Business is ready, is IT?
Over the last few years I have noticed a change in the risk matrix associated with Sterling implementations. 3-4 years back the level of customization in Sterling implementations was higher. The level of available out of box functionality may have been a contributing factor, however the bigger driver was aligning the solution with business processes. I remember it used to be very difficult to get business teams to change their processes, resulting in costly customizations.
Since the downturn last year, I have noticed a change in this area. IT organizations are more confident about being able to get the business to agree to process changes to avoid costly customizations. Business users are more open to understand how they could change their processes to be able to benefit from faster and cheaper implementations of required features. So why did this shift happen?
I posed this to a senior IT representative at one of my customers, and his answer was interesting. He thought that it happened to an extent due to the downturn. Cash was in short supply and it was cheaper to let go off the process than customize the IT system. Customization was not only a cost during the implementation phase but led to recurring costs during upgrades and for maintenance. This was true earlier too, but the business had more cash to spend. There is increasing focus to manage greater returns for the same investment and thus the change.
This has led to an interesting situation since for newer projects we are assuming that we would use OOB features wherever we can. This drastically reduces the time required to implement. This puts pressure on IT teams to deliver features faster, and suddenly the IT teams' ability to flex is becoming the bottleneck. While it was once the business slowing down implementations with customizations and changes, now business is setting the pace and IT is trying to keep up. This transfers onto IT's partners and bloated timelines are no longer fashionable (I wonder if they ever were).
So what do we do to help IT organizations keep pace with business, enabling businesses to keep pace with the market?
