Interesting Report on IT depts role in value creation

July 16, 2008 By Leave a Comment

The CIGREF (french big companies CIO club) issued and interesting report co-writen with McKinsey. Although it’s writen in French, [ now availabe in english] I would like to share some points with you. And, if ever you know someone who can make a quick translation for you I think it’s really worht.

- IT doesn’t impact directly value creation

- value doesn’t reside in tools but in their use

- as a result, IT depts don’t have to provide people with tools, hoping it will meet their needs and they’ll manage to do something efficient with it, but have to fulfill people’s needs.

- IT depts can’t create value by themselves and on their own, they have to co-create it with business managers.

- by the way, IT’s impact on value creation has to be measured by business indicators and not by IT ones.

That reminds me of the debate on enteprise 2.0 ROI which, according to me, in neither soft nor qualitative but can be well and truly measured through the performance of the business processes it supports. For example, the report quotes a case study from AXA ( a big insurance company) where results are measured through Balanced Scorecard indicators which reminds me of my series about strategy maps.

If this reflection can apply to all IT issues, it’s obviously relevant when discussing social sofware issues.

Whatever, the end of the “one size fits all” logic is coming closer et the time when IT depts role will be to provide people with the tools that match their needs instead of providing a standardized offer which makes IT people feel comfortable but doesn’t help people to be efficient in their day to day job. No more “try to do what you can with what we give you” but “Why can I do for you ? What are your needs ? Fopr what purpose ? ” instead !

It inspires me another reflextion on the very notion of goal. If we consider the IT activity is a goal in itself, the current way of doing things is logical : rationalize costs, tools, providing one unified offer. But if we consider it has to serve corporate performance as a whole, measuring its efficiency according to its own results is contrary to any business efficiency approach. By the way, it takes us back again to the discussion on “local optima vs. global maximum” that companies will soon have to deal with. But we’ll be discussin that further in a few weeks…

However that may be, the report can be downloaded here.

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR, Software & Tools Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

People are more likely to share information if they know why

March 29, 2008 By 2 Comments

Companies know their performance depends more and more on their ability to use information. But information that’s not harnessed can’t be used.

There are two kinds of information : company generated information that’s harnessed (even if people within the organization don’t know where to find it), and employee generated information that remains informal and is only known from its owner and some few people around him, because it’s not harnessed at the organization scale.

Harnessing this informal information is one of enterprises 2.0′s purposes. As said in this Gartner’s post, this kind of information exists and is available as flows, contrary to what people used to know, that is more about stocks. That’s quite destabilizing because the liquidity of this information, the fact it’s owned by employees, and the fact that employees share it and make it available for the whole organization only if they want is the exact opposite of everything that’s been known till then. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Intranets and digital workplace, Knowledge & Information management, Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

IT will matter…but differently

March 2, 2008 By Leave a Comment

While social computing platforms emergence within the enterprise seems to be unavoidable, the debate on “does IT (still) matter” is coming back at the forefront of the actuality. Not directly but because, since it’s said that enterprise’s wealth is in people, we can wonder if IT sill matter.

The debate was reopened on Wikinomics, in response to Nicholas Carr’s famous scepticism. I agree with Carr to some extent, being convinced that ERP and CRM never helped enterprises to build a real competitive advantage. It doesn’t mean they didn’t improve operational performances, the point it this added performance didn’t impact competitive advantage as expected.

As for stating that IT won’t matter, it’s, according to me, going too far. Of course what counts in 2.0 world is people. But without the appropriate tools, people won’t deliver their full potential. And, although those tools are easy to install and manage, integrating them in global IT strategy will still need a lot of attention.

More, le 2.0 sphere is completing what already exists : we’re adding a right hemisphere to the existing information system. In the same way I keep repeating informal activities have to be reused by formal business, tools may make this connection possible, and once liquid information became solid it has to go back to traditional channels. Connectors between social platforms and legacy tools will be crucial and that’s why IT will matter even more.

At last, traditional formal business activities will still need process-driven tools. Even if they won’t remain the only ones.

So IT will still matter, and even more. But with an added dimension : besides tools which value is in what they do, we’ll see the emergence of tools which value is in how the make it possible for people to interact. Tools that allow people to treat information, and tools that treat information by themselves.

Even in the people-centric era, IT will still be key because it will allow people to deliver their full potential.

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Software & Tools, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , ,

Informationnal overload is a myth

March 5, 2007 By Leave a Comment

It’s also called infobesity and it’s said being the cause of all our sorrows. It stresses those who aren’t able to manage such an amount of information, it causes losses of productivity and its growths makes informationnal quality decrease.

I don’t suscribe to this point of views. Honestly I don’t feel like being overloaded by information. I’d rather say I don’t have enough information and I’d be very happy to get more. And I think we’re all in the same situation but not everybody realizes it.

Our problem isn’t informationnal overload. We’re not being flooded by information, but by datas. It’s not just a change in verbalization, it’s really a conceptual change that may have a lot of effects once you’ve taking it into account

What are we talking about ?

What’s the difference between information and datas. Information is an answer to a question. Data is only a part of this answer that, taken individually, doesn’t mean nothing for me and is useless.our moi.

The first conclusion is that the difference between both is highly subjective. What’s a data for me may be information for you and conversly. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Management & HR, Software & Tools Tagged With: , , ,

What 2007′enterprise is. Production is changing.

March 3, 2007 By Leave a Comment

At first sight nothing has changed. Coca Cola still produces beverages, GM cars… So what makes me say production changed ?

If you have a closer look you’ll realize that enterprises are now producing information. And what about car manufacturers for example ? Exactly the same. Consider, for example, how much information was necessary to conceive and build the famous Fort T ? And the amount of information that the same goal, making a car, requires now. Compare the number of people whose job is producing information to those whose job is producing the final product in the 70s…the 80s…and now. Enterprises are information producers because the part of information contained in each final product, may it be a car, a shampoo, a computer, is increasing to an extent we can hardly realize.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Management & HR Tagged With: , , ,