We hear your needs

 

How do I get my business people (sales, operations, finance and others) to speak the same language as technology people?  We need the same language before we even try to align business and technology.

Yes, the various functional areas of a business do have their own language.  IT's language can sometimes be a bit more challenging than others.  We've also heard business leaders say "IT listens to me, but I don't think they are really understanding me."  It has been said many times that communication is fundamental.  In addressing this problem, we can help build new paths to communication based on making "the main things the plain things."  The VP of Sales isn't required to understand every piece of manufacturing equipment.  In the same way, the VP of Operations doesn't need to understand the workings of a server.  However, that VP does need to understand the economics of how technology can change cost structure, scalability or flexibility.  The VP of marketing does need to understand whether it is more important to integrate data or integrate transactions.  We focus on what matters to making better risk-return decisions and work to get everyone on the same page. As an added bonus, this approach also helps organizations better understand specialized language in other functional areas.

We are pretty good at project management because of what we do in serving our customers every day.   We're also good in IT project management.  However, we have a track record of poor IT investment decisions.  In looking back, sometimes the problem was scope, sometimes requirements, sometimes change in the environment, sometimes a wrong bet on technology directions.  We just keep tripping up.  We can't afford this.  What do we do?

Our clients are generally good, often very good, at many things IT.  Yet, just like a sports team, it is VERY difficult to be good at everything at once.   Especially in today's environment, poor decisions have potentially fatal consequences. The fixes generally lie outside IT, in properly engaging the right areas of the business (often with other functional areas or product lines, not just with IT).  In these situations, we apply our reviews of company and industry-specific factors, our standardized health checks and our knowledge of the best of the best practices, to get more systematic about good decision making.  We work to improve decision making to help ensure that the right information gets to the right people at the right time to make the right (or at least better) decisions with accountability.  We say "better" because the "perfect" decision can be a rabbit trail of low returns.

My business is pretty focused, we know what we need to do.  We have a few big business improvement initiatives.  We know they depend heavily on technology and we are very good about making the right technology decisions.   We're just poor at implementation.   It's interesting that IT does very well on the reviews for delivering on what was requested.  Our problem seems to be that we miss key operational level requirements.  Another problem is that we try to save money and churn, by having smooth (also long) implementation cycles. However, that is also hurting us in time to market and missing changing requirements.  We need help figuring out the right balance.

There are many trade-offs to be made in implementation process.  While good project managers can catch many of these, other problems are beyond the scope of the project manager.  These rest with trade-offs made by the entire executive team in assessing timing and specific requirements due to competitors, partners and customers. This is about getting executives to make technology-aware assessment of the parties with whom they do  business and then internalizing (sharing with other functional leaders in a way that drives actions).  For example, sales people are very good at looking for signs of a customer's price sensitivity.  But that same sellers' antenna may not be tuned to hearing and acting on competitive or customer changes in technology.

Even in this tough economy, I see opportunity everywhere.  Yet, I don't have the people and systems to be able to take advantage of it.   I know I can't fix it all in a day, but how do I understand what to cut, what not to cut and what to invest in to become more competitive?

This is a great example of why ValueBridge Advisors focuses on the critical intersection of business effectiveness, technology economics and decision-making.  Pundits will often talk about "the business" and "IT."  There are many laudable comments in the media about the need to work together.  All true.  Yet, many of these fail, because they are not at the level of meaningful execution of strategy.  This is because 1) not all functional areas are considered and 2) business processes are viewed in pieces, instead of end to end.   For example, there was a group on a walk-through of a manufacturing plant.  There was a bin of parts.  To warehousing, it was inventory. To assembly, it was work to do.  To finance, it was cash consumption.  To marketing, it was differentiation.  To technology it needed to be all of the above.  Working together, the executive team needed to land on a shared view of those parts in the business process, what technology priorities were most important to achieve the needed results -- was it more flexibility (more revenue), more scalability (lower cost), more agility, more resilience?  Working from the very, very basic concepts like a bin of parts, ValueBridge Advisors seeks to simplify the complex and helps you create faster and more effective decisions.

Other questions include "How do I:

• Cut cost in a more risk-aware way so I don’t kill capability?
• Invest in the right capabilities to restructure and compete better as we recover?

• Improve my enterprise decision making to be more transparent, informed, accountable and agile?
• Know if I am getting enough value from technology?
• Use technology to reduce risk to my operations?

• Use technology to help us in M&A?
• Make my organization more adaptable to change?
• More closely bridge business needs and technology capabilities?

And just for CFOs...

These are just two of several frequently asked questions from CFOs.  The short answer is that these tie back to the earlier comments on getting the right information to the right people at the right time.  Value does indeed need to be measured against a) real competitive needs b) the business understanding of those, c) the IT understanding, d) IT implementation and e) business implementation.  Miss a step and you miss both good measurement of value and the correct decision in the first place.

Liquidity is an even a better question.  In these times, one of the most important roles for a CFO is to help trade off options for pay now/pay later.   This is particularly important as the CFO can not only manage from liquidity perspective but also in the budget process balancing between capital and expense.  This extends not just to the CIO organization, but also to how business line budgets are managed.