The role of IS/IT is not about suc­cess­ful­ly deliv­er­ing sys­tem projects, it’s about ensur­ing the adop­tion of sus­tain­able solu­tions. Let that sit with you for a minute while I first explain what I mean by sus­tain­able solu­tions, and then I’ll dive into how and why it’s important.

A sus­tain­able solu­tion includes a tan­gi­ble piece of soft­ware, but this is only part of it. It’s the know-how of each busi­ness unit’s process­es and the industry’s lead­ing prac­tices, as well as an under­stand­ing of the tech­nol­o­gy that can improve all of it. It’s also hav­ing the abil­i­ty to train and stick around to encour­age employ­ees to adopt that new solu­tion. It’s an under­stand­ing that the job is not done at the end of deliv­ery and hyper­care, but that the job con­tin­ues for up to six, nine, or even 24 months after.

Now that we’ve estab­lished this as the foun­da­tion of your IS/IT team’s func­tion, we can move on to defin­ing what the team’s role is in adopt­ing a sus­tain­able solution.

The Role of IT/IS: Real­i­ty Ver­sus the Ideal

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, IT/IS has sup­port­ed two types of shops: a pack­age shop that pri­mar­i­ly lever­ages soft­ware such as SAP, and a cus­tom shop that goes out and cre­ates its own unique solu­tions. The cus­tom shops are the ones that tend to have more tal­ent assigned to them because they’re doing all the work them­selves. So tra­di­tion­al­ly, the role of IS/IT has been to say, ​“Okay, tell me how you want me to do some­thing and I’ll fig­ure out the most effi­cient way to devel­op it.”

For the pur­pos­es of this post, we’re going to focus on pack­age shops, which have cre­at­ed an envi­ron­ment where the IS/IT team says, ​“Tell me what you want, and I’ll go fig­ure how to con­fig­ure or cus­tomize the soft­ware to do it.” With this approach, many times the team will know how to make the soft­ware do what a func­tion or busi­ness unit wants it to do as opposed to under­stand­ing and know­ing when to say, ​“We can do it this way, but that’s not the best way to meet your busi­ness needs.”

A Tech-First Approach or a Solu­tion-First Approach?

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, the IS/IT team has employed a tech-first approach where it deliv­ers soft­ware that is prop­er­ly test­ed and busi­ness users are ini­tial­ly trained, and the team moves on to the next project. Ide­al­ly, the IS/IT team should focus on a solu­tion-first approach with the know-how that the solu­tion is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the appli­ca­tion only, but a solu­tion to the whole prob­lem or oppor­tu­ni­ty. And, it’s not just about hand­ing it over with some ini­tial train­ing, but stick­ing around long after to observe that the busi­ness is using it cor­rect­ly and adjust­ing where and when any adjust­ments are needed.

IS/IT teams should be asking:

• Do we have a process in place to make sure we have the right tal­ent to use this software?
• Has our tal­ent learned how to lever­age it properly?
• How do we con­tin­ue to improve how we lever­age this new technology?
• How do we ensure that the busi­ness process­es we’re using now are effi­cient and effective?
• How do we mea­sure success?
• Are we meet­ing with our busi­ness units to strategize?
• How do we remain agile in the face of con­stant change and con­tin­ue to sup­port this technology?

All that is on top of, ​“Here’s your software.”

Get­ting Through the Roadblocks

Through the years, IS/IT teams have allowed them­selves to be boxed into a cor­ner. They have focused on tech­nol­o­gy and its appli­ca­tion as request­ed, and noth­ing more.

Most IS/IT teams have just kept cur­rent with the tech­nol­o­gy. They have not paid atten­tion to lead­ing indus­try stan­dards and lead­ing prac­tices. In today’s world, if you just keep cur­rent with tech­nol­o­gy and noth­ing more, your job can very well be out­sourced. You need to under­stand the tech­nol­o­gy, but it is far more impor­tant to under­stand how to address busi­ness units and func­tion­al issues with­in your organization.

The mea­sure of suc­cess is when a busi­ness unit will not make a tac­ti­cal or strate­gic deci­sion or do some­thing dif­fer­ent­ly with­out hav­ing IS/IT rep­re­sent­ed at the table. And, it is the CIOs respon­si­bil­i­ty to clear the path for this to hap­pen and do so by build­ing rela­tion­ships at the top lev­el, while also pay­ing close atten­tion to their team to assign the right peo­ple to the right jobs.

The Risk of the Sta­tus Quo 

It can be easy to step back and decide what you have in place right now is work­ing just fine. So, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? I can tell you from expe­ri­ence why it’s impor­tant to fix it.

At one com­pa­ny I worked for, one of our man­u­fac­tur­ing loca­tions was run by a site man­ag­er who was tech­ni­cal­ly savvy and real­ly knew how to lever­age tech­nol­o­gy. The resources with­in the IS/IT team that were sup­port­ing that site got along well, but spent their time cus­tomiz­ing — not con­fig­ur­ing — solu­tions to make the site the most effi­cient, effec­tive site in the world. The team was deliv­er­ing soft­ware, the busi­ness was using it, and things were going great.

But as the world changed, the com­pe­ti­tion changed, the cus­tomer needs changed, and the busi­ness needs also changed with it. But what didn’t change, was the site manager’s abil­i­ty to keep up with all of it. They were so locked into the soft­ware appli­ca­tion and how they did the job ver­sus under­stand­ing the process­es that they almost went out of busi­ness. Just because it ain’t broke today doesn’t mean it can’t break tomorrow.

Take Sen­si­ble, Sus­tain­able Steps Toward Success

Now that we know the how, what, and why, let’s talk about what’s next. First, focus your IS/IT tal­ent on being the best they can in under­stand­ing lead­ing process­es enabled by tech­nol­o­gy. That’s key.

The sec­ond thing I’d rec­om­mend is to audit your work­force. At anoth­er com­pa­ny, we just did some head­count right-siz­ing beyond what we need­ed to so that we can hire indi­vid­u­als who have more busi­ness process/​function knowl­edge. It’s eas­i­er to get them up to speed on the soft­ware ver­sus them being the gurus of the soft­ware and not know­ing any­thing about the busi­ness processes.

You need to have lega­cy and new tal­ent, plus a new mind­set in terms of what everyone’s role is. By tak­ing these steps you’ll begin to change the mind­set and move toward adopt­ing sus­tain­able solu­tions that make the most sense for your business.

If you have a ques­tion and/​or have oth­er sug­ges­tions, please reach out to undercovercio@​asug.​com. If you’re an exec­u­tive, you can join us at our local and nation­al ASUG Exec­u­tive Exchange events to net­work with oth­er exec­u­tives look­ing to get more val­ue from their SAP systems.