CXO Strategies - Aligning Business & IT

BT Summit (Where business matters)

2008-09-28T20:47:00.000-07:00

Business Technology (BT Summit) Summit was held on 23 Sep -24 Sep 2008 at Bangalore. The summit covered four complementary, yet important tracks viz. SOA & Web Services, SaaS/PaaS, Virtualization and Enterprise Content Management (ECM). The eminent speakers of the conference brought the insights on how to align the technology with business needs.
The summit was very well organized in terms of keynote sessions, track based sessions and technology intensive workshops. The Business Technology Expo had different stalls like SalesForce.com, mPower etc. They definitely provided the opportunity for networking, to understand about the products/offerings
Prominent speakers like Sasa Ana, Peter Coffee, Kiran Datar, Ismael Ghalimi, Otto de Graaf, Tarun Gulati, Chris Harding, Matjaz B. Juric, Robert Marcus, Alan Pelz-Sharpe & others had graced the occasion.
The summary of some of the sessions are shared below:
KeyNote Sessions
The Keynote sessions covered the issues which are of concern to the enterprises. These sessions included
> Business Transformation vs. SOA Transformation - Can I do Both?
> Way to Work - Enterprise 2.0
> Software + Services: Fundamental Shifts in Platform Computing
> The Drive Towards an On-Demand Platform

The keynote session of Business Transformation vs. SOA Transformation - Can I do Both? was addressd by Manoj Saxena. The summary of the session is to link how business transformation can be achieved through SOA initiative. However, the majority of IT's budget and resources are spent in maintenance leaving little time and resources for IT to be innovative and meet the business demands. In addition, many IT Corporations have adopted SOA in adhoc fashion and achieved some maturity in the technology. The key to aligning the IT objectives with the business objectives is a structured approach. He shared different ways to develop the required capabilities and prioritize the initiatives to create a Business and SOA transformation roadmap.
Kiran Datar of Cisco spoke on “The Drive towards an On-Demand Platform”. He mentioned that according to Gartner, the annual cost to own and manage software applications can be up to four times the cost of the initial purchase. As a result, companies end up spending more than 75% of their total IT budget just on maintaining and running existing infrastructure and software, companies have accepted this as a cost of doing business. The number of software applications that a company may need is infinite but the resources are finite. The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) revolution allows companies to subscribe to software applications and have minimal cost of ownership on a usage basis. SaaS solutions are more cost effective than ownership. Thus, companies can spread their IT budget across applications to support their business needs which will contribute to the bottom line. On-demand collaboration is among the leaders in the SaaS platform along with CRM solutions. People want to work together and share data, video & audio with anyone, anywhere, anytime. We are in the “NOW” era of collaboration. . Today’s collaboration solutions also offer a very high level of security and availability. As the environment for collaboration is changing, IT departments are now making collaboration services as part of their overall deliverables.
The session had given the perspective on how enterprises can bring their cost of IT down by adopting SaaS as strategic solution.
Peter Coffee spoke on “Code in the Cloud”
On-demand computing has transformed software, lowering risk and cost while increasing user adoption and customer success. To be successful, an application must be designed for on-demand from the ground-up, including core architectural elements such as multi-tenancy, availability, performance, security, metadata-driven customization, integration via web services, etc. A comprehensive platform should encapsulate core computing services, allowing application developers to focus on innovation and value. Using demos and code examples, Peter Coffee will discuss the technical architecture and developer benefits of a multi-tenant language and a comprehensive cloud-based development experience.
SOA Track
The SOA & Webservices track was filled with lots of action. The sessions ranged from SOA Standards, SOA Patterns, Business Process Management, Best practices of SOA. SOA Life cycles, DNA of SOA etc.
The 2 days were full of knowledge, examples, data, market trends etc. on SOA. The best part was the speakers knew what they were talking about. The speakers were very much willing to give away information and answer queries (offline & online). The SOA menu was filling the hunger of quest of SOA learner be a naive or advanced.
Summary of some of the sessions are listed below:
Building a Flexible Enterprise with SOA and BPM by Matjaz B. Juric.
Matjaz explained how SOA & BPM fits together. He started off his session with executives’ perspective on IT. As per the Gartner/Forbes’ executive survey (2005), around 48% of managers felt that IT hinders change. The reason for that feeling is that IT is not flexible to meet the changes of the business needs. This is where there is a need for SOA to pitch in to make the IT infrastructure as agile to meet the changes of the business needs.
He cautioned that it is very much vital to have a long term perspective for the SOA projects & the needs of the SOA to be looked at business aspect, technology aspect & organizational aspect. He compared the SOA implementation with respect to traditional software implementation.

