Building Social Web Experience – Euroia 2008

Posted by Sean Lew on Tuesday, 30 September, 2008 under General Ranting |
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Book Review: IT Value Stack

Posted by Sean Lew on Monday, 29 September, 2008 under IT strategy, books |
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I have recently finished reading “The IT Value Stack: A Boardroom Guide to IT Leadership” by Ade McCormack. I must say its one of my best read this year.

First of all, the book proposes a IT value stack (duh) and describes each of the component of the model in detail. Each chapter (other than intro and conclusion) starts of with a description of the topic/component that is being discussed, why is it not done in organisation and how can you make it happen. It is then followed by commentary from various business/IT leaders from various organisations. This is a fantastic structure – not only it is clear, and is broken down into bite size components for readers to digest, the commentary ensures that what he is talking about is NOT bullcrap. Many of such books are “blue sky thinking” (i.e. semi baseless discussions) but he has managed to make it relevant by providing insights and comments from various business leaders.

The content of the book gets even better. It provides a great blend of business and IT issues and describes it in detail. Being an IT consultant, I have to be both technically and business focus and this book teaches me many of the different perspective business leaders have and also what the IT department is thinking/doing and the challenges that faces each party. The solutions provided, even though high level, provides an excellent grounding for your endeavor and the rest is up to you.

I highly recommend this book to any one who wishes to understand what the IT department is doing. They are no longer a “black box” department but a team, if properly managed, could deliver competitive advantage.

The anatomy of a Gen Y

Posted by Sean Lew on Friday, 26 September, 2008 under General Ranting |
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I would like to understand more about Gen Y employees and the best way to start is to understand Gen Ys in general.

Everyone has a different definition of Gen Y. Here, I would like define Gen Y as anyone who is born later than 1980. When the Gen Ys were born, it was probably the peak of the industrial revolution, there was advance machinery, agriculture, transportation and socioeconomic changes. Everyone was getting richer leading a better life as compare to the childhoods of their parents who would have (possibly) been through the second world war as kids and the Vietnam / Korean war. Life was getting better. These kids grew up in a relatively stable and well provided society.

In the 80s, computers were born and by the early nineties, the more well-to-do or techno-friendly families started having computers in the study room. This is probably the time best for learning such technologies. The older gen Ys could have seen Microsoft 3.1 and windows 95. They grew up playing games like Pac-man on such machines. They soon went to college and the internet came and took over the world. There was IRC, ICQ, AOL, MSN messenger and emails originally. They had an unprecedented power to communicate with people around the world and friends on the other side of the city or just down the street. Web 1.0 allowed smoother information flow as compared to going to libraries or bookshop.

In general, Gen Ys has never gone through a big war, a depression nor anything too dramatic. They grew up in a smooth sailing environment. They had channels to voice their opinions in the comfort of their own room and was constantly connected even while playing games like WarCraft.

These people wants to be connected. They want to know things when they need to. They want access to information and speed is critical. Each has a mind of its own and does not like to conform to standards. They can manage friendships over the internet and are effective communicators. They generally can’t take much hardship too.

So the question now is how can you make them happy at work and keep them motivated? There’s alot of untapped power in each of these Gen Ys. They work hard, the play even harder.

Communication within organisations

Posted by Sean Lew on Thursday, 25 September, 2008 under General Ranting, IT strategy |
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Why are projects fail? Why departments work in silos? Why are there duplicated work / initiatives? Why is there inefficiency? Why are wrong decisions being made? There are many reasons for each of the questions above but one of the common answer for all questions is the lack of communication within the organisation.

Communication does wonders and can create major havoc. Even between two person (say man and wife), communication is one of the key success factors of a relationship. Communication allows a relationship to be built between two parties. In an “all good” workplace scenario, communication will build trust and therefore its much easier to manage a work relationship after that. If we have sufficient information, we would have better capability to make good decisions. Discussions also allow people to uncover issues that they have no visibility to. In general, it will help.

If you want your organisation to run better, relook at your enterprise communication solution. There is no one size fits all solution. It must be designed to the specific culture of the organisation and ensure that your employees are comfortable with the form of communication and would use it. There are too many white elephant technologies in the workplace and lets not add to the list.

Organisational inefficiency

Posted by Sean Lew on Friday, 19 September, 2008 under Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, IT strategy, Information management |
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Everyone knows that there is no organisation in the world that is 100% efficient meaning all business process moves without a flaw, IT systems are always working as expected, people never makes mistakes and analysis of the business operations is always spot on.

Let me tell you a story, I just spoke to a call centre regarding a telecommunication product I have. I told them I would like to downgrade the plan to something more light weight in the new billing month. They said I can’t do it because that plan that I asked for is only available for new customers (it was not listed on the website and I think its dumb but if its the business process they would like to take, so be it). So after a short “discussion” we hung up. I went online to customer self service and saw the plan there AVAILABLE for me to downgrade. So I happily downgraded. All good, I get what I want.

This is a story of inefficiency. Either ways, this company made a mistake. Either the call centre staff was not informed that customer CAN downgrade to the plan now or the self service site is not updated.

