Seven IT Business Partner Challenges
That Causes Delay To Next Year's Budget Approval
Image by 15299 from Pixabay Still Chasing Sign-off for Next Year's Budget? Are you currently going through the exercise of what's in or out of your project list for next year? I've been there and frankly it's never a satisfying experience for any participant in the process. Estimated Project CAPEX spend: £9m. Budget: £2m. What gets cut and how do you decide? Darts? Endless rounds of governance meetings that argue the relative merits of projects only to be over-ruled by…
Remedies for skill shortage
The 5 competences
Our literature survey suggests that skill shortage is one of the key factors that derail Digital Transformation. We see that several contributors highlight the lack of technical skills as a major cause for failure. Others further point out skills around partnering and communication. However, from my experience, I would go one step further and argue that where those skills have been present, they’ve been concentrated in too few people and distributed insufficiently across the whole organisation - effectively becoming a…
How Should Digital Transform the Business?
Organisational Change Management
According to The Economist Intelligence Unit in 2013, 44% of strategic initiatives did not succeed in the last three years. Do you get significant resistance when introducing new activities or roles into an organisation? Typically, the missing part of the plan is a focus on leadership and people, such as: demonstrating a commitment to change, understanding how people will work in the future, helping people accept and embrace change, and incorporating feedback into the implementation process. My take on Organisational…
What Elements of Digital Would Best Realise the Company Vision?
Portfolio Management
Consider this: Have you ever witnessed a mad rush at the start of the financial planning season to allocate budget for next year's projects? And despite this, you still end up seeing leftover CAPEX simply because of a lack of approved business initiatives to spend it on? Such shortsighted pipeline inefficiencies substantially limit the value our organizations can offer. Instead, multi-year Portfolio Management should be implemented, not just to maximise return on investment but to also realise the strategic intent…
How Can We Demystify the Digital Future for Our Organisation and Make It Relevant and Meaningful?
Strategy Management
Image courtesy of JMortonPhoto.com & OtoGodfrey.com Quite often, organisations are reactive rather than proactive. We find it difficult to plan even six months into the future, yet find ourselves ill-equipped for sudden changes when they do occur. To answer this question, we need to have clear outcomes that reflect the values of our customers – That's done through Value Management. Secondly, as part of our innovation practice, we can test different digital products and services to see if they fulfil…
What Does the Customer Want and How Does Digital Help?
Value Management
Answers to this question can be expressed as customer values and outcomes. Value Management is the “shepherd” which keeps activity and focus on those outcomes. This doesn't just mean operations and project activities but also continuously improving the way we work as we go, adopting lessons learnt. By taking our customers' values into account, we can improve where we put our focus and how we allocate our resources to bridge the gap between expectations and outcomes. Essentially, we can direct…
Getting your point across on your plans for digital
Relationship Management
The ways in which we treat other people and engage them in the conversation will ultimately have a high impact on the answer. How often have you heard an office conversation in which there is a complete disconnect between those involved? It's not at all uncommon; a lack of trust and alignment has been shown to be a root cause of workplace friction. That's why it's so fundamentally vital for us to manage expectations in a consistent way - not…
Gavin Berman reflecting on June SITP Forum
Influence and Collaboration track
At the SITP Forum in June, I had the pleasure of hosting The Influence and Collaboration track. My guests were Robina Chatham, who spoke about how to become personally powerful, followed by Judy Rees and Steve McCann explaining how we could improve the experience of online meetings. How to become personally powerful The concept of personal power can be quite difficult to comprehend – how is it achieved? What does it look like? Robina presented the pyramid model, which shared…
The Key Take-aways from the SITP Forum June
James O'Driscoll
On Thursday 27th of June the eighth Strategic IT Partner forum took place at the impressive Great Hall within King's College in central London. This was our biggest event yet and offered those in the IT Partnering community an opportunity to network and attend various talks, including: Paul Bratcher (Former CMO and CDO at Rexel UK) - In Pursuit of Strategy Meghana Garg (Associate Director - IT Product Manager at JLL) – Digital, The Need of Today Dafydd Moore (Global…
Strategic Thinking
My Perspectives on the afternoon track at the June SITP Forum.
Following an insightful morning at the Strategic IT Partner forum, and an excellent lunch in the superb surrounding of Kings College; We kicked off the afternoon in the Strategic Thinking track with Thierry Ackermann looking at the Business Model Canvas. In a well-attended session, Thierry delivered an entertaining and informative view on this concept. Thierry built on the session he delivered at last year's Partner forum, taking us into more detail and using easily relatable examples to bring the concept…
What Technologies Differentiate An Agile Organisation From One That Isn’t?