Essential DNA for SOA Genesis by Gautam Nadakarni
Gautam started the session humorously with list of SOA Maixms like replace “EAI” with SOA on your resume. That caught the attention of the audience very well.
He shared that the main objective of the SOA project should be “Service Orientation”. The session was well structured. He shared insights on SOA vision, principles, Processes, Service oriented Infrastructure. According to him the SOA initiative has 3 phases viz. Service oriented Architecture (SOA), Service Oriented Infrastructure (SOI), Service Oriented Processes (SOP). He also drawn the analogy of ITIL guidelines and applied them to SOA lifecycle. Finally he ended up the session with 7 key takeaways of his session for all the audience.

Enterprise Content Management track
The sessions of Enterprise content management (ECM) ranged from defining what ECM is to how ECM & SOA are linked. Speakers had caught the attention of the audience with very rich information & relevant trends.
ECM 2.0 by Sridharan Sankaran
Sridharan exemplified the importance of ECM technologies in the enterprise. The workforce entering the corporation is already well versed with the ECM technologies & expecting the corporate to provide the similar experience. However, enterprises do have their limitations towards the opening all the Web 2.0 technologies to the workforce because of security issues.
Sridharan gave insights on what are the different technologies involved in ECM 2.0. Few of them are listed as below:
> Wikis, blogs, rss
> Web 2.0 clients
> Personal publishing
> Guided navigation
> Text/media analytics
> Bus process analytics
> Expertise profiling
> Virtualized repository
> Self contained content
> Native xml everywhere
According to the speaker, the technology is bringing out opportunities as well as challenges. He has of a opinion that this requires a solid architectural approach to the ECM platform and the glue to connect the business needs with a rich set of applications. He also suggested that there is a need for SAAS enabled ECM platform which could cater to the need of
> Multi tenancy support,
> Provisioning services
> Data, user, full text partitioning
> Authentication & authorization
ECM & SOA by Alan Pelz
The insights of how ECM & SOA relations were shared by Alan Pelz. ECM provides control to the content across the enterprise. (Controls like Security, access, changes, audit trail, associated business processes, compliance, life cycle through to destruction). The content can be distributed across multiple locations/servers. So, providing the control on this distributed content is very complicated. The technologies involved and the architecture of these are very complex. Alan mentioned that the webservices developed to integrate the applications need to be well thought.
Usually the content in an enterprise has been managed through centralized architecture
> Centrally controlled & organized
> Simple processes optimized for local needs
> Parallel activities
> Distributed & fragmented policies
> Various levels of expertise
However in the globalized enterprise, the content will be distributed. Some of the different ways to achieve distributed ECM are libraries of content, through cluster of services, virtual ECM.
Some of the ECM Demands of SOA includes
> Awareness of the location of content items
> Interacting with identity management protocols & products
> Real-time bidirectional integration with directory services
Most of the vendors in the ECM space are already have SOA approach for their products. Alan explained Wipro Technologies’ SOA framework has been very well thought out & he explained how it can meet the needs of ECM demands.
Alan also gave the insights on SWOT for ECM. According to him, strength is buyers want SOA/ECM. Weakness - SOA is not adopted by everyone, opportunities being common set of standards & alignment with BPM & threat is that vendors of SOA could take away the whole market of ECM.
Workshops
There were multiple deep dive workshops were conducted related to ECM, Cloud computing & SOA.
Selecting the Best ECM System by Alan Pelz was intended to give tips on how to select ECM system that best suits the organization. He shared the hints and tips on selecting an ECM product, best practices for selecting the product & to select the product based on the use case scenarios i.e. objectively assessing the vendor product.
BPMN to BPEL – Modelling business processes for SOA workshop was covered by Matjaz B.Juric.
According to speaker, SOA lifecycle starts with business process modeling and continues with process implementation, identification of services, process execution, activity monitoring & optimization.
He demonstrated how to translate BPMN to BPEL, decomposition of services, to reuse services, to use registry & repository & to execute the process. The IBM & Oracle SOA platforms were used for the workshop.Matjaz demonstrated the indepth knowledge on the subject & practical aspects.BPMN to BPEL - Modelling Business Processes for SOABPMN to BPEL - Modelling Business Processes for SOA

Summary

The BT Summit gave full perspective on the technologies which are key to transform the business. The sessions were organized very well and master of ceremony had done a wonderful job. Team of SaltMarch Media did a wonderful job in bringing the in depth experience of thought leaders..

Ethical Business Practice

2008-09-07T21:45:00.000-07:00

We had to renovate the house. We called up a contractor to outsource the work. The initial dialogues went on well. We awarded the contract to the person. During the transactions we could find that the person was not following very good business practices. Even though he finished the work with quality, in the process he lost our trust.
Family members were debating on what went wrong etc. My spouse shared about a real estate developer who happens to be practicing a very healthy, transparent business practices for more than 2 decades. He charges premium for his services, however because of his frankness and openness, he has been able to get very good business all along.
So, sustainability of business is possible provided good business practices are followed. It does not matter, whether your business is real estate, retail outlet, financial service or IT.