There is no solution to such kinds of problems. If its not this scenario, there will be something else. Organisations must try to reduce any forms of inefficiency and communication problems. The above story is an example that humans are not aligned to the system (or vice versa). There are some areas of interest in organisations which should be addressed:

Information management
Organisations deals with mountain loads of data and to make sense of the data in a report is hard enough. Getting data extracted, transferred and loaded (ETL) into your data warehouse can be a nightmare in itself. Designing whatever reports required by each business department and teams can be another issue. Getting it out in time is another issue. So after all these steps, you still need to analyse it and make sense out of it – this is simply not a simple task! Information management must be done well so that management could see that “Oh that plan should not be there for people to downgrade to”

Collaboration and communication
Enterprise 2.0 aims to solve this problem. However, for someone to actually listen, accept and execute an instruction, its not as easy as just posting a piece of information online. Managers would need to promote it, send information out to people, make sure they understand and move on. There is no easy way out. Call centre staff needs to be told “Hey, from now on, people can downgrade their plan to the other plan!” and they have to acknowledge the information. If you argue that people should be RSS-ed / emailed the information and they take action from there, well in the perfect world, it will work that way but not on the imperfect earth.

P.S. Half of this is ranting my frustration about the error. Forgive me.

Enterprise 2.0 Change Management Part 2

Posted by Sean Lew on under Enterprise 2.0, IT strategy |
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Further from my last discussion on Enterprise 2.0 change management post, I would like to add that change managers do not have an easy job. They deal with people and some levels of technology. Their job is to make sure that people knows how to use new technology and make sure they use it the right way together with training, strategy, software releases and managing people different different agendas within the organisation.

Having said this, any good change manager (at least the ones I see around me) has excellent grip of the concepts and implementation of change management. However, in enterprise 2.0, one of the requirements is to engage the c-level people and they have to set an example to use the system, support by providing content and “evangelise” the goodness. Alot of people can’t see the benefits up front but once they start using it, they’ll get it. So how do you get the c-level people engaged in such kinds of implementation.

I believe that change management must be engaged right from the start of the strategy and planning of enterprise 2.0 projects. Benefits and projected strategic outcomes must be communicated well to c-level folks. They need to understand the roadmap very very well and they must also be well-informed of their “to-do” list when the system goes live. A strategy is useless if people do not know how to get there. They must be able to map the execution plan to the strategy to the high level objectives. Someone in change management has to do this, ensure communication is done the right way and people’s comments and feedback are being address promptly and everyone is on track to me culturally and mentally prepared for such a system.

Mobile Web

Posted by Sean Lew on Thursday, 18 September, 2008 under General Ranting |
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I really like this slide deck on mobile. I believe that no matter what enterprises do at the moment, sooner or later, they will have to open up access to mobile phones. It would be interesting to see mobile collaboration. Enjoy

Enterprise 2.0 Change Management

Posted by Sean Lew on Monday, 15 September, 2008 under Enterprise 2.0, General Ranting, IT strategy |
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Its quite interesting to see how some companies go ahead with big transformation projects and spend millions of dollars on IT systems that provides them with all these cool new functionality, more streamlined business process and better management of the business in general but fail to realize that no matter how much you spend on whatever cool systems, it will be pointless if change management is not done properly. Ultimately, its people who are running the systems.

In Enterprise 2.0, change management is even more important. Fundamentally, Enterprise 2.0 changes the way people work and interact with other colleagues, suppliers and/or clients. Stakeholders need to understand the shift in work habits, communication standards and also the soft skills needed to manage relationships online. No matter how great a technology can be, it is only as good as the person who controls it.

So how do you perform a good change program with enterprise 2.0? First of all, users need to be convinced that Enterprise 2.0 works and it will make their life easier. No one should force anyone to use any system.

Secondly, overview of the tool should be provided, a clear roadmap, timelines and instructions should be provided. Thirdly, training should be provided. If the tool is easy to use, you can consider sessions like lunch and learn. Fourthly, online help, documentation and easy access to an adviser is very crucial. Finally, as many Enterprise 2.0 evangelist would say, you need champions and I believe the more the merrier.

BearingPoint’s Enterprise Wiki

Posted by Sean Lew on Friday, 12 September, 2008 under Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, IT strategy, Wiki |
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If you have missed my great colleagues Nate and Jay at the enterprise 2.0 conference earlier this year, its all good. For your info, they have presented what BearingPoint did with their enterprise wiki, the thoughts behind it and the approach they have taken. See the slides below for more information!

Integrated discussions across enterprise systems

Posted by Sean Lew on under Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Information management |
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In any large organisation, there is likely to be some kind or CRM system like Siebel and there will be finance, HR, inventory, knowledge management system, business intelligence and the list goes on. That’s alot of systems to manage. Across all these systems, there’s alot of data stored under it and even more in your enterprise data warehouse. Stakeholders would then access the reports and make decisions based on that they get. However, as most of us know, not all decisions are easy to make and requires thinking and team work. After all, “the wisdom of crowds” have taught us that two heads is better than one.

I do see that there is a huge potential in this space where an enterprise collaboration site can come in and connect all these reports and numbers together, display it on ONE screen and discuss on ONE platform. However, its much easier said than done. Technology is still not at the stage where platforms like Clearspace and Connections is ready to integrate into systems like Cognos, Business Objects, SAP Financials or Hyperion. There is no point if both are not integrated together. You want dynamic data report on a dynamic discussion site.

I guess to a certain degree I am kinda dreaming, many companies can’t even get their reporting right or they are not willing to spend on a collaboration system. Let alone spending money to integrate them together. But I could really imagine the power of solid, reliable business reports integrated with a collaboration site with inputs from the team around the world and hopefully make the best logical decision everytime.