish the training and support requirements: the stakeholder must identify any effected individuals of their projects and establish the necessary training and support requirements. This will be done in harness with the relevant departments but the stakeholder is responsible for it. A project should not end when the development is finished but when it is fully implemented with full training and relevant support models.

Identifying and resolving any project issues and risks, especially those associated with managing change during the transition phase: it’s up to the stakeholder to identify and acknowledge any potential risk and change associated with their project during the proposal stages. This will obviously be discussed with the project team, PMO or legal representatives prior to the project getting a green light.

Communicating throughout the life of the project: I cannot stress enough the need for strong communication. The least successful projects are the ones that are done in isolation, that people forget about until an email gets sent around heralding its imminent implementation. Requirements or processes sometimes change during project development and without having relevant resource or communication with the targeted business areas, a project will quickly lose resonance and relevance. Managing associated change during the transition phase must be done up front or during the life of the project and not when its ready to be implemented as those reticent to change can quickly sour any implementation.

Project closure: in accordance with good project governance, the stakeholder must perform an analysis of the projects delivery against plan, budget and strategic objectives and sign off and accept the project.

This piece has also been posted on my Outsource Magazine column here and on The Business Value Exchange in my position as CIO ‘Thought Leader’.

Flexible IT Systems – Building Systems that can Overlap Across Functions

By Christian on 16th July 2013 in C-Level Executives, CEO, CIO, CIO/CTO, Cloud, Collaboration, Cost Efficiency, Costs, EA, Enterprise, Enterprise Architecture, Executive, Innovation, Internet, IT, IT Director, IT Leadership, IT Process, Leadership, Platform, Process, Software, Strategy, Thought Leadership, Transformation

My latest ‘CIO Thought Leadership’ piece entitled, ‘Flexible IT Systems – Building Systems that can Overlap Across Functions.’
This piece is available in the IT-Enabled Business Innovation topic section on The Business Value Exchange.
Read it here and get involved by leaving a comment.

Post Merger Integration – Do’s and Don’ts

By Christian on 4th July 2013 in C-Level Executives, CEO, CIO, CIO/CTO, Cost Efficiency, Costs, Enterprise, Executive, IT Director, IT Leadership, IT Process, Leadership, M&A, Management, Planning, Process, Stakeholders, Strategy, Thought Leadership

My latest ‘CIO Thought Leadership’ piece entitled, ‘Post Merger Integration – Do’s and Don’ts.’
This is the last piece in a series that I have written for the Mergers and Acquisition topic section on The Business Value Exchange.
Read it here and get involved by leaving a comment.