People watch the business practices, integrity, honesty etc. with close eyes. They don’t like to be cheated. They liked to be made feel good at the same time tell them what is good for them very honestly. At times the truth you speak might not be accepted, but if they realize that it was in their own interest, then they will come back. They will refer you to their closed ones. Your business will flourish.

Branding

2008-08-26T22:28:00.000-07:00

Branding is an effort of creation of mind share with the customer. It is better to create a positive image and positive mind share than a negative one.
Hence, every customer touch through different channels viz. sales, marketing, delivery and product/service creates an impression about the company. If the touch creates a positive feeling, it creates a positive recall and makes customer come back.
If there is a negative mind share created then it takes a longer time to change it & bring them back to the positive side. As most of us aware, the customers share the negative words with more people than sharing the positive results. This word of mouth, in turn creates a barrier for the companies to cross the bridge as the new customer who has heard the negative words would take more time and energy to cross to positive side.

Few tips to maintain the positive image of the company:

Ensure every individual directly touching the customer is aware about the responsibility of the interaction.
Ensure that people working on customer deliverables (product/service) is aware about their responsibility & impact of their work to the customer and to the company.
Basically everyone in the company needs to understand the bigger picture

Happy branding..

Why innovation is important?

2008-08-17T20:42:00.000-07:00

It is said that the “nothing brings failure than the success itself”. If you don’t innovate and bring out new initiatives or new changes to the business, someone else will. The impact of this is, the customer would move from you to other vendor provided there is a clear benefit of value, price & time factors.
To sustain and grow, new value additions have to be brought to the table. Every customer wants to learn something new all the time. He/she wants to learn about the new features, new uses, new products etc. It is the job of the marketer to invocate these thoughts and produce the environment suitable for this growth.
To provide this environment to the customer, the company where the goods are produced, the people who are involved in these have to spend time and innovate new ideas to help customer.

Ultimately, the truth of the business is if you don’t then someone else will..

Who owns the customer?

2008-07-04T02:38:00.000-07:00

“Today’s customers seem to think the world revolves around them—and
they are right.”. This statement was written in one of the customer centricity article by Accenture.

Customers are lured by every company or most of the companies. Who ever not doing it today, either they are planning to lure customers or paying a high price for not doing it.

The customers learn very quickly (like a child). They understand that they are important and they have been pampered. They start demanding more and more. That is exactly what has happened. They observe the innovation/customer centricity in one industry and expect the same or better service/product from everyone else who is serving. In the long run, only the one who keep pace with the customer expectation wins and continues to be in the market. Though, It is not an easy job..

Let me come to the point. In this hyper customer centered market, who owns the customer? Is it sales people, is it marketing people, is it product designers, is it people who manufacture the products.. etc.. The list goes endless.

Usually the organizations are very much fragmented and at times this is the reason why customer orientation falls apart. To the customer, it does not matter who is interacting with him/her. For him, it is the company/brand which is represented by the person interacting with the customer. So, it is very important to make everyone interacting with the customer to be made aware that he/she owns the customer. It should be a cultural shift or paradigm shift in customer service.

To be a successful CIO and successful business leader

2008-06-20T01:14:00.000-07:00

I was reading an article: Customer Data Should Drive IT Decisions on CIO.com by Michelle McKenna. Michelle is a senior vice president and CIO at Universal Orlando Resort in Orlando. Michelle writes in this article on how she could devise the strategy of her company based on the customer data. Incidentally she used the IT to capture and analyze the data. I did mention in my earlier blog about IT’s relevancy in customer relationship management.

It is very apparent from this case in point that, a CIO can become a transformation agent of a company & be a successful business leader in doing so.

Having an affair with a customer

2008-06-17T20:21:00.000-07:00

Last week I happened to visit a mall & happened to overhear the conversation over the counter – “Find out who is the customer contact and see whether you can have an affair with her”. A senior colleague was suggesting a junior – who was trying to break an ice with a customer.

It sounded very funny to me. However, when went through deeply, it made sense. What teenagers/people do when they are in love? They try to find out every minute detail of the person they are in love with. He/she want to know what the other person’s likes/dislikes, hobbies, interests and what not? They approach the other person very carefully and treat them very important.

You know what? If we apply these principles or even 10% of these principles with our customers, our day is done. We get ideas to serve them better. When we serve them better, they obviously feel good and naturally come back to us. That is all what is relationship is about.

