IBM Business Consulting Services. Implementing a governance policy for on demand workplace success. deeper. White Paper

Transcription

1 IBM Business Consulting Services Implementing a governance policy for on demand workplace success. White Paper deeper June 2004

2 Implementing a governance policy for on demand workplace success. Page 2 Contents 2 Our objective 2 The wild, wild West 4 The promise 5 The challenge 7 Portal governance 8 What it takes 10 When portal governance works 11 How IBM can help Our objective There are two questions that anyone implementing or thinking of implementing a workplace portal should be able to answer: What is portal governance? Why should I care? If you are contemplating implementing a portal or if you have already taken the first steps to do so, we believe you need clear answers to both questions. If the importance of portal governance has not yet made itself evident in your organization, just wait. It will. In our experience and in documented experience within the industry early and effective portal governance is crucial. Implement portal governance properly, and you are well on your way to helping ensure your portal investment will deliver on its promise. Ignore or under-appreciate governance, and your portal investments could be in jeopardy. Yes, this may sound dramatic. In our experience it is true. Why? Read on. The wild, wild West Consider your own organization for a moment. What does your intranet look like? How many sites does it encompass? How easy is it for you to find the information and services you need? Is it easy to navigate? Does it have a consistent look and feel? Is the information on your intranet consistent, authoritative and nonredundant? If you are like most employees, managers and executives we encounter, your answers probably look something like this: Sites: Hundreds, thousands, who knows too many! Easy to find the information and services I need: You ve got to be kidding the words find and intranet should not be used in the same sentence. Easy to navigate and consistent look and feel: Sure, if you have hours to kill getting familiar with all the different layouts.

3 Highlights Most organizations that IBM has worked with have leveraged network technologies with abandon. As they say, misery loves company. If your responses look anything like those above, then you are not alone. Most organizations that IBM has worked with have leveraged network technologies with abandon. Each function, division, community of practice, interest group or toolset (you name it ) sought a presence on the Web and has achieved real and sometimes significant benefits in doing so. It made sense at the time. Let each organization fund, tailor, build and implement its own Web site to address its own unique business interests, concerns and priorities. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Now consider your external-facing Internet sites for customers, suppliers or shareholders. Is the story any different? Perhaps it is not as extreme. But for many of our clients, the lament is the same: What a mess! As individual Web sites multiplied, each organization aimed to solve its own local problem, and the Web as a whole has become increasingly unruly and unmanageable. The problem seems simple in retrospect. Letting each organization do its own thing on the Web came with a significant and increasingly problematic unintended consequence. As the sites multiplied, each aimed to solve its own local problem, and the Web as a whole has become increasingly unruly and unmanageable. And in the process of building these Web sites, each function, division, business unit, community of practice, interest group and so on developed its own Web turf its sphere of influence where it calls the shots, where it can tailor the Web environment to suit its own ends. Look around your company. How

4 Implementing a governance policy for on demand workplace success. Page 4 Highlights many webmasters and Web administrators do you have? How protective are managers and executives of their autonomy to leverage the Web in ways that will best support their own local business objectives? When we think about portal governance and why it is important, this is our starting point. Hold on to this thought. Portal technology allows you to draw upon the vast amount of information and services on the Web, filter out the noise and serve up tailored content and services that the employee wants and needs. The promise Enter portal technologies. Just when things seemed beyond hope, along came a new technology that promised to clean up the mess. When you think about it, portal technology is pretty amazing. It allows you to draw upon the vast amount of information and services on the Web, filter out the noise and serve up tailored content and services that the employee wants and needs all based on his or her unique characteristics. This capability role-based access makes the Web a much simpler and more user-friendly place. Add to this the ability to integrate content and services into virtually seamless, cross-functional processes and you have a real winner. And the benefits do not stop there. The portal allows you to deliver tools for collaboration that provide employees with new ways to work together. The potential to drive process improvement and organizational renewal are compelling. The wild, wild West of the intranet or Internet can be centralized, simplified and controlled. Think for a moment what this means to the IT manager. Rather than dealing with hundreds of Web sites housed on servers distributed through the company, he or she can deal with only a single platform. What had been the wild, wild West of the intranet or Internet can be centralized, simplified and controlled. With these benefits in sight, it is no wonder that many organizations have opted to move forward with portal investments, despite recent economic pressures.

