Changing Expectations from Information Technology - From Simple Business Assistance to the Essential Business Ingredient: Part III (concluding)
The Appropriate Way Ahead For The IT
There is an increasing market demand for harnessing deep Industry know-how with the IT Service offering. One effective way for achieving this is to invest in establishing Centre of Competence, dedicated to a particular Industry vertical, to train the IT professionals in industry domain fundamentals. For an ERP Service provider group, these CoCs would deal with those Industry needs which are effectively addressed by the ERP package. In parallel, it would also pay attention to those needs which are only partially fulfilled or not fulfilled at all through the ERP solution. As such, CoC would concentrate on training the IT Consultants on the niche features that an ERP offers, that are aptly suitable for the Industry segment, so that more and more Industries can avail advantage of the same. At the same time, CoC would give due consideration to the grey areas, with the aim of coming up with simple work-around as a short term solution and some innovative development through long term plan in these areas. CoC may have 4 main focus areas - (1) Training (2) Knowledge - Gaining & Sharing (3) Reference Process Flows and Best Practices Repository (4) Solution Development. Through these focus areas, CoCs would develop Industry specific expertise in relation to the ERP offering under consideration.
Broadly, the expertise can be divided into 3 levels - Basic, Core, Expert. The junior roles need to be at least at "Basic" level of knowledge of the particular industry working. The "Core" level, which would map to Team Lead positions, should have in-depth business knowledge of the organisation under consideration. The "Expert" level would be the "Solution Owner" position, having pan-Organisations knowledge. A person marked to be an "Expert" would typically carry solid working experience from the relevant Industry. And further, the Expert level CoC training would enable him / her to provide more value add to the customers. The value add could be in form of proposals for business process modification, adoption of best practices prevalent in the said industry, optimum planning for future IT landscape etc. CoCs can further strengthen the objective through a certification framework for "ERP + Industry" knowledge courses. The CoCs can also develop supporting artifacts, like dedicated portals, expert forums, knowledge repositories etc. for the selected Industry vertical. Going forward, this would effectively create specialists for a particular Industry, who would have good Industry / business knowledge (and experience), along with excellent grip on the ERP package / IT solution in his area of work.
Going few steps ahead, Organisations can establish their own Training Centers or Universities or "Organisational CoCs", who would hold the overall responsibility to train people in their areas of expertise, from Business as well as from IT perspective. More on the "Organisational CoC" - its objective, scope, how to set it up, ways of working etc., sometime later.
Hope you were with me through this 3 part blog discussion on the IT journey, with respect to the changing demands on the IT from the Industry. Would surely like to hear your views on this subject. Thanks.
