This is Technology Tracey.  Today, Tracey has decided she needs a new car.  After driving to the nearest car yard (she is personal friends with one of the salespeople), she buys a nifty two-door coupe with canary yellow paint, leopard print seats, keyless entry and an eight speaker, top of the line stereo.  Tracey drives home feeling very happy.  But then her significant other asks: “How will I drive our three kids to soccer practice?”

Or consider Shopping List Sam.  Sam has spent six months drawing up the dream specifications for his car:  Rugged off road capability, roof rack for the skiing and surfing holidays, and 8 seater capacity with towbar attachment for the caravan.  Yet despite the $75,000 price tag, Sam hasn’t driven beyond the city limits in 5 years, can’t ski, gets seasick at the sight of a seagull, and lives by himself.

Lastly, we turn to Focused Fred.  Fred has purchased an electric car because he works just 15 minutes down the road from his house.  But in four months’ time, he and his family are going on a 3000km trek to Far North Queensland.  That electrical car isn’t going to be practical without either installing some very expensive battery packs, or starting over with a system that has better long-distance travel range.

All of these scenarios may seem quite ridiculous.  Yet I have witnessed organisations that approached the purchase of significant information platforms in just the same way as Tracey, Sam, and Fred.  

By an information platform I mean a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software product.  These products are typically sold on the basis that they can be “configured” – as compared to “customised” through programming – to be useful in executing a variety of business processes.  Examples of information platforms include electronic document and records management systems (EDRMS), customer relationship management (CRM) systems, case management tools, workflow processing engines, or an amalgam of these.

These flawed purchase decisions stem from two causes:  a lack of balance in the requirements gathering process, and/or a lack of understanding of how a “platform” differs from an “application”.

“Tracey companies” are heavily technology-focused.  They often buy software on the basis of little more than a sparkly ‘tech demo’, or a close relationship with an existing vendor.  When it turns out that critical features are missing or don’t live up to the hype, there’s a panicked search for add-ons or a fall-back to programming the missing features.  

Lesson:  Always ensure the business is involved in any decision to acquire a COTS product.  While they may need to compromise due to long-term design requirements and technical limitations, if you can’t convince them that the recommended approach is useful and viable, rethink your purchase.

“Sam companies” let the business owners specify exactly what they want.  This approach to defining functional requirements is typically adapted from designing systems that are coded from scratch.  However, this “blank check” method can be disastrous when working with COTS products.  

Focusing on delivering features exactly as requested by the business, instead of working collaboratively to work within the strengths of the COTS product, leads to complex workarounds, hacks, or code that compromises the upgrade path of the software.  This rarely works out well for the vendor or customer, leading to delayed delivery, substantial cost-blowouts and buggy functionality.  

Lesson:  Effective deployment of COTS products requires a strong internal technical expert who understands both business needs and the product architecture.  Between purchase and deployment, these experts should review and adapt functional requirements to be more “natural” to the product design approach while minimising functional loss.

“Fred” companies have given project teams the whip hand.  By remaining focused purely on keeping costs down and meeting the immediate needs of the first business users of the system, design choices may be made which are difficult or impossible to undo.  This can lead to massive re-engineering bills as subsequent projects attempt to enhance the original platform design to meet more complex needs. 

Lesson:  Always establish and adhere to clear principles for the overall COTS implementation.  Having these will minimise the risk of short-sighted design decisions being made which will be costly to reverse.

Ordinarily, line area systems are designed to fix a specific problem, and are used mainly by one business area.  These can be tactical solutions, in which case the flaws of the approaches of Tracey, Sam and Fred above are less critical.  

On the other hand information platforms, by their very nature need to be adapted and enhanced over time.  This long-term investment makes information platforms a strategic purchase rather than a tactical one.  This in turn makes it critical for information platforms to have a defined and viable strategic framework which is understood, accepted, and promoted from the top.  

All strategic frameworks need to answer seven key questions:

Objectives – Why does it matter that this project goes ahead?

Goals – What does success look like when everything is done?

Benefits – How can we measure success?

Principles – Can we arrive at a consensus on what values matter?

Strategies – Can we arrive at a consensus on where our change efforts should be focused?

Norms – Does the new system match “how things are done” around the organisation?  If not, what’s our plan to deal with that?

Roles & Responsibilities – Will jobs change after implementation and if so, how?

In some cases, the answers to these questions are easy and straightforward, but in many cases they are not.  

Technology may have been put forward as “the answer” to problems that instead are rooted in far more complex, people-oriented issues such as fear of change, morale or management deficiencies, lack of knowledge, lack of skills, or lack of trust.  If an implementation doesn’t tackle these issues head-on, failure is far more likely.  

High-level strategic planning and knowledge management skills are generally required to effectively navigate and design around these uncomfortable conversations.

Robust and well-governed information platforms can be transformational in unlocking business productivity.  

But equally, they are one of the hardest projects to successfully execute.  You should never treat the implementation of an information platform as a trivial task.  But at a minimum, please try to avoid being another Tracey, Sam, or Fred.

Stephen Bounds is an Information and Knowledge Management Specialist with a wide gamut of experience across the government and private sectors.  As founding director of knowquestion Pty Ltd, Stephen provides strategic thought leadership in the development and implementation of modern information systems. Contact him at sb@knowquestion.com.au