— IT should evolve to a proactive decision-making and problem-solving body: The
technology decision-making organization should be comprised not only of technology
professionals but business representatives as well.
— The central IT organization should establish a Program Office (PO) that will manage
all outsourced activities, all account executive activities, and those “negotiations”
activities that characterize so many of the interactions with the businesses. This PO
should be staffed by central/enterprise IT and representatives from the lines of
business.
— The office of the CIO of the enterprise should create deputy CIO
positions to be filled by technology representatives from the lines of
business.
— Enterprise IT should organize according to the targeted enterprise activities,
according to the percentage of support that is outsourced, and according to what the
businesses need and will find useful. The organization should be defined via a
partnership with the lines of business (who – as “clients” – have a clear
vested interest in the way enterprise IT is organized). The central IT organization
has a clear vested interest in defining an organization the businesses will find
useful. This is not a call for reengineering, which when done in-house nearly
always fails; rather, the suggestion is to identify – with the help of the divisions –
a slate of activities and capabilities the businesses would find valuable and then
back-fill the organization into these requirements.
— The central IT organization should establish Centers of Excellence on a temporary
basis. For example, when there is a cross-divisional need like in the areas of Year
2000 compliance or eBusiness, Centers of Excellence, staffed by enterprise and
lines of business professionals.
— IT should take the lead in massing the talent and technology to develop solutions
to problems that all the businesses face. Once the problems have been solved, the
technology should be exported to the businesses, making room for the next Center (or
“tiger team”). These Centers collectively represent the “special services” the
central IT organization provides to the lines of business.
— Central IT should organize a small set of (excellent) “consultants” that will
support the businesses in the enterprise areas. These consultants should not be
charged on a fee-for-service basis. Instead, they should be (a) charged to tax or (b)
embedded in the rates. However, over time – and once value has been demonstrated –
then a “declining subsidy” funding model can be implemented. Such a model provides
non-fee-for-service support initially but converts the support to fee-for-service over
time.
with the businesses:
— It should partner with the businesses, actively seeking their involvement in
key decisions about infrastructure and other enterprise activities. Failure to get
buy-in results in unnecessary and unproductive conflict.
— The central IT organization should adopt the “consulting mindset” which would see
the divisions as clients, not as adversaries.
— The central IT organization should work with the businesses to develop charge-back
and investment procedures for paying for IT services. This source of enormous
conflict can be reduced or eliminated.
— It should identify (with the businesses) those services that should fall into the
traditional charge back model, those services that should be fee-for-service, those
services that should be non-fee-for-service, and those services that should be funded
centrally (via some model that puts skin in the game from all sources). Ambiguity
here must be eliminated.
— There are special occasions when the enterprise will subsidize business costs, such
as for major technology refreshes and events like the Year 2000 conversion effort.
But this funding will come with “strings”: The enterprise will require the divisions
to comply with certain conditions of acceptance, such as hardware/software asset
acquisition practices, adherence to standards, and enterprise systems management.
In Part 3 tomorrow, we’ll cover services, alternative funding mechanisms,
organizational structure and people.
C
lick here to read Part 1 of this three-part column.
Steve Andriole is the Thomas G. Labrecque Professor of Business at Villanova
University where he conducts applied research in business and technology alignment. He
is also the founder & CTO of TechVestCo, a new-economy consortium that focuses on
optimizing investments in information technology. He can be reached at [email protected].