For many large organizations, their key challenge focuses on transforming IT from a support organization into an engine for growth; from a cost overhead into a revenue generator; from a reactive team to a proactive partner that provides the business with a competitive advantage.
"Many organizations are consumed by the firefighting they have to do," remarks HP’s David Hall, a Senior Enterprise Architect. "They don’t get the opportunity to ask what they can do differently."
IT Transformation Planning, a consulting service offered by HP, offers a wealth of experience as well as a proven methodology for transforming a large enterprise. Consider the merger of HP and Compaq: one of the most complex and well-publicized IT transformation success stories ever undertaken.
In a typical client engagement, HP’s Transformation Services team spends ten to twelve weeks running through four stages of service.
- Review materials provided by the client and interview both IT and business leadership to define the current and desired end states
- Analysis of gathered information to forge an overall strategy by relating what the team has learned with their knowledge of the industry’s best practices
- Client engagement to develop a number of tactical steps required to reach the defined strategic goal
- Acceptance and action of the strategy and tactics by business and IT leadership
At the end of the process, you’ll have a detailed map for change, broken down into bite-size projects that your organization can adopt:
- An executive presentation outlining the findings and recommendations
- A detailed report containing the analysis and rationale that informed the findings
- A detailed strategic transformation roadmap, in Microsoft Project format, showing phasing, sequencing, dependencies and timelines
Providing direction for action
HP’s methodology makes sense, and it’s worked for a number of their customers. Typically, those customers have tried change on their own before coming to HP. "One organization wanted to move to an SLA environment," relates Jennifer Heublein, HP’s Practice Principal and Director for Strategy and Architecture. "The order came from the top, but by the time it filtered down to the developers, there were no tools, no methodologies, no change management, no way for their tools to talk to each other. Basically it was an edict, without direction. Nothing changed."
"When you create a strategic plan you have to wrap your arms around all these moving parts of your organization: the people, applications, communications pieces and hardware infrastructure," says Hall. "No one person in the organization can see and understand it all."
By bringing in a third party, a company can ensure they receive an unbiased, bird’s-eye view of their issues. "You can’t do this yourself," agrees Heublein. "But just because you bring in an outside organization to help you see the forest for the trees, it doesn’t mean they have to stay there forever and do the work of implementing the strategy. This is a ‘do this with you,’ not a ‘do this to you,’" she laughs, referring to other consulting practices that install parallel workforces inside large organizations.
Change is never easy. But with the right partner and approach, it can be a lot less challenging.