Systemic errors can have pandemic impact and spread like a bush fire, they tend to show up in the news and on front pages. The root cause can usually be found at the organization’s very senior management level. The cost of preventing this from happening is comparably small and relatively easy. However, it requires a change in the way that management teams thinks and communicates!
An unemployment center in Stockholm had to request police backup when 61.000 unemployed turned up for a central meeting that they had been requested to attend in person….
A national Credit card payment system was down nationwide for 11 hours, and while the service provider was fighting against time to get it back up and running, businesses across the country was losing money by the minute…
A bank’s IT meltdown left 600,000 customers unable to use their accounts for up to a month in 2012 and the event repeated itself again in 2013, Estimated loss of revenue as a result of the first event; £175 million! Just last week they were on the front-page again and this time it was as a result of having been fined £2,75 million. For 3 consecutive years, a decision made at senior management level is continuing to impact the banks’ revenue!
These are just a few samples of errors that arise every day as a result of decisions made by management teams at the highest level. Decisions that are costing society, business and public institutions millions and they are mostly a result of not having enough insight of the business from cradle to grave coupled with silo thinking.
Analysis shows that 56% of all errors occurring can be pointed back to ambiguity in what is being asked for when executing the company strategy, and the errors are getting exponentially more expensive the longer they manage to evolve, eventually reaching customers and then the Newsfeed.
Today IT is the backbone of your business; if your IT isn’t working as intended your Brand is being impacted. If your Brand is being impacted your revenue is affected, customers no longer trust you and your stakeholders are losing faith in your ability to deliver.
So why are you making headlines?
- Economy, Lack of IT investment during the Global Financial Crisis is impacting the market today with constant software failures
- The increasingly obscene demand of faster delivery, faster is not necessarily better – it is important to understand the complete picture of time-to-market versus quality
- Running on Old technology, most organizations are not up to date on current software platforms or leveraging the power of modern solutions. Most new solutions work and deliver immediate impact.
A recent study involving 717 companies across industries shows that the average IT spend the past 10 years has been 4.8% based on their revenue with an increase over the past 3 years up to 5.14%, indicating a catch up from the past years recession. Another study shows that only 49% of CIO’s express to be a strong business partner to the business, the same study indicates that business leaders do not think of IT to provide sufficient business value.
The results to some extent provide root cause to the war stories above; sitting in the trenches firing at each other does not prevent errors. What, on the other hand does help prevent the war stories is to create a value creating a partnership with other senior executives and business leaders, do the same with customers and suppliers of the business and with your IT vendors.
Initiate a co-creation strategy at the highest level that instil Quality and eliminate ambiguity, ensuring both horizontal understanding and vertical awareness supported by a cascading information flow will enable you to execute your strategy in a way that will protect your Brand.
Bottom line; There is no substitute for developing a strategy level relationship with decision – makers and other stakeholders. These relationships will form the backbone for advancing IT and provide higher value to business partners in a manner that will prevent your business being the talk of the day as a result of an error affecting your customers.
Heidi Kristoffersen 