Miraculous idea no. 1
Show-me-the-money game
Spending money is easy; making it is a different ballgame altogether. Insight into the direct and indirect costs (total cost of ownership) is a must, but the business won’t warm to IT as long as it is known as the group that spends all ‘their’ hard-earned cash. How can IT contribute to the making of money? By investing in IT, the must-do business cases are created on the basis of legislation or business requirements, efficiency improvement or innovation. Why don’t we show how IT can generate funds in a concrete manner? How can IT maximise the number of perfect orders, minimise stock risks and increase the number of satisfied end customers? The trick is to continue optimising operations from top to bottom. There are branches of industry where internet and mobility change the purchase behaviour of customers and consequently the way that money is made. There’s no denying that this is the case for travel brands, online retailers or wholesalers. But other business sectors also change along with and because of IT. ‘No IT means no satisfied customers.’ This holds true for concerns such as Cable Europe, Vattenfall or Océ, whose customers want to communicate with a single service company, regardless of the fact that the underlying divisions operate independently. The customer wants to arrange the transfer of internet, television and telephone in a single action. This means that you can utilise IT for three strategies: cost savings, process improvement and growth. Organise a show-me-the-money meeting and business will become a far more pleasant affair.
Miraculous idea no. 2
ABC for office automation
Office automation needs to be simplified, but guard against oversimplifying the workstation. The workplace (office, mobile or home) is one of the keys to productivity and work enjoyment. In employee satisfaction surveys, the digital working environment rises head and shoulders above the rest as the most important of these. How do you ensure that users are seen as human beings? Forget the SLA for a moment and gear the user support to the type of user according to the ABC approach: A stands for the autonomous users who prefer to resolve the problem themselves. B represents the users who want to be bottle-fed, so to speak, who expect the PC to work ‘at the push of a button’, who want on-site support and who don’t hesitate to call you up in the weekend when their presentation needs to be ready on Monday. C stands for the conformists, who are quick to learn and are happy to receive service in the form of contact centres or self service. They attend training programmes and expect efficient support. Fortunately, this constitutes the largest of the groups, but that doesn’t mean that the smaller groups aren’t equally important. The result of this simple ABC approach is a rising appreciation for IT. Line managers in particular, who currently go through life as ‘Crackberries’ and have since advanced from VIP to true productivity users, are far more positive about IT if you apply support type B to them - a rather unique development if you consider that this has until recently been the group that harboured the most hatred towards IT workers.
Miraculous idea no. 3
Turn top managers into NERDs
Strategy comes from the top. Getting top managers excited about new technology is like trying to introduce a steel hatchet in the Stone Age. You also have to take a very personal approach. That is why Chase Bank decided, in the late 1990s, to introduce the NERD programme: Necessary Executive Reshaping Degree. The entire top received a personal trainer to gain a thorough understanding of the world of IT. During a three-month period, they devoted at least one hour a week to the NERD programme. Thirteen important applications, from PowerPoint to ERP, were covered in as many weeks. The trainers were employees who were far removed from the executive floor and therefore insensitive to intimidation because of status. Every top manager had to pass the NERD exam, after which they could officially call themselves NERDs. This is a good way of making top managers more confident and self-sufficient when it comes to understanding and dealing with IT. It makes for a far more pleasant environment if top managers don’t have to fake their computer literacy. ‘Unknown is unloved’. As IT, it is in your best interest to get the top managers on your side. Gone are the days of using the FUD factor (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) to force a green light on investments.
Miraculous idea no. 4
Release the stranglehold of security
Chief Security Officers are vital; just like audit, compliance and legal officers. But ‘cannot and should not’ no longer forms the basis for going through life as an internal service provider. When CSOs can squash it all and less and less is allowed without a good alternative, you’re killing a lot of important initiatives for portals, unified communication and online collaboration. That is, in other words, a dead-end street! Major concerns such as Philips, HP and KLM are active participants in the Jericho Forum, a joint venture for the future of open network securitisation. The traditional approach to security says that everything within the firewall is safe, and that the big bad world outside consists entirely of threats. The trend is therefore to keep making this firewall thicker, which is incredibly user-unfriendly. The idea behind Jericho is that systems themselves should be safe to begin with and as a result readily accessible. It’s all about the so-called perimeter; the borders around your company. The new approach is based on de-parameterisation, in other words the erosion of strict borders. You make use of smarter levels of encryption, authentication and authorisation. It is very sensible to see security as an enabler rather than a showstopper.
Miraculous idea no. 5
Promote the helpdesk to customer service champions
Helpdesk employees are often seen as the ‘lowest life form’ in the IT hierarchy. But to users (by definition almost everyone) they are the face of IT. ITIL can help make the helpdesk the single point of contact (SPOC), so that the helpdesk arranges more and more. In addition to the ‘it’s broken please fix it’ requests, they are receiving requests concerning SAP incidents or changes in user authorisations. You need to keep working at the evolutionary development and keep promoting SPOC to customer service champion. SPOC employees usually have a good understanding of IT’s impact on the business, because they have the most direct contact with this very business. However, the second and third-line support specialists fail to grasp fully which operational process falls flat when CRM, ERP, e-mail or another business-critical system goes offline. They spend too little time on the shop floor of a sales department or distribution centre. The reorganisation of incident management is a good springboard towards becoming a true service champion. Service managers must be able to make the connection between the incidents and the pain experienced by the business. A good added indicator for success is the measuring of the satisfaction level on how incidents are handled. Measure the level of satisfaction and you’ll know whether a closed incident has also been truly resolved in the eyes of the user. This gives dissatisfaction in the business a voice to which you can then respond in an adequate manner.
We wish you a fruitful afternoon of magical contemplation!
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