In our previous post, we went into depth about the conceptual backbone of Agile. In short, it’s a progressive mindset predicated on empowered roles and fluid plans set to a regular “heartbeat” with the goal of delivering a product more focused on customer needs. Within this Agile umbrella, we further dived into some of the main principles and philosophies that make it tick. This includes the 12 Principles of the Agile Manifesto, as well as key methodologies such as Scrum,…
The Three Change Agents That Drive Digital Transformation Success.
No matter what your company goals are, organisational transformation is a tricky proposition that requires a heavily nuanced strategy. And yet, current processes are often ineffective and outdated, taking shortcuts and failing to realize the bigger picture. Teams decide to focus heavily on the changes needed, so they bring in external consultants to get desired results. Once these interims finish their tasks and depart, however, they take all their contextual knowledge and vital relationships with them. The organisation is then…
The Digital Engine
What is Digital? Everybody has a different answer. The point is it’s evolving and the phenomenon has not yet reached a sufficient level of maturity where there is a broad consensus. However, we are making progress. There are methods, technologies, impacts on society, business models - all of which could have the term “digital” superimposed on it. But what makes a digital organisation fundamentally different from a non-digital organisation, one that has a catalyst for growth, scale and competitive advantage…
The Nine Principles of Digital Transformation Success
While the rise of Digital has drastically changed our lives this past decade, many organisations still find themselves struggling with ERP upgrades and legacy software. This unfortunate disconnect between consumer experiences and enterprise operations begs some questions: What if we could quickly develop effective technological solutions across all teams? And how would we go about doing so? I suggest that corporate Digital Transformation is akin to change an aeroplane's engines mid-flight; it requires carefully developing a strategy and assets for…
Relationship Maturity Model Case Study
British Council at the SITP Forum on the 22nd November
Deborah Meredith and Richard Coldwell presented their experiences of developing the BRM maturity model, to help in establish the IT business partnering team at the British Council. The second half of the session split was into two groups to discuss where participants saw themselves on the maturity scale. The aim of the interactive discussion was to link up and share insights between those who have made it to performing at a strategic level and those looking to move upwards. Highlights…
The Role of Strategic IT Partner in Digital Transformation
Key Takeaways - 22nd November SITP Forum
The Role of Strategic IT Partner in Digital Transformation On Thursday 22nd of November 2018 the seventh Strategic IT Partner forum (previously known as the IT BRM/IT BP forum) took place near Heathrow. In my opinion the content of the day was our best yet and offered those in the IT Partnering community an opportunity to network and attend various talks, including: Liam Hogan - The role of Strategic IT Partners in Digital Transformation Ian Golding - A CIO's Perspective…
Report The Right Metrics
Part 3: The Town Crier Syndrome
This article is the third in a series of five about finding time to become more strategic (see part 1). This is one of the key challenges faced by anybody who has a partnering role on behalf of technology support functions in a company. Here we discuss a common symptom - "the Town Crier" syndrome, how we can become more than relayers of information; and how we can consequently improve our tenure in role by avoiding this syndrome. A long…
Improve Your Personal Impact And Influence
Part 2 - The "White Glove" Syndrome
Improve Your Personal Impact And Influence Part 2 - The "White Glove" Syndrome This article is the second in a series of five about finding time to become more strategic (see part 1). This is one of the key challenges faced by anybody who has a partnering role on behalf of technology support functions in a company. Here we discuss a common symptom - "the white glove" syndrome, how we can improve our personal impact and influence; and how we…
Creating Time To Become More Strategic
Part 1: YOU are the crucible of Organisational Change.
Creating Time To Become More Strategic Part 1: YOU are the crucible of Organisational Change. The Goal When I talk with peers and customers, the goal of becoming a Strategic IT Partner comes across as being self evident: Thinking about the long-term future of how the business grows and how technology helps; and having those discussions earlier and with more senior people. The challenge they pose to me, is how? This is an introduction blog post in a series of…
.....A Peak Preview Of Our Relationship Management Workshop.....
Our Beliefs, Principles and Guidelines
.....A Peak Preview Of Our Relationship Management Workshop..... .....We've been curating some great insight into how we can get a seat at the Decision Maker's table.... The way things get done in an organisation is through relationships. Success in Relationship Management is about building trust and managing expectations consistently To be credible, your words and behaviours need to be consistent; you need to be an expert in an activity that is valuable to your organisation. To become influential, practice different…