5 Highlights The challenge But wait a minute. How will our colleagues out in the business feel about the portal? From the perspective of the business Web site owners, the answer is clear. In our experience, most are enthusiastic about the potential to leverage portal capabilities to better serve their audiences. Many have gone so far as to build their own functional or business-unit-specific portals. Functions and business units are often reticent to cede control over their Web sites or local portal efforts to a centralized portal program. Managers will need to trust that portal governance will deliver on its promise. When it comes time to sign on to a companywide portal effort, however, the enthusiasm wanes. Functions and business units are often reticent to cede control over their Web sites or local portal efforts to a centralized portal program. And who can blame them? In the current environment, they have the ability to define, build and implement sites that meet their own specific business needs. Give that up, and they run the risk of their priorities being shelved or placed on the back burner. What is optimal from a companywide perspective may not and usually is not what is optimal from the perspective of a particular function or business unit. Even when managers concede the business value of a companywide approach to portal design and development, they will think twice before they surrender this autonomy. To do so, they will need to trust that a centralized approach will deliver on its promise. All too often, such trust is tenuous. It is common for the business to feel constrained and frustrated by the IT function s need to coordinate and manage the many elements of a company s IT infrastructure. IT gets a bad rap from the business: it slows them down; fails to deliver on its promises; and is a hassle to deal with. No wonder, then, that the business is going to be cautious about jumping onto a centralized portal effort. Experience speaks louder than words.

6 Implementing a governance policy for on demand workplace success. Page 6 Highlights But let s consider the best-case scenario for a moment. Even if we assume the business managers are willing to engage in a centralized portal effort, a question inevitably arises: Who gets to decide what is in the company s best interest, and on what authority? If I as the business manager am going to cede control of my unit s Web activities to a central body, how can I be sure that my priorities are given their proper due? I do not want to sacrifice my autonomy to a process that drives outcomes that I do not believe are truly in the best interest of the company. In fact unless I have the benefit of a larger company perspective I am likely to view my own organization s priorities as relatively more important for the overall business. My willingness to play ball will depend on whether I view the process as sound and fair. In some companies notably those with a very strong and consistent culture such an attitude is more prevalent. In many companies, this is harder to come by. How is this likely to play out in your company? Business managers want their priorities to be given their proper due, and their willingness to play ball will depend on whether they view the governance process as sound and fair. Reflecting on the current state of their projects, portal managers say that getting IT and business to come to an agreement on portal goals and building the business case to support their needs are their top challenges. Without business-level justification, CFOs quickly shut off spending when projects fail to substantiate results in initial deployments. Forrester Research* We can state this challenge in simple terms. Most organizations today do not have a mechanism in place to handle a technology so broad in its organizational impact. There is no way to make decisions about portal priorities that are in the company s best collective interest and more importantly that are viewed as legitimate by all interested parties. This is the essential governance challenge posed by portal technologies. And it is one that is widely under-appreciated by companies as they contemplate the many benefits of implementing a portal.

7 Highlights Portal governance OK. So you have an organizational challenge on your hands. How do you deal with it? Enter portal governance. Portal governance addresses the thorny problem outlined above by putting in place structures, processes and practices that are both legitimate and institutionalized. The process by which portal priorities are defined must be viewed by business managers as legitimate and institutionalized. First, the process by which portal priorities are defined must be viewed by business managers as legitimate that is, beyond challenge or debate. If decisions are viewed as legitimate, managers will accept them and willingly align their conduct with them. If such legitimacy is lacking, you can count on managers to challenge the decisions either overtly, through active protest, or quietly, through passive noncooperation. Either reaction can derail your portal effort and limit the business value it generates. Second, the process by which portal priorities are defined must be viewed as institutionalized that is, it must be an ongoing, enduring way to do things in your company. Governance is not a fleeting or temporary endeavor. If managers are to comply with the process, they need to be assured that the process will remain intact in the future. If they are to accept outcomes that go against their own business priorities today, they need to know that the process will endure and hopefully play out to their own benefit sometime in the future. In short, the rules of the game need to be both accepted and stable. Otherwise, you cannot expect managers to play willingly.

8 Implementing a governance policy for on demand workplace success. Page 8 Highlights Governance is not the same as project management. In this context, note that governance is not the same as project management. In our experience, this point is often missed. Governance is all about an enduring set of rules and practices and roles and organizations to support them. Project management is temporary and goal focused. Once the project goal has been achieved, the project management team goes away. Not so with governance. Your initial project team needs to put into place a governance model that endures long after the project team itself has been disbanded. What it takes So you need a governance model to support your portal implementation. How do you go about setting one up? How much effort is involved? What kinds of activities and deliverables need to be created? Let s take a look. In IBM s experience across many engagements, establishing effective governance is both challenging and doable. You will need to take four important steps. For effective governance, you will need to obtain a basis for legitimacy. Obtain a basis for legitimacy If your effort to establish a companywide portal governance model is to have traction, it must be viewed as legitimate by managers across your company. In our experience, legitimacy is most easily established through executive sponsorship. Recruit a senior executive to endorse and act as an advocate for the portal governance model, and you will clear away many potential roadblocks. In addition, you can enhance the legitimacy of your governance effort by actively and repeatedly seeking the input and perspective of key business managers across the company. Provide them with a voice in the process of governance development and you will better anticipate and accommodate their concerns.

