Perspectives
> Data: the big and small of IT
> Mobile applications: join or wait?
> Expense reduction: start by converging business and IT efforts
> Enterprise architecture: valuable or overrated?
> People: balancing insourcing vs. outsourcing
Data: the big and small of IT
Category: Knowledge and Data Management
How much data does your company have stored? If you’re like other companies, your world is overwhelmed by volumes of data that get larger by the minute. According to a study released by research firm IDC, 15 petabytes of data are generated worldwide every day. So how does your company transform data into easy-to-use executive insights that will help manage corporate effectiveness and growth? Traditionally, the solution would include design, development, and maintenance of an enterprise data warehouse. These projects generally take strong consensus building across the enterprise and good organizational collaboration.
Entech’s CIO Perspective differs. In the current economy, CEOs have key concerns about company cash positions and managing increasing expenses. CIOs have to be ready to ensure that data can provide useful information for shareholders and stakeholders.
This requires:
- Data standardization and one agreed-upon definition and functional central store of key performance indicators, specifically revenue-generation elements
- The ability to enable easy integration of internal and external data sources
- Moving data silos to domain intelligence
- Data aggregation with intelligence platforms for executive review and reporting.
We believe that smaller, more flexible, and more integrated business-domain data stores—focused specifically on core-operation and revenue-generation information—are the right approach to greater visibility, transparency, and meaningful business intelligence.
What’s your perspective?
Mobile applications: join or wait?
Category: Mobile Technology
By now, consumers have mastered the web, and the App Store has single handedly changed how people use mobile devices. It has also created opportunities for companies to discover alternative means of customer acquisition and retention at a low entry cost. Some research has indicated that mobile devices and applications are limited compared with PC web experience. Although this is true, taking the traditional path of "simply doing what we’ve always done before, but using the new technology channel" is not the answer.
Entech’s CIO Perspective is that the limited nature of mobile devices is irrelevant compared with the infinite growth opportunities for building revenue through this platform. Instead of taking the path of least resistance, great companies seek out uncommon technology to enable them to drive both their business growth and customer acquisition. If history is any indication, we need only compare the mobile experience with the Internet path from the mid-1990s; it then becomes clear that the need to move forward with creation of a mobile platform is imperative. Coupling mobile platforms with social media builds powerful communities. Take the case of Lockerz—a site where members worldwide connect through commerce and social networking to watch videos and to buy music and games, while earning points. Lockerz has gained millions of members in a very short time. Member preferences are then sold to video and game makers for a profit.
Expense reduction: start by converging business and IT efforts
Category: Cost Containment
Rising external pressures, organizational changes, global flattening, and growing marketplace competition—these forces are driving companies to continue searching for cost-cutting opportunities. IT represents an average of 5% or more of a company’s total budget. Assessing the direct impact of IT on revenue or its contribution to corporate profits is a challenge.
Over the last several years, IT has reduced the low-hanging-fruit costs in outside services, outsourcing to offshore resources, renegotiation of hardware and software terms/agreements, deferring upgrades, and consolidation/ virtualization of infrastructure. What is the long-term impact of these cuts? Is this the right approach?
Entech’s CIO Perspective is that significant additional cost-cutting using this approach will lead to future fallout and instability in a company’s IT infrastructure. It is clear to us that we need a broader look at the way IT architecture is managed. Driving further economies is about joining efforts between business and IT to justify complexity and redundancy of core functional applications and processes, infrastructure, and operations. Implementing disparate, decentralized IT systems across business units will lead to quantifiable reductions in costs. This implementation encompasses targeting redundancies; reducing complexity by consolidating similar systems; and standardizing technologies and planned growth of infrastructure, systems, data, and integration to prevent further duplication. Taking this approach must be balanced by continuing to meet the short-term business needs while assessing the impact to overall costs and complexity.
Enterprise architecture: valuable or overrated?
Category: Infrastructure
Global changes, technology advances, limited resources, and competition are creating business drivers that Enterprise Architecture (EA) can’t keep up with. The prescribed goal of EA is to provide a holistic view of the current state and a defined future state to achieve end-to-end optimization aligned with business strategies. Generally, EA defines a consistent use of the standards and processes that, if followed, are believed to provide cost savings and optimization. Although all EA models emphasize being business-centric, have you noticed that discussions on the topic tend to alienate business executives? Executives fail to see the relevance of EA to their strategic plans, because its value lacks concrete articulation. Maybe because it doesn’t drive revenue?
Entech's CIO Perspective is that an IT organization must be able to quickly respond to business pressures, which requires agility and a reinvented EA model. Current EA models are overburdened with process, lack agility, and have no intrinsic value. Most of the models are not a means to an end by themselves. In order for any architectural model to thrive, its value must be derived from business benefits and from driving business value. EA evolves over time and is not a one-time event. As the business changes, so must the supporting architecture models.
By reinventing a nimble approach that embraces fast-moving external and internal change while creating just enough structure to support business strategies, better decisions can be made about the right investment of time, money, and resources to develop, implement, and maintain a company’s EA. This type of architectural approach eliminates the requirement to get all the answers before decisions can be made. Linking business goals to technology investments can help forecast emerging trends, resulting in more-collaborative decisions and investments in strategic business goals. New model benchmarks should be measured on their ability to drive and achieve business goals.
People: balancing insourcing vs. outsourcing
Category: Business Alignment and Management
Increasing global-business demands—along with the training and development of less costly labor in India and other countries—have definitely helped shaped our assessment of which IT functions can be viewed as commodities. Most CIOs have outsourced one or more IT functions, such as those that are easy to codify, require little interaction, or are not labor intensive, for a variety of skills such as development, maintenance, and operations. The driving goals of IT service off-shoring are to provide large cost reductions and to enable global technology use, resulting in sharing, analyzing, and using information across great geographic distances.
Although some have found outsourcing to have hidden impacts—including additional cost overruns, more paperwork, and less efficiency than initially planned—results have been positive to the CIO’s bottom line. Trends show that, with good management, the CIO can achieve business objectives in a timely manner.
Entech's CIO Perspective is that, as information continues to be increasingly important in driving business revenue and as resource boundaries are removed for virtual working around the world, IT jobs will become utility-like functions whose related components and services will be purchased or leased. Also, IT labor will more closely mirror an open-source model of doing business, one in which commodity skills will be bid on in the global marketplace. Very few have thought about the implication of a "flat world" and the effects on IT functions. IT will need to think about business versus IT in order to achieve business success. We believe that, although the key competitive functions will continue to be managed in-house, much work will be outsourced.
Perhaps the most important CIO Perspective is that there has never been a greater sense of urgency when it comes to fostering innovation, developing technology, and driving revenue in the U.S. Companies must continue to seek out the best and the brightest—they are of paramount importance in ensuring that business needs continue to drive revenue. Those CIOs whose perspective is focused on carefully sourcing jobs that can be done virtually or on a consulting basis, while managing increased offshore labor costs, will ensure success for their organization.
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