Poorly performing IT investments
The Performance Technologies Group
Category: ui-design | Author: David Brock | Date: 04/01/2005
04 January 2005
Summary
For the past forty years, the consistently dominant focus of technologists with delivery responsibilities, has been the technical aspects of IT - efficiency, response times, data base optimisation, network performance, architectures, interoperability and so on and so on. In spite of the global investment by business in ERP and CRM systems of close to $US200B, Excel spread sheets continue to be the corporate chewing gum of choice. What IT lacks is a means of expression that produces the ‘blueprint’ for IT to ‘build’ from to produce applications that really work.
The failure of IT to consistently produce results
It is now understood at board level that technology is not the source of competitive advantage that, starting in the 1980’s, it was touted to be. In addition, there has been a consistent and significant shortfall between the benefits promised and actual benefits gained from all forms of information technology implemented.
For the past forty years, the consistently dominant focus of technologists with delivery responsibilities, has been the technical aspects of IT - efficiency, response times, data base optimisation, network performance, architectures, interoperability and so on and so on. There has been a lack of attention to (or understanding of) the business implications (effective alignment with strategy) or the usability of technology on the part of IT people
ERP and CRM systems are prime examples of unfulfilled expectations. In spite of the global investment by business in ERP and CRM systems of close to $US200B, Excel spread sheets continue to be the corporate chewing gum of choice. For example, due to the age, fragility and inflexibility of its core billing systems, there is a significant Australian Telco whose billing functions actually effectively reside on spreadsheets. Calculate the commercial risk associated with that situation.
As highlighted in the article entitled “BOARDS AND IT — WHO CARES AND DOES IT REALLY MATTER?” in the August 2004 issue of Company Director, the problem does not lie solely at IT’s door. For their part, a very large proportion of board members do not understanding the key issues associated with technology.
Creating the bridge between business, requirements and IT
What is the answer? Clearly, it is unrealistic to expect board members to become technology experts and it is also unreasonable to expect thirty something year old techno wiz’s to become high stakes business savvy. Therefore, common ground must be found. In the construction industry there is an unambiguous ‘bridge’ that connects all parties in the process; the client, the architect and the builder. It is called the blueprint. The client has needs, the architect translates those needs onto paper and both are able to communicate needs and instructions to the builder in a form that can be directly implemented. While the builder certainly has some latitude in the translation from logical to physical- the materials to be used and other considerations - the original intents are never lost and are able to be progressively ‘audited’ by the architect and the client. There is exactly the same need in relation to business and its deployment of technology.
In the case of business, the Board is the client, the strategy groups are potentially the architects and IT are the builders. I say the strategy groups are 'potentially' the architects because they facilitate the business planning process. What they lack is a means of expression that produces the ‘blueprint’ for IT to ‘build’ from. Armed with such a process, however, they would be able to express strategy in a form that IT can implement as working technology systems. In this environment, the Board would be able to oversee the entire process. Ideally, the blueprint would not only reflect strategy but it should also ensure a high degree of usability in the resulting technology implementations. The latter would help ensure that Excel disappears from the enterprise systems landscape.
The capability to produce such a blueprint exists within our process, XPDesign™, which creates high performance user interface designs and provides a development framework. By using XPDesign in concert with our experienced organistional psychologists, we also ensure that the resulting designs are intuitive and usable.
PTG Global’s user interface design process takes into account both business objectives and user and technology requirements. These are then clearly communicated to IT in a form that requires no interpretation and can be directly implemented as working applications. It is equally suited to solving existing problems by reverse engineering the design of a current system to understant the root cause of the oberved problems.
To get the most of your ERP, CRM or other IT investment, the user interface needs primary attention. If your staff can't use it effectively, they'll go back to their Excel spreadsheets, undermining your business performance.
