I have been successful at delivering a consistent message for the past fifteen years to audiences from the C-suite to middle management, and that is in today’s ever-changing business climate, successful companies are those that create an enterprise that can effectively synchronize business and IT. By matching their company’s evolving business needs to their IT environments, they can strike a balance across managing costs and risks, increasing value and quality, and enhancing business agility.
In my current engagement, there has been a lot of talk lately about “future-proofing” the overall organization. I find this puzzling, because the basic definition of that term has not been identified. As the economy becomes increasingly connected, this customer stands at the threshold where the fundamental processes of value exchange are being transformed. The sheer abundance of information …
Continue reading “Notes from the Field: Planning the Extended Enterprise”
I stated in my last article that an adaptive enterprise—or, as this customer likes to call it now, an extended enterprise—is built, not bought. It is a transformational process, and every enterprise arrives at the task of transforming itself with a different history and different goals, priorities, and needs.
A critical factor in achieving speed of execution is being clear about who gets to make which decisions. Governance is about establishing a framework to ensure that all decisions are made by the right person or persons, according to the importance of the decision and the expertise and organizational responsibilities of the parties to the …
This Field Notes series chronicles my experiences with a major transformation project I’ve been involved in for the past eighteen months. I have worked on almost every aspect of this project, from application rationalization to portfolio management to reconstructing business processes and aligning and synchronizing IT with the business.
Companies are still facing an era of unprecedented and continuous change. In fact, perhaps the most striking feature of today’s business environment is its dynamic nature. While change is often unexpected and disruptive, companies that adapt quickly can gain a competitive advantage. I’ve said this many times in the past, and it still rings true …
Continue reading “Managing Change: More Notes from the Field”
I recently spent four months mired knee-deep in a large enterprise transformation project, analyzing and working directly with the customer on a bloated application portfolio rationalization. This isn’t easy, especially with a very large, diverse enterprise. Companies of this type have multiple business areas, some of which in turn have multiple business units, each with its own complexities and quirks. These areas and units …
Continue reading “Posts from the Field: Application Portfolio Rationalization”
