CIOs can learn from the media industry’s mistakes by looking not only at the content they are delivering (and that content could be anything from a shiny new VoIP phone system to a massive ERP package), but at how it is being distributed and how their end-users expect to interact with the content. For example, if you are implementing a new business intelligence package, don’t focus on all the wonderful data you will have locked up in the package, focus on the streamlined ways users can interact with the data. You are in fact giving “power to the people” by letting them pull data and slice and dice it on their terms.
For a large systems implementation like a CRM package, look at how the sales force’s daily lives will change based on the required interactions with the system, and develop a plan to compensate reps for their adoption of the new way of doing business. In short, look at corporate IT as providing a complete experience, not dumping technology on unsuspecting victims.
Looking at IT in this manner unifies formerly disparate areas like change management and process improvement. When content is no longer king and the end-user experience paramount, things like process tweaks become key to IT success rather than an afterthought at the 11th hour. In essence, your IT activities are aiming squarely for a successful end-user experience, rather than technically successful endeavors that become overall failures due to an extreme focus on content.
Patrick Gray is the founder and president of Prevoyance Group, and author of Breakthrough IT: Supercharging Organizational Value through Technology. Prevoyance Group provides strategic IT consulting services to Fortune 500 and 1000 companies. Patrick can be reached at [email protected].