In the business language, having an affair with the customer is building good customer relationship. You might ask a question, what is IT has to do with customer relationship? My answer is most of it. You can capture all your customer information through the IT systems. They can help you get the single view of the customer, interests and what not? You can leverage IT to gather information and monitor the relationship. Here you go..

Reactive vs. Proactive IT

2008-06-16T01:32:00.000-07:00

In most of the organizations today, business always drives what IT has to do. Business is always under the impression that IT solutions are costly and time consuming. To address the short term need, business always asks for the tactical /quick fix from the IT folks. Most of the time, IT department bends to the pressure. So, IT has been reacting to the business needs and trying to meet the ends.

One of the Management consulting firm partner comments on this game of alignment as –“ IT has a list of things it’s working on, perhaps with some subjective connection to business objectives, and a hurried business agrees that, yes, this is the right list.”

Question is how IT can be proactive & influence business? IT can get overall picture of the landscape of software, hardware, processes. If it focuses on improving the business processes / business efficiency, it can proactively suggest changes to business. Quantify the benefits in terms of response time, strategic business benefit, competitive advantage etc. Ask for business endorsement for these initiatives.

Forrester suggests “Business Focused Enterprise Architecture” for strategically aligning IT & business. According to this process, IT needs to
Ø Identify key outcomes
Ø Analyze outcome drivers
Ø Develop & propose concepts
Ø Incorporate into planning
Ø Build into “To be” architecture.

IT can become a strategic partner to the organization, only if it becomes proactive in its approach.

Business Transformation

2008-06-11T20:37:00.000-07:00

Ralph Szygenda, CIO of General Motors states in the Wall Street Journal article, “My job is to use IT to transform the business.” He estimates that his cost-cutting has added $5 billion to GM’s bottom line over the past decade. He used IT to eliminate the redundant efforts/processes in the Car design and other processes.

In any organization, the IT can play a role of transformation agent by aligning business and IT. Most of the time, the business processes across LOBs/functions will be working in silos. IT can look at the bigger picture and integrate/optimize the resources across organization. So, CTOs and CIOs play an important role to use the IT effectively and efficiently.

Business process management (BPM) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) enable organizations to optimize their processes and IT infrastructure. These technologies also enable companies to be agile to new business requirements. So, it is very important for CXOs to look at technology as a strategic tool rather than tactical requirement.

Customer experience

2008-06-05T21:38:00.000-07:00

How has been your experience as a customer to a good service provider? Or how do you feel when you use a good product? WOW!!
How did you feel when you went through a bad experience as a customer either consuming a service or product? “What a pain!!”

Yes, I did feel the same way.. When you come across something innovative either as a service or product, you do feel that “WOW-What an experience?” So the key to success is to make the customer feel the “WOW” with you or your product more often..

How do you make these feelings happen? There is only one way for it. Think through the customer. Go through his experience. Understand what are his pains are? Address it.It is so simple. Yet difficult to attain because, there are so many different types of them to address.

Are we listening enough?

2008-06-03T20:41:00.000-07:00

Each one of us who are playing in the market is selling either some product or service or both. Who do you think is the expert of your offerings? Is it the sales people who are selling to customer, is it the assembler who is in the shop floor, is it the designer who is drawing on the board? Is it the marketing person who analyses what the customer needs are? Who is it who is the expert of your offerings?

If you have chosen anyone from the above list then according to me you need to think through.. In my opinion the person who is the expert of your offering is the consumer/customer. Go and ask him what is the fault of your offering.. He would come up with at least 3-4 points..

Do you wonder why it so? Question is Are we listening enough?..

Change is inevitable..

2008-06-02T21:16:00.000-07:00

According to IBM's Global CEO study 2008, the CEOs of fortune 1000 companies are anticipating enormous change. As everyone aware change is inevitable. Changing demographics, changing customer needs, changing customer awareness, globalization, competition and many more other factors affect the market dynamics and hence a corporation/business entity.

If a business has to be successful the leadership team (CXOs) have to hear the unheard and change the course of action. It is very important to look at the strategic value of any initiative than just looking at tactical benefit. The organizations which keep looking at the tactical benefits than the strategic ones will ultimately loose out to the competition. We have so many examples of market leaders loosing out to the competition.

Innovation and change should be the mantra of CXOs to attain & retain the market leadership.

2008-05-25T04:21:00.000-07:00

In today’s competitive business world, CIOs need to focus on utilizing the technology as a strategic tool.
Service Oriented Architecture is an architecture style, which enables the organizations to save cost and achieve business agility.

Feature	Business Benefits
Reuse the software/ services across different business processes	Reduces the cost of development of software in the long term horizon
Expose the existing functionality as services	Expanding the network of vendors/business partners

CXOs need to think strategically about their organization and business growth. SOA can be used as a strategic tool to help the organizations to change quickly to the need of the business. This enables to bring in more synergy between the business and IT.