9 Highlights You must tailor the model to fit your organization and define processes at both the strategic and operational levels. Communicate and implement the model effectively: focus on building momentum by aligning support and managing resistance. Tailor the model to fit your organization Although governance models share many common elements, no single governance model works well for every company. You must tailor your model to work well within your company s unique environment. Ask yourself a number of questions: How do you make decisions in your company? Who is involved? How centralized is the process? What existing decision-making bodies must be taken into consideration? You must develop answers to these questions both in general and more importantly as they relate to specific portal technologies, such as audience segmentation/roles, taxonomy management and user experience design. You must balance inclusion, on the one hand, with responsiveness, on the other. Define processes at both the strategic and operational levels Governance is required at two levels the strategic and the operational. At a strategic level, the governance process becomes the means through which the company sets business priorities for the portal. At the operational level, the governance process defines the means by which the company designs, builds, implements and maintains the portal. Governance should not end with a consideration of roles and structures, but should also include a detailed account of process and procedure. Only then can you hope to institutionalize portal governance as an ongoing way of doing business. Communicate and implement the model effectively You must take care in how you communicate and implement your governance model within your company. Some resistance is likely. Your messages and actions must both acknowledge and address the issues, concerns and reservations expressed by the various parties who need to play a role in governance. Think carefully about what to communicate with whom, and in what sequence. Focus on building momentum by aligning support and managing resistance.

10 Implementing a governance policy for on demand workplace success. Page 10 Highlights Once you have defined and implemented an effective governance model, you will be ready to create a truly on demand organization. When portal governance works Once you have defined and implemented an effective governance model, you are ready to drive full exploitation of your portal investments. The short-term gains from portal implementation are easy to see. Clean up and simplify your company s Web environment (internal and/or external), and you will have achieved a huge win. But this is only a beginning. Once you have cleaned up the mess, you will be in a position to drive profound organizational change. You will as we like to say at IBM move into the realm of creating a truly on demand organization. That is, you will be able to drive companywide process integration and simplification. You will build a new kind of organization, one capable of achieving important business goals. Improved productivity The portal will serve up content and services tailored to support your employees specific work activities and goals within welldefined, cross-company processes. The result: focused, value-adding activity instead of lost time and effort spent finding and coordinating resources. An on demand organization is designed for improved productivity, superior operational efficiency and deep integration. Superior operational efficiency In an on demand environment, well-defined business processes will drive the design of each employee s information and social context. Not only will each employee achieve a greater level of personal productivity, but the process as a whole will operate more efficiently. The result: less waste and more value creation for a given investment of resources. Deep integration As they become accustomed to working in an on demand environment, your employees will internalize and practice new beliefs and habits that allow them to be effective as technically enabled knowledge workers. This means placing a premium on flexibility, responsiveness, teamwork, creativity and personal initiative. It means a corporate strategy and culture that are widely understood and personally meaningful to individual staff.

11 Highlights Get portal governance right, and you have set the stage for significant organizational transformation that drives business value. Enhanced revenue With new organizational capability come new often unforeseen market opportunities. The on demand organization is designed to be smarter, quicker and more innovative. It leverages analytics to understand the wants and needs of its customers and to deliver new forms of value value for which customers are all too happy to pay. Portal governance is critical to enable future organizational capabilities. Get it right, and you have set the stage for significant organizational transformation that drives business value. Get it wrong, and you will have hampered your ability to drive change, which can ultimately impact your company s economic viability. Be assured, your competitors are driving their own organizational transformations to on demand operating models. Companies and industries are on the threshold of a significant, generational shift in how they get work done. Get portal governance right and you can be in the game. How IBM can help To date, IBM Business Consulting Services has helped many organizations implement their workplace portal solutions. Through these experiences, we have come to a clear conviction on portal governance it is a critical element of portal projects. If you fail to actively confront the issue of governance, you run the risk of not fully optimizing the business value generated from your portal investment. IBM Business Consulting Services has acquired deep expertise in the process of portal governance development and implementation. Through multiple experiences establishing portals for large global clients, IBM has acquired deep expertise in the process of portal governance development and implementation. Our professionals can tap a wealth of experience to help you pose the right questions, develop appropriate options and offer the right solutions. For more information To learn more about how IBM can help you on the path to portal governance, contact your IBM sales representative or visit: ibm.com /ondemand/workplace

12 Copyright IBM Corporation 2004 IBM Global Services Route 100 Somers, NY U.S.A. Printed in the United States of America All Rights Reserved IBM and the IBM logo are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. References in this publication to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates. * Portal Projects in Search of a Purpose. April 21, Forrester Research. G