Corporate IT Strategy

Philosophy and Business Strategy:

Ever wondered if philosophy can be applied to business strategy and as an extension to IT strategy? Grrrrrr… Weird thought isn’t’ it? Yes. Sometimes weird thoughts, can lead to meaningful and actionable insights!

Let us apply ancient Hindu philosophy to Corporate strategy for a change. For starters, according to Hindu philosophy the word ‘GOD’ has three connotations. Letter ‘G’ represents ‘Generator’ – Creator of new beings/creatures, letter ‘O’ represents ‘Organizer’ – Managing the present; existing beings/creatures/processes well and the letter ‘D’ represents ‘Destroyer’ – Selectively destroying old concepts and kick starting new concepts, based on lessons learnt from past. One wonders, what is the relevance of word ‘GOD’ to Business Strategy?

Let us think a little deeper about it. Corporate and for that matter any firm manages its portfolio as follows:

Organize – Well manage the existing product mix to maximize revenues – Keep the present going well.

Destroy- Retire and or decommission off-patent or failed clinical trials by documenting lessons learnt – Leave the past behind and move to the future.

Generate – Innovate and create ideas for new products, markets, partnerships, which enables sustenance of the firm in the long term.

Practically there is no firm which does not do all of the above in today’s world. There you go… Philosophy indeed has some relevance in the business world after all.

Now let us apply the same concept to IT strategy related to a corporate separation from Parent Corporation. Organize in this case is to support all the business functions without any disruption during the separation. Destroying is to retire legacy technologies and systems by archiving and retaining data in a cheaper system and save cost; without compromising on compliance and regulation. Generation is to innovate and bring new concepts and solutions to the firm. For example leveraging cloud, outsourced data centers, instead of building capital intensive own data centers might provide a big cost saving to any firm. All of the above need strong and quick execution to minimize costs.

If one thinks about it, subconsciously we all follow this concept as individuals and as a firm.

How does this concept apply to IT Agility?

Agility is the ability to move easily and quickly to perform a task. However when we apply this concept to IT, agility is the ability to solve a business problem quickly, providing significant benefits to the business.

Business benefits could mean a) enabling business to introduce innovative product or service offering to the market place, thus building competitive advantage and revenues to the firm, b) significant cost savings and/or improved services to customers, thus enabling increased customer retention and c) increased compliance to regulations with a lean supporting organization/structure and many others. However, many a times in the complex business and IT world we live in, we can move quickly but cannot solve a business problem easily; as solving a business problem involves dealing with multiple and complex technologies, processes and ultimately people. So how can a firm like AbbVie and its IT function achieve increased agility? Do we need new tools or methods or processes to accomplish this? Not really.

The trick is not to introduce any new processes but new thinking of using the existing processes/methods and tools effectively. So what is this new thinking?

This new thinking involves better collaboration, communication, continuous improvement and Innovation (3CI) for solving business problems within an agreed upon timeline.

Problem – Traditionally in many firms, IT and business functions are managed separately and operate in silos. Business and IT closely work together only when there is a new project or an issue with an existing system, impacting business operations. When there is no crisis or a project, collaboration and communication between the groups is minimal. This model of operation limits and blind sights IT folks about the events, change in market dynamics and resultant change in business/IT needs. Sub-optimal systems are delivered if IT does not understand the business problems completely. This forces business users to introduce their ‘own’ little local databases and spreadsheets, there by increasing the risk of disjointed and disconnected business process execution.

Solution: One way of resolving this IT conundrum is to task every IT functional area to not just focus on the specific systems they are responsible for but to learn ‘end-to-end’ or ‘cradle-to-grave’ business process.  Once specific business process is clearly laid out, it is relatively easier to identify opportunities for process improvement. This learning requires IT folks to not just ‘deliver a report’ on time but to understand how that report is being used by business or is it used at all?  A very close collaboration between IT and business functions is needed, which leads to better communication of current and emergent business needs, resulting in better designed IT systems.

Continuous improvement means small but meaningful improvements, which makes the life of business user better. As the saying goes that ‘necessity is mother of inventions’, IT folks are quite capable of innovating or thinking ‘out-of-the-box’ solutions, if challenged to solve a specific business technical problem. Collaboration and communication leads to identifying specific problems or issues which can be addressed ‘one-at-a-time’, leading to ‘benign vicious cycle of 3CI’ of improved collaboration, communication, continuous improvement through innovation.

Ultimately a business user is not really worried about the technology IT deploys, but they are thrilled if the system deployed helps them do their jobs better.

So does the concept of ‘GOD’ apply to IT agility?

Go figure it out..!