Anne Bruce / AB & Associates
Business leaders are challenged to create new markets and to manage in global markets. Creating new market share is the “sweet spot” of sustainability. So how does redefining our information technology fit into this sweet spot and into sustainability business strategy?
Science fiction shows us societies run by artificial intelligence. Consumers’ experiences of outsourced services can find themselves speaking to others literally anywhere in the world! Social media is our newest marketplace. Today, enterprise information systems enable the business processes that run global markets, while technology infrastructures provide the backbone. Early adopter market leaders employing Enterprise and Web 2.0 services are creating the collaboration in the organization to sense and respond rapidly to exceptions in business process and turbulent markets. Meanwhile, too many of us still pour through hundreds of e-mails to manage exceptions to the business processes for which we are responsible.
With all this change, how can our CIOs (Chief Information Officer) and IT organizations really enable an information enterprise to provide us the predictive analyses to strategically lead and manage in a sustainable future? And, is it even IT’s purpose? Much has been written about the role of the CIO providing a competitive advantage to business through technology. Even more has been written about how the IT organization must get beyond the day-to-day and focus on project management, IT governance and portfolio management in order to provide real value to business goals.
But as perceptive CIOs seek to transform their rigid, legacy-ridden infrastructures into agile, efficient, service-driven delivery mechanisms, they must adopt a pragmatic approach to look at the top-line benefits of sustainability in the same manner in which they manage the risk of consumer IT while embracing the benefits. Otherwise, CIOs risk being sidelined as the “enemy” by their constituencies. These information enterprises must be transformed to focus on the information to develop new markets that balance social, economic and environmental capital. The Information Enterprise has the data, and many business functions today create the analytics to forecast and model the future. So how do we put the Information Enterprise to work toward sustainability? How can the CIO and IT organization of the future provide the predictive intelligence to corporate leadership to ensure sustainability?
New Markets – IT and The Sweet Spot of Sustainability
We are living in the Age of Information as it is migrating into the Age of Accountability. Accountability has created the era of corporate sustainability. Sustainability has been defined as “providing for the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” However, there’s still much confusion about full sustainability, as it means different things to different people.
Nonetheless, more and more companies have recognized that sustainability can be good for their business. It represents a changing role for business and its shareholders in the wake of globalization. Beyond achieving cost reduction through efficiencies, it can lead to growth, the opening of new markets and improved stakeholder relationships. It can drive growth and create new markets. It’s a balance between people, planet and profit. Where these three intersect is the “sweet spot” – profitable new markets – or products and/or services.
These new realities require a redesign of our corporate organizations enabled for true sustainability by IT. So how can IT take the forefront and lead the effort?
Redesigning Our Corporations
The ultimate purpose of business has been to conduct business. However, as we holistically rethink this purpose with the future in mind, the mindsets of our current leadership and the organizations they create are changing. Sustainability in the 21st century requires much more than carbon neutral operations. Although company-wide growth and innovation has been the historical art form of strategic leadership, the process of reshaping corporate governance through best practices, policy and program portfolios while delivering on strategic plan, has been an arduous process.
Using customer and business data to influence new products, services and driving growth has also been the norm. Now the question is: Will facilitating company-wide innovation in the future be achieved from these existing processes or is further change needed? We might consider that a re-design is underway as we speak. This is the grass roots effort of the green movement. But to realize this type of change throughout the enterprise requires evaluation of all available information, which is the real product of the Information Enterprise. Its purpose then becomes increased decisional effectiveness. Predictive analytics and models are at its core. Predicting the future of a corporation’s performance facilitates the decisions and actions that will be effective in sustainable globalization.
Today’s Information Enterprise
The CIO has oversight of the enterprise information architecture and has achieved much success through collaboration with functional business areas over the past decades. We know that automated business processes can create an operational competitive advantage. IT professionals, together with users of business and IT systems, are responsible for products and services created. These systems, however, are only as savvy as the business processes we create and implement. Thought leadership has created numerous solutions to optimize and re-engineer business processes.
We’ve lived through the introduction and implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Product Lifecycle Management(PLM) approaches, just to name a few. Each of these disciplines contains best practices, yet application in practice is always dependant on the internal business strategy, process and the people who operate them.
How do we translate this re-design of the corporation, as it changes business processes and enterprise applications and software? Well, there are four generations in the work force, each with different approaches to work, collaboration and IT tools. We’re now living in a time where change is occurring at a pace within the lifespan of individuals. Some working people grew up before computers existed (and they’re now in power positions), while Gen-Yers never knew what it was like without computers! But the fundamentals of management haven’t changed in 40 or 50 years.
The current generation operates in a social media world, with wiki- and widget-driven tools, and they gain information from blogs and Internet sources. This is the generation that is enabling a sustainable future. They have the whole world at their fingertips and they don’t even have to go anywhere. They have the ability to participate in things anywhere without leaving their home.
If you take the intense amount of information generated by internal and external collaboration tools, enable this through instantaneous wireless communications, then capture the information in participative knowledge bases, you have the information necessary to model a sustainable future.
Think about it, companies spend millions of dollars a year bringing in consultants from McKenzie and Accenture to analyze and predict; but the information already exists! It just needs to be analyzed and evaluated. Is this the future purpose of an Information Enterprise?
Drivers of the New Breed of CIO
The 20th-century CIO was focused on technology skills, process transformation, packaged applications, risk mitigation and IT recruiting. The 21st-century focus has been transformed to commoditized infrastructure, globalization of firms, sophisticated service supply and a demand for innovation over efficiency. Now as a global visionary, the CIO is partnership focused, has delegated operations, Google-ized applications and is a business recruiter.
Let’s apply a level of actional effectiveness to the “information” and create a Chief “Intelligence” Officer, whose value to corporate leadership now becomes strategic predictive analytics. The predictive information enterprise now has a purpose that goes beyond establishing and operating the systems. The Information Enterprise has a new purpose as it creates predictive intelligence for decisional effectiveness. In this enlightened state, we have the ability to model and create new markets and measure variables, thus providing the corporate intelligence that creates the sustainable future.
As our GenYers make their way into the boardroom, what we have today called consumerization of IT will merge with the Information Enterprise, enabling this predicative analysis and modeling. The speed of decisional effectiveness will become even faster. A completely new breed of information executives will be created across the organization. Our new Chief Intelligence Officer becomes the catalyst for this change. But how do we prepare ourselves for this?
Predictive Intelligence
Driving for a predictive intellect sounds like science fiction, but as discussed, terrific capabilities already exist. It’s only the agreements we make from collective mindsets that limit our vision, reach, ability and achievements. Who, if not us, sets the reality of what can be achieved? Therefore, if we decide that reliable predictive intelligence can be achieved, what is preventing us from creating it? If we have the ability to establish and monitor the variables to achieve predictive intelligence, we have the ability to create sustainability for a three-, five- or ten-year business plan.
Successful leadership has been setting the vision of business plans for years. Company-wide innovation has been the differentiator for decades. The secret weapon now becomes a greater utilization of the Information Enterprise we can have, predictably evaluated toward sustainable business goals.
Case Study
Today’s business metrics do a great job summarizing the past. A marketing department wanted to predict how customers would respond to a re-engineered sustainable product, the answer was predictive intelligence. By learning from abundant historical data, the information enterprise provided the marketer something beyond standard business reports and sales forecasts. It provided actionable predictions for each customer market and segment. The R&D department was then able to respond to each new requirement from marketing, while R&D and marketing models were combined to analyze the life cycle of the product in the consumer environment.
As multiple predictors were added, a statistical model was formed. Predictions were made and the model was validated as additional data became available. The processes were heuristic and resulted in a successful launch of the product. And with predictive intelligence running as a business activity, the team was able to guide the process toward actionable predications. This process dissolved past internal business function silos and time to market was reduced by months, while financial predictions were on target and the markets entered performed profitability. The project’s success was based on the program defining sustainable product goals, evaluating predictive results and deploying the product based on the predictive model.
Anne Bruce is a senior management executive at AB & Associates with extensive experience in consulting, information systems and technology, serving middle market and Fortune 500 clients. Anne is a Sr. Partner at Up-Shift LLC, headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Up-shift is a management training and services firm specializing in implementation of a holistic, enterprise-wide management system that routinely improves revenue and enhance human capital in achieving full sustainability with long-term viability.
