During my university days (quite a while ago!), my desk had to be in order before I could study. Today, you’ll see that my office reflects the same mantra. Everything has its place, and my workflow absolutely relies on its maintenance. When working on projects, I encourage my peers to follow the SSC motto when choosing solutions:
Simplify, Standardise and Centralise.
It’s easy to get caught up in the latest new bulletin solution or cloud product; especially when every stakeholder has their own vision. Couple that with a poorly thought out organisational structure, and, before you know it, you’ve led your team into paralysis.
Loren Mahon, the vice president of Global Finance Systems in Oracle, stressed how important it is to fix and improve business processes during any cloud transition. Notice it isn’t a “technical process”? It is the organisational element that is the key to their success.
Mahon’s three steps?
- Simplify – eliminate anything that is not required. This requires discipline.
- Standardise – do the right things the same way every time. This requires buy-in from all stakeholders.
- Centralise – don’t outsource broken processes.
Look familiar? Believe it or not, my SSC ethos and Mahon’s evolved independently from each other. If you’ve studied evolutionary biology, you’d know about convergent evolution; where organisms not closely related independently evolve similar traits as a result of having to adapt to similar environments. The same applies to our business and ICT landscape.
Writer for Forber, Lisa BodellIn, said it succinctly where it’s too easy for companies to fall into the trap where complex systems “undermine the benefits of the underlying technologies being deployed.” It is a classic case where less is more. More secure. More efficient. More productive. More manageable.
So, the question arises, is your busy “messy”? Have you cavalier your team into the proverbial ditch? How agile are you in changing and adapting to emerging technologies? Are these technologies bogging you down instead of creating value?
Indeed, an “emerging” competitive advantage is what I like to call “agile delivery”. As companies begin to choose vendors with a plethora of services, an SSC quality control filter is essential more than ever. Automating repeatable processes that align with the technology used is where, I think, companies will either live or die.
At getNEXT we are committed to helping our customers safeguard their IT integrity and ensure their business continuity, focusing on business outcomes, not technology solutions alone. Get in touch today to see how we can help your business.
0 Comments