Posts Tagged ‘skills inventory’
A New Branch on the TechExecs Tree
I recently became the new National Programs Chair at TechExecs. I’m excited about this new role because I believe that this provides another means of helping the IT community build closer bonds with their customers. I often have written about the benefits of business-IT alignment. Mostly it’s been about improving business processes and then making sure the client’s IT hardware and systems are supportive of those processes. This time it’s different.
In this new role we can expand that focus to include more support of the human resources of the IT world. Over the years, I have observed a very persistent disconnect between the technical community and their customers. The core problem is that there is minimal shared vocabulary and sensitivity to the other side’s issues. We will be providing seminars and workshops on topics like:
- Relationship building
- Consensus building
- Internal customer relationship management
- Internal sales techniques
Understanding your internal customer’s business issues
- Business skills development for IT professionals
- Understanding your customer’s business processes
- Other similar topics of interest to our members …
These are some of the types of topics we will cover but these are not necessarily the titles we’ll use. The overall goal is to help our membership grow the skills that will help them be better at their current jobs as well as make them more competitive in the marketplace. Obviously, we have our own ideas but we need to hear from our customers. We need to hear your ideas and needs. We’d like to hear your opinions on this topic as well. We want to make this new offering as valuable as we can for our membership. Please either comment on this post or send me an email at mnpattison@gmail.com.
This is a short post but it won’t be the last on the topic. Don’t forget to send me your ideas on this post as soon as you can. Thanks for stopping by…
Structuring your team for BPI sustainability
All business process related projects require some form of team to execute the work. Even for small companies with very informal and centralized leadership, BPI teams exist. They may not be formal but to improve their business processes they need a diverse skills inventory to look at the challenge from multiple points of view. The structure of those teams is extremely important. Insuring the appropriate mix of skills needs to be carefully managed by the company’s leadership to include the perspectives of business operations, information technology, staff functions and external stakeholders. Those external stakeholders may not participate the same way or to the same extent but the needs of customers, vendors and supply chain partners need to be included.
Historically, many business process improvement (BPI) projects fail to sustain their initial gains over the long term. Typically, this happens when the key resources needed to sustain your BPI benefits are overwhelmed by the crush of daily, urgent tasks. Over time, the automated part of the business practices may stay in place but the behavior of the people changes. To address this StrAIT Advisors recommends:
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Create a collaborative environment
Create a site on your company’s network (portal or something similar) where team members can collaborate, collect new ideas and monitor BPI success. Examples of useful tools are Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Groove, IBM (Lotus) Notes/Domino and Oracle Beehive.
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Project team becomes a business process competency center
Keep your team focused, even after the project is over. Put some level of accountability in their performance plans to spend a portion of their time managing and collaborating on your business processes from a companywide perspective. Remember it is possible to optimize individual departments but sub-optimize the company as a whole.
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Team leader is on the COO succession plan
This is often overlooked. Your business processes are the lifeblood of your company. The Chief Operating Officer (COO) or equivalent has the primary responsibility for making sure all the wheels keep turning smoothly. The person responsible for your company’s business process “think tank” will gain a wider perspective on how your business works, reinforcing the experiences that put them on that succession plan in